Paper Palate

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Steve Rubenstein detailed some of the changes planned by America’s largest convenience store chain.
The article, “7-Eleven seeks to go beyond beer, jerky, cigarettes,” reports on a northern California meeting of 7-Eleven franchise owners. The company set up a “faux” 7-Eleven so the franchisees […]

I have been reading Cook’s Illustrated for years now, and though I seldom use any of their recipes anymore (they tend to be very basic dishes that I can cook with my eyes shut), I still read the magazine. I am always interested in their product reviews, because their very methodical, somewhat obessive testing approach […]

Faith Kramer finds herself reading about food sometimes even more often than cooking it. “After all,” she says “it’s hard to grill chicken in bed.” In addition to the many American food magazines she reads, Faith also enjoys “translating” into American some of the best food magazines of England and Australia. She’s […]

Welcome to the fourth week of the Chronicle’s Sunday Dinner series - this week’s focus is an “Oscar-themed hen party.”
Inspired by best actress nominee Reese Witherspoon (playing Johnny Cash’s wife in Walk the Line), the party features appetizer-size portions of modified Southern favorites, all prepared on a budget. The Chronicle estimates that feeding […]

I think that we are onto something with the idea of healthy hedonism.
It may send our more puritannical anti-pleasure brethren in this country into a tizzy, but, so be it. Bring it on.
This is the kind of culture war I am up for.
I’m armed and ready with a saute pan in one […]

My love for cooking has evolved over the past 20 years. I started my journey as someone who loved to eat, so I needed to be able to cook. I practiced my craft trying to improve. I became food obsessed a few years ago transforming myself from an accountant to a personal […]

The first year that I lived on my own was when I was eighteen — senior year of high school, my parents moved to another country and I stuck around to graduate. I spent that year eating takeout pizza, Subway sandwiches and Hungry-Man frozen dinners.
It. Sucked.
Afterwards, after I went off to […]

My love affair with cookbooks started when, as a young girl, I discovered my older sister’s copy of Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls. I went through it page by page countless times, mesmerized by words like sift, blend, chop and mince. I fell in love with the pictures of Pigs […]

First things first: if you don’t like spicy food, then this magazine is not for you.
Chile Pepper is about as niche as niche can be when it comes to food magazines, since it pretty much focuses on chile peppers and the foods that they make fiery, though there are also the occasional forays into […]

There is a reason why I am neither a chef nor a chef-owner of a restaurant.
Washington Post staffer Korin Miller pegged it in her story, “Love on the Back Burner.”
Chefs work so hard, and so much, that they not only tend to have no social lives, but they are also often left lonely and without […]