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Recently, I’ve been making breakfast potatoes and pancakes every Sunday for my friends. I get asked about the process I use for making my potatoes so I thought I’d fill you in on some tips I use to make those tubers extra delicious.

1). Leave the skin on the potato unless you are using Russet potatoes, which are cursed with having an unpleasant leathery skin. There is some good fiber and nutrients in and around the skin too–more of a reason to keep them on. If you aren’t peeling, make sure they get a good scrubbing and you cut off any green or sprouted areas. Also, I think the ideal potatoes for breakfast are small organic Yukon Gold since they have a nice buttery flavor to them.

2). Boiling potatoes beforehand will make them absorb spices much more effectively and cut your skillet cooking time. The potatoes should be soft enough to pierce with a fork but not so much that they completely fall apart–we aren’t cooking breakfast mash here!

3) Pick a flavorful oil to start. This may seem weird, but I usually choose sesame oil because I really enjoy the strong flavor. But since sesame oil is expensive and harder to find, I usually will settle for extra-virgin olive oil. I saute some onions and garlic on medium heat being careful not to brown the garlic or make the oil smoke–you might as well start again if that happens.

4). Add the flavors before the potatoes. You don’t want to add the spices after adding the potatoes because you’d probably end up with a mouthful of paprika. Since pancakes tend to be intensely sweet, I like to make the potatoes salty and spicy to contrast the flavor. If I was making something like tofu scramble, I might instead use a mixture of sweet potatoes and regular potatoes as well as use less salt. While I usually improvise, the spices I typically love to use are: turmeric and paprika (for color), basil and cumin (for nice savory tastes), red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper (for zing), and black pepper. While I’ll usually add table salt, I like to rely more on using Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, tamari or soy sauce for the salty component. When everything is evenly mixed and right before the onions begin to become translucent, add the potatoes.

5). Slower cooking is much better than cooking quickly for two reasons: the flavors can be absorbed more by the potatoes AND you don’t risk having the taters stick and burn to the bottom of the skillet. While I’m working on the other breakfast components, I’ll give a turn of the potatoes every couple of minutes.

6). Condiments are for suckers. My philosophy is that food should be prepared to be tasty and flavorful right out of the gate. If your guests have to add lots of salt, pepper, ketchup, etc afterwards, then you (the cook) didn’t do your job. Of course, everyone is going to have their preferences how they treat food before it goes in their mouth, but I find that making really delicious food will allow everyone to share in the same experience. Even if the food was a complete disaster, it is those types of common experiences that can build community.

I hope that was helpful. Visit my recipe website for more delicious ideas.

Rereading my journal from when moved to Los Angeles, I’d forgotten just how stressful an experience it was when I first walked off the plane. My first anxiety-filled mission when I arrived was trying to find a car so that I could, in turn, find a place to live, work. I remember thinking that owning a car was an essential part of the LA equation–like having a tent if you want go to camping.

Let me make it perfectly clear that I don’t like driving and never have. When I was twelve I repeatedly had dreams about being on the school bus and the driver suddenly disappears and I have to talk the helm. From an early age I disliked the idea so much so that I was really late in getting my driver’s license–a year and half after my peers. My parents had to force me to take driver’s ed because they were sick of driving my ass around.

I only had budgeted about $1800 for my new wheels. The first place I looked was Craigslist, however, everything there was either too busted, too far away, too good to be true, or too out of my price range. In addition, I knew dick squat about cars, let alone buying, registering and insuring one. My first instinct was to do what my mom does when she doesn’t know something about what she is buying: look in the Consumer Reports. To me, the Consumer Reports felt more like reading the cliff notes without reading the book itself. In other words, it only helps to know that Honda Accord earned 4.3 stars on reliability if you can tell the difference between a sedan and a horse-drawn buggy. The extent of my car experience at that point had been limited to sitting shotgun while my brother drove me to school.

By some stroke of luck, uncle Craigslist landed me an afternoon meeting with Devan (pronounced dee-VON). He had advertised a 1997 red Nissan Sentra for around $1900. I met with him at a parking garage and he was wearing sunglasses the whole time. Not a very personable chap. In fact, I didn’t like his cool attitude, I didn’t like his faded LA sunglasses and I certainly didn’t like his name (which I repeatedly mispronounced). He asked me if I had car insurance and if I wanted to drive the car. I said yes even though my answer to both was a resounding no. As I was backing out I took a sharp turn out of the parking spot and rubbed the front fender against a white cement pole. Devan freaked out a little bit and I swore to myself to try and seem more dramatic than him in the hopes he would say, “That’s okay, don’t worry about it.” He didn’t fall for it. To this day, it still embarrasses me to think of that moment–not my finest.

Devan sucked and I’m pretty generous when it come to giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, especially a stranger whom I’m about to give $1800 to. He would not take a check from me (and I hadn’t yet established my new bank account because I’d only been in LA a week and had been looking for cars the whole time). My rental car needed to be returned by the end of the week and I was under an immense time constraint. Out of desperation, I withdrew that cash from my Boston account and that was that. I was now the owner of a shiny (technically it was dulled from the sun) used 1996 (he lied to me, it was not a 1997) Nissan Sentra. Added to the list of unforeseen ailments: the car’s AC was broken, the steering fluid had a slow leak, the radio was messed up, it needed new breaks and new ignition wires and, to top it all off, there was freshly spilled coffee on the front console. I was screwed and I knew it. I dubbed my car “Red Barron”.

It was even more intimidating finding an honest mechanic than it was finding the car itself. The mechanic I eventually found instantly exposed my naivety for not having had the car inspected before I purchased it. Why didn’t I think of that? Where was that in the Consumer Reports? I had spent another $700+ on the Red Barron to fix all the mechanical problems. The car made me want to cry.

Five weeks in to my adventure, while I was driving my roommate to the airport, I was rear-ended. The car that hit me was a commercial pickup truck for a plumbing company. I’ve never been in an accident but I know that if you are in an accident you should exchange basic insurance and license information. The guy refused and told me to call his company and they would take care of it. (Everyone was okay, by the way). The Red Barron was looking pretty bad, it looked as if the Hulk had tripped over the back of my car. Even that initial parking garage scrape to the front fender was nothing compared to this. The next day I was leaving to go home for Christmas and there was absolutely nothing I could do to remedy the situation until I was back in LA. It was a stressful vacation thinking about how I would get screwed again.

Yet, there is a happy ending to this story. I returned to LA and after deliberating with the plumbing company for a couple of days, they finally agreed to reimburse me for the damage done–which was well over $3K. Now, I had all the money back that I had invested as well as a car that still functions. If you are reading this, in your face Devan!

After I got my first parking ticket, I made the brash decision that I never wanted to put anymore money into this that machine. After I had found a job and became familiar with the public transportation system, I gave the car to my friend Matt. I also used a chunk of the insurance money to buy a new sweet road bicycle which I used to commute to my job. Plus, as an added bonus, I’m in the best shape of my life for riding my bike everyday. The Brokeback Nissan, for all the headache, was the best car that I ever had–all two months of it.

At least the polyps in Bush’s colon have an exit strategy and timetable for removal.

The world woke up this morning to find that all its can openers were missing. Subsequently, no one could figure out how to open those pesky aluminum cans. All attempts to use blow torches, axes, hacksaws and nails only resulted in higher-than-normal embarrassing food spillages and emergency room visits. Canned food was entirely abandoned as a method of food storage, as evident by the uncontrollable, toppling overflow of cans in church donation baskets. No one has eaten a maraschino cherry since.

You may be asking yourself, “Why on earth is this the ‘first post’ when it is, in fact, the eleventh or so?” That is a great question. I felt like welcoming people to my new blog without any content would be a little like having people over to an unfurnished apartment I just moved into. Everyone would be awkwardly standing around bare walls and eating lasagna off of paper napkins. For my first few entries, I posted pieces that I wrote within the last couple months. It all has been living on my USB drive, so I’m glad I finally have a place to put it.

I’m excited about this blog. While I was at college I kept a semi-private blog that became more like a virtual sketchbook for my writing. While I will continue to post new things I write here, I’m hoping this blog will be a much broader forum: a chance to tell stories, comment on art, share new recipes, and to reconnect with people that are interested in what I’m doing.

Enjoy. Also, comments welcomed.

the clown was right
perfection is, in fact,
an eroding keystone

a paralyzing refusal to muddy my skin
worshiping that sweet devil
with hands
still pristine and green

benjamin franklin
that son of a bitch
and his
unabating, industrious pitch

my face was surgically removed
by your scalpel eyes
self-deprecating, post-humorously
time is your crucifixion
no fix for the streaming blood
in my pupils and teeth
we’ll never build a house together
and I’ll never again cook for your
scalpel eyes

He had one sister and two parents
He lived with five roommates
He had no tribe

I hear them and I see their bodies
I listen intently to their passionate moans
and watch when the police intensify their yells
I know their children’s cries and the reasons why
They smoke cigarettes in the mornings
and their laundry is boring
They never say hi, hello, or goodbye

We are disgusted by their bodies
We are embarrassed of our own
No public showers or naked locker rooms