Here are my Top Five(w)rappers: reusable bags, cellophane, hand-stamped, Eminem and personalized. Probably everyone who reads this blog received our holiday card which included a photo from this year’s posed pic with kids and animals (it’s on the bottom right, if you’re curious).

It’s on the bottom right in a big collage of photos because, after all the trouble, the photo was too blurry to stand alone. Knowing that our annual photo sessions depict the trigger formula: perfection quest(2) + time depravity/cat superiority x dog skittish(teenager) = our dysfunction, the daughter used it as the setting for her class family video assignment. She got an A and I got outtakes that created the most perfect wrapping paper.But as that same daughter, at age 2, one time shouted to a group of carol-singing boys in January, “Christmas is over little girl.”

And so we look to New Year’s celebration…. Before we dial in our diets – see you soon Lose It app – here’s a little something that brings summer barbecue into our winter kitchens with so much ease you can ignore it like Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction.

I have made these slow cooker ribs several times with sweat-free and fall-off-the-bone results.

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Why apple custard tart? Because this one is thrown together in minutes and gives big ‘oohs’ for the holidays.

If there ever was a crunchtime… Stacks of stacks printed out, torn out recipes that once were Christmas hopefuls until the wrapping devil bitchslapped the week – wasn’t that one of the lines from Twas the night? Oh yeah, and that little thing we call World Xmas, you know, every year we celebrate the Christmas traditions from another country see here and here – 24 years and counting – is now a gathering the Sunday before. What in the World were we thinking? This year, we were thinking Scotland. Kilts and whisky tasting aside, the night was a blast and the tradition will grow.

Now it’s time to work on Christmas Eve buffet dinner including our apple custard tart,

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For a minute this past summer, we planned a European trip for when our son would be away at camp. Don’t you just hear ‘European’ and think of strolling, food, wine, scarves, American shaming? My more adventurous better half thinks more of conquering places we’ve never been, something say Berlin-ish. Side note about better-half travel: may I recommend to all couples that you do not take a ten-day/seven-country trip through Europe, in a Smart car. Liechtenstein and Luxembourg don’t count and are not worth a route diversion. We stayed married anyway. Back to Berlin…granted, I could find my German Dieter roots on a Sprockets sojourn, but it felt like more work than eating herb omelettes in the fifth arrondissement. Well, it was not to be because my dad was ailing and we had music video producers to feed, so we happily, most fortunately settled for California excursions to Napa – glorious – and to San Francisco for what will have to be an annual concert pilgrimage, Outside Lands.

Wait, it didn’t end there. So my sister and family are living for a year in Aix-en Provence. I cry for her daily. My favorite cousins (I tell them all they’re my favorites, as I learned from my mom) live in Tourves, and our son – in his second year of French – made a friend from Paris at that summer camp, and well, it just all begged for a Spring Break trip to France. Herb omelettes, strolling, wine, scarves, family, American shaming, and tuna niçoise salads – ah, there we are – I made it back to headline.

With France on the brain and herbes des Provence on the shelf, we made an already French salade, Frenchier and to make up for the missing key ingredient that better-half doesn’t like,niçoise olives. The traditional version relies mostly on tomatoes and eggs, with canned tuna and the olives taking a backseat and none of the vegetables were cooked. We’ve evolved niçoise salad to our liking and so should you.

All good meals start with good ingredients. I tend to shop first and concoct later, especially with fresh fish. Yet, I’d never wrestle you to the ground if you went to the store with tuna nicoise salad intentions. The salad components are easy to come by and canned tuna awaits down aisle 15.

Our salad platter earns crunchtime status from the do-ahead opportunity. I mean this entire thing can be prepared a day in advance, well preserved by plastic wrap and your willpower. Despite the varying cooked ingredients, it requires few pots and pans for preparation – and who doesn’t love a one dish meal. Potatoes and eggs satisfy heavy eaters, raw vegetables and light protein satisfy waistlines. Come on let’s get this platter started. read more

Before moving to Los Angeles, “craft services” meant something to me like scrapbooking displays. If you don’t know, and I didn’t know, craft services or crafty, as the production crew refers to it, is food service on a production set. Craft service provides meals, but the real attraction is the constant supplying of snacks and treats to keep that burly guy who’s wearing an undersized Hootie & the Blowfish t-shirt and dirty cargo shorts, constantly fed so he’ll hold up a boom mike for eight straight hours. That’s how he became burly, it’s how we all became burly during production. Our friend Ron called it Shoot Butt.

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Put the white in red, white & blue this 4th of July with sumptuous chicken burgers. Celebrating our fiftieth state, we add a few items to take chicken burgers from bland to grand.

Let’s see how, but first, a story about patriotic jury duty on a criminal trial involving a transvestite prostitute – a tranny tute in my circles.

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