I’m heading out to Mexico tomorrow, but before I go, I wanted to share these photos. On a trip to Park City last month, I found I was in a prime position to capture some incredible views from my little airplane window on both the outbound and inbound flights. I have flown in and out of SFO probably hundreds of times, but the approach on my return flight is one I have literally never experienced, and made for some neat photos of my favorite city. We flew in from the northeast, over Marin or Sonoma county, then looped back down on the western (Pacific Ocean) side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It made for some stunning views of all of the major bridges and a clear outline of the city’s distinctive 49 mile peninsula.

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All of a sudden, Hummingbird Cake is everywhere. I saw it on two popular blogs the day after I first tried it at Dixie in San Francisco. I had questions, like what the heck is it? Why is it so good? And why is it called “Hummingbird Cake?”

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Kamakura is a small, peaceful beach town about an hour (by train) outside of Tokyo. It was the political capital of Japan for a couple of hundred years, but that ended in 1333; still, the town is rife with beautiful temples and Shinto shrines, some with hundreds or thousands of clay figures used as funerary offerings.

Kamakura is also home to the Great Buddha, which is known as the Daibutsu. It’s the second largest Buddha in Japan and is thought to have been cast in bronze sometime during the mid-1200s.

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I know what you’re thinking: cake? For breakfast? I say yes, yes, unequivocally yes. If it helps, you can think of it as a giant blueberry pancake. It’s just the thing for a lazy summer Sunday, and is so full of berries that it’s practically health food.

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I am going through another one of those phases where I decide to count calories and eat healthier. They usually pass after a few months, but while in the thick of them I tend to come up with some pretty creative low-calorie recipes. Hence these teriyaki tacos (teriyacos?) with a crunchy snap pea and scallion slaw.

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Some best-laid plans for a rhubarb pie never came to fruition, so I found myself with some less-than-fresh, semi-flaccid rhubarb in the fridge. It was headed for the compost pile, but I got the bright idea to turn it into a pretty pink syrup for cocktails or non-alcoholic sodas.

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A few years ago I had one of the most incredible travel experiences I have had so far – two days of tracking the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. I am probably not skilled enough as a writer to describe how moving and unbelievable the experience was, but I will try.

I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to write about this, but it might have something to do with the fact that I have hundreds of gorilla photos to wade through, and when they are this cute – it’s hard to choose which ones to share.

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We have been getting the most gorgeous strawberries from a local farm stand out near Petaluma. In fact, we bought a 3-pack on Sunday morning and they were gone within a few hours. We stopped back at the stand for a full flat that afternoon, and after eating, sharing, and cooking pounds and pounds of strawberries for 24 hours – by Monday night they had all somehow disappeared.

One of the best things to come out of this strawberry extravaganza was these brown butter shortcakes. With the strawberries baked right into the fluffy, slightly sweet biscuits, all you need is a little ice cream or whipped cream and you’re good to go.

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We’re experiencing record high temperatures here in the Bay Area, which makes me want to eat light, bright dinners like this broiled halibut with chermoula. Chermoula is a versatile North African condiment made with toasted spices, cilantro, and parsley, and it goes beautifully with fish.

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There are so many nonsensical myths about food and cooking that people trot out, and I’m not going to lie: they make me a little grumpy. They are awful and they are persistent and they need to stop.  I reached my limit this week when I saw a viral Pinterest post about how to tell whether a bell pepper was male or female.

Once I was done shaking my head at the sheer inanity of it all, I decided to arm myself with (some) science and facts and a liberal dose of common sense to explain why some of these common food tropes are as mythological as unicorns, leprechauns, or free parking in San Francisco.

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