*Exciting update! The folks at Art in the Age who make Root liquor were pretty thrilled about this root beer float, so they offered me the chance to give some goods away to you. Much as they would love to give a bottle of Root, The Man forbids it, so they put together a box of Root swag for one lucky (US-based) winner.

It includes an Art in the Age logo tee, Root mug, coaster set, soap, tote and shot glass. If you want it, leave a comment below. Bonus entries for tweeting this giveaway and following @saltyseattle and @artintheage on twitter- just comment that you follow/followed. Winner selected at random on Wednesday, October 5th.

It is going to be very difficult for me to contain my excitement about this subject matter, but I will do my best. I can only hope that my enthusiasm is infectious enough that you catch it too and we both get the pleasure of having such a joyous disease.

Let’s talk about the olden days. Now would be a good time to put on a pair of bloomers and borrow a cap gun from a little kid. Also, take a nip off your flask. You’re going to want to finish it by the end of this post so you can refill it with this stuff. Read more

Team #SmileHarder with Guide Brad (left) & Pilot Chris (rear)

*Special thanks to Andrew Wilder of Eating Rules, who took most pictures from this post unless otherwise specified.

Remember summer camp? Whistling with ten crackers in your mouth after swimming the length of the lake? Getting asked to the end-of-week dance by Petey Goldwyn (heir to the MGM crown) and turning him down because Gary Warsaw was way cuter? Ok, so maybe you didn’t go to summer camp with the spawn of Hollywood royalty, and frankly I’m not sure why I did either, but you remember the experience, right?

At the beginning there was an impending sense of dread. What if they don’t like me? What if I wet my pants on the top bunk and it dribbles down into Shiela B’s perfectly-plaited hair? But by the end, you’d sooner streak naked through the mess hall than abscond to the eager arms of your ‘rents.

That’s what the long weekend I spent in Oregon hosted by Travel Oregon and managed by Maxwell PR was like. Before I went, I didn’t love Oregon. I lived in Portland for a year just out of high school and found very little to do there besides get into the kind of trouble that involved copious bong hits and regular rave attendance (along with the accoutrements of that lifestyle). The tragicomic denouement was a weeklong sojourn in my car because I was too embarrassed to call home and admit I’d been kicked out of my apartment. When I left Portland I commemorated it by shaving my head to the quick and leaving the pile of blond half-dreadlocks behind in favor of a new zen lifestyle.

So it was with great trepidation that I returned to the heart of my late-adolescent angst. I needn’t have worried. I took a train to Portland, which was delayed because a drunken man took up residence on an underpass above the tracks and refused to come down from his six inch perch. When we finally got the all-clear to pass, our train was well-behind schedule, thus depositing me late into the throes of the welcome reception. Read more

oh lookie at me cookie

Pim Techamuanvivit of the blog Chez Pim made a resonant point on her facebook page recently. She said:

“It annoys me every time I hear someone say “I’m a self-taught cook/chef/whatever”. There is no such thing. You learn from SOMEONE, via books or eating or other experiences. Be grateful to those who came before you and acknowledge that lineage.”

Often I hear that cooks, food-lovers, even food-writers are “self-taught”. In fact, I am guilty of claiming autodidacticism in my own culinary trajectory. I have come to realize that it is important to acknowledge what made me who I am so that I can build a better future-me. This is the age-old dilemma with history repeating itself. If we don’t look back and appreciate what made us learn, leap and fail, we’ll never succeed to our fullest.

Here are some of my decisive kitchen moments in the early years.

with mom and dad

It starts with one story that some of you have heard before. It involves me, my best friend Slobber, and his untimely demise. As you may know, when I was little, my father moved our biracial family to an extremely small town in Idaho from the suburb of LA, California where we had been living. My dad is white, but my mom and her two children from a previous marriage are black. I am not adopted, in case you were wondering, I just happened to get most of my dad’s coloring. I like to think that I inherited nice lips and supple nipples from my mom’s side, but that’s about it. Read more