By profession, I'm a full-time food writer, often snarky because befuddled, often sarcastic because ridiculously innocent deep in where the marrow lives, and the author with my partner, Bruce Weinstein, of some 15 cookbooks (with two more in various stages of birth--or, well, labor), as well as a couple ghost-written cookbooks for cantankerous celebrities. I'm also the guy who reads Dante's Paradiso for fun, who is working his way through Bach's cantatas this year, and who hangs out in art museums on sunny afternoons.
I'm passionate about food: its preparation, politics, and pleasure. I get dizzy at chocolate, lap up anything braised, and cannot stand foolish pretension mostly because I just want to have a good dinner without having to marvel at every bite to justify to myself why I'm paying $200 a person for a tomato tasting menu.
I have managed to twist myself from a former academic into the writing half of this cookbook team--and am now a bemused Texan in rural New England, a dumbfounded progressive, a once-upon-a-time script writer, and a committed novel reader, now working for some of the glossy food magazines (Eating Well--where we're contributing editors--Cooking Light, and Fine Cooking, among others) as well as a few of the big websites (primarily weightwatchers.com, where we write a monthly column: "The Every Day Gourmet.")
These days, Bruce and I live on several acres in very, very rural Litchfield county, Connecticut (don't think of a backyard--think of a big black bear in the driveway), in a tiny town called Colebrook, the mention of which draws a blank from even many life-long Nutmeggers. (Yes, that's what the state's residents call themselves. Don't even ask.)
As to the other half of this team, Bruce Weinstein,
he's the chef in the duo, a life-long New Yorker who wanted to leave the city for this rural America thing, and my partner, my better half, my spouse, whatever word works these days. He can rip through Chopin Nocturnes on the piano, knits whenever he's not cooking (is in fact writing a knitting book these days), and introduced my evangelical family to the question "Who's up for a cocktail?"
And then there's this collie named Dreydl.
