Personal Stuff

Thank You

December 30, 2014 by diannejacob

A virtual bouquet for you, dear reader.

Today I’m saying thanks for being a reader. It’s my fifth year of blogging, and I still love writing my weekly post on food writing. Most of all, I love hearing from you and having a conversation.

If you lurk, I’m thrilled to have you as a reader, regardless of whether you’ll ever leave a comment.

If you’re a regular commenter, I’m grateful when you take the time to type something, even if it’s “thanks.”

When you tell me you’re a long-time reader who has finally commented, I love that.

If you have corrected me or told me I’m flat out wrong, I’m thankful that you set me straight or offered a different perspective.

If you have tactfully emailed me about a typo, I am grateful, grateful, grateful. To those of you who [Read more…] about Thank You

That’s me, lucky enough to teach a food writing workshop in Dubai this past year, thanks to Bethany Kehdy and Food Blogger Connect. From there, I vacationed in Jordan and Israel. (Photo by Owen Rubin.)

At the end of 2013 — my fourth year as a blogger — I’m taking time to say how grateful I am to have you as a reader. Whether you’re a frequent commenter or you’ve never left a note, I’m thankful you’re here.

To be honest, sometimes I’m surprised that anyone wants to read, considering how much [Read more…] about Thank You

Finally! A Site Redesign

September 30, 2013 by diannejacob 30 Comments

My techie husband built my old website at least a decade ago in Dreamweaver, an Adobe web design tool. It served me well over the years, but I got frustrated trying to update it. I didn’t understand HTML code, tables or how to repair all the bad things that happened when I pressed the wrong button. My website languished.

Several kind people inferred that my website needed a facelift. I was too terrified to do act. I’d heard horror stories about the time sink. I pushed it off. For years.

Finally, a colleague told me about a good experience she’d had with a designer. Plus I loved the clean, strong design of her blog. I took the plunge. It was time to move to an all WordPress website.

The designer and I worked together on several drafts. That was the fun part. I won’t bore you with what [Read more…] about Finally! A Site Redesign

On Sameness and Wildness

June 26, 2012 by diannejacob 90 Comments

On my third date with my future husband, he took me by the house to meet his parents. His mother said she hoped he would find a nice girl and settle down soon.

He did, and she made me a part of the family immediately. Janice Rubin was my mother-in-law for 25 years.

Here she is, licking the straw from a chocolate soda at Fenton’s, an Oakland, CA ice cream parlor she patronized since she was a kid. That chocolate soda, with its mocha chocolate chip ice cream, was one of only two fountain items she ordered. Once she found a food she liked, she stuck with it.

This culinary philosophy was on display when we went to her home twice a year during the Jewish holidays. The courses were the same almost every time, served in order: chopped liver, gefilte fish, boiled eggs in salt water, chicken soup with [Read more…] about On Sameness and Wildness

In Love with Reinvention

March 13, 2012 by diannejacob 53 Comments

At a March writing workshop with food bloggers in Liz Schmitt’s San Diego home (Photo courtesy of Averie Sunshine of Averie Cooks)

Reinvention keeps me in love with my career. It gives me the ability to shape my work into what interests me. So far I’ve had lots of inventions, since graduating from journalism school decades ago. I’ve been a

newspaper reporter and editor
magazine editor
interactive book editor
freelance writer
website designer
book author
book collaborator
manuscript editor
blogger
teacher
speaker.

And I’m just getting started. It’s a privilege to work this way, and I know it. Not everyone gets to go off in new directions.

But you probably do it too as a food writer. Your career might include cooking teacher, caterer, photographer, food stylist, and writer-of-other-content-that-actually-pays-decently (a broad category). Or maybe it’s the other way around: you have a day job, and food writing is [Read more…] about In Love with Reinvention

Watch Out for Ongoing Bitter Taste from Pine Nuts

July 26, 2011 by diannejacob 149 Comments

See those innocent-looking pine nuts? They can poison you! (Photo courtesy of Kent Cameron from A Food Centric Life blog.)

How much do you count on your taste buds, as a food writer? Do you use them every day, as a recipe tester, cook, restaurant reviewer, or just because you love to eat?

Then beware of pine nuts. They can ruin your tastebuds for weeks. Actually, they can poison you.

Last Thursday I ate pine nuts at lunch. The next day, a breakfast of fruit, yogurt and granola tasted especially bitter. Lunch was worse. All three dishes I sampled at a hip new neighborhood place were so bitter I could hardly eat them. While making dinner, I was temped to throw out my salmon chowder because of its metallic taste. It tasted like bad white wine. On a hunch, I asked my husband to sample a spoonful. “Really good,” he pronounced.

That’s when I knew something was wrong. Owen Googled “bitter taste in mouth” and found [Read more…] about Watch Out for Ongoing Bitter Taste from Pine Nuts

The Perfectly-Prepared Dinner that Failed

January 24, 2011 by diannejacob

I planned a dinner last week, hoping to achieve these goals. I wanted to cook for my cousin Dana in Los Angeles, who is dying of cancer.

He requested two dishes that did not go together: spaghetti and meatballs, in honor of his mother’s Italian-Catholic side; and Hamoth, a sweet and sour beet stew made by our Iraqi-Jewish grandmother, which is actually an Indian-Jewish dish.

(Confused yet? Now, if you had an Italian-Catholic mother from New York and an Iraqi-Jewish father from Shanghai, what would your identity be? Dana chose to play the bagpipes.)

I cooked the meal at the home of my friend Mary Ann and her husband Daniel, where my [Read more…] about The Perfectly-Prepared Dinner that Failed