This is Episode IV of my Book Update series, in which I share some behind-the-scenes aspects of my cookbook and the writing thereof, an activity that occupies roughly 99% of my waking and sleeping thoughts. And today kids, the topic will be: food photography.

(Read the first three installments of the series, dealing with the book deal, the recipes, and the recipe testing.)

I never really considered hiring someone else to take care of the photography, even in ...

This is the third episode of my Book Update series, in which I share the ins and outs of writing a cookbook -- or at least the way I'm tackling it. (You can read the first two parts about The Book Deal and The Recipes.)

Back in late July, when the sun was shining bright and the air was crisp with elation and hope and the workmen had not yet adorned the facade ...

[War Ration Stamps]

As if those two books my grandmother gave me weren't fascinating enough, leafing through them unearthed other treasures, slipped between the pages over the years.

A yellowed advertisement for a bottled remedy called Le Contre-Coups de l'Abbé Perdrigeon (Abbot Perdrigeon's back-kick), which will help you recover from heavy falls and blows, brain congestion, apoplexy, and will ease the pain from arthritis, rhumatisms, hypertension, and miscellaneous maladies de la cinquantaine, those ailments ...