Wow, it’s Friday and boy did this week really fly by. Did you get through it ok? That’s interesting. Hey so you know what you should make this weekend? Granola!

Have you ever made granola? You haven’t? My word. This is my favorite go-to granola recipe (it comes from the BAKED Cookbook) and many people who make it leave comments saying it’s too salty. I think these people are crazy because the saltiness is what makes it so good. Also because of all the sugar in it, it’s sort of like candy…which is probably why I like it so much.

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Sometimes you have a negative restaurant experience that stays with you for a really long time after the fact. This is one such experience illustrated by a very talented illustrator: me.

This fall I went to a hip new restaurant, here in L.A., with my friends Jim and Jess. You might ask, “Which restaurant?” but I’m not sure I want to shame them so publicly. Maybe they deserve another chance. Maybe. Here’s what happened…

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This is my friend Justin, you may recognize him from his great work at Food & Wine Magazine. Last time I was in New York, I met Justin for drinks in midtown and afterwards we decided to grab dinner somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. On the fancy end of the spectrum is Esca, one of New York’s best seafood restaurants (an appealing thing for someone who was about to become a pescatarian) but instead of the high road, I suggested a low road… a road informed by bathrooms. Specifically, my favorite restaurant bathrooms in all of New York, the bathrooms at Vinyl.

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An outcast. A misfit. Persona non grata.

That’s been my life ever since, four days ago, I became a pescatarian. True: I only made this declaration yesterday and, truth be told, it’ll probably end with an Umami Burger somewhere down the road. But you should’ve seen the horrified looks on my friends’ faces last night when, at L&E Oyster Bar, I refused the chorizo toast that came with the smoked mussels. It was at that moment they knew I might be for real.

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There’s egg salad with mayo, which is just normal egg salad, and then there’s another kind of egg salad, a healthier person’s egg salad, an egg salad that may make egg salad traditionalists recoil in horror: egg salad with yogurt.

Well, think about it. Yogurt (especially low-fat Greek yogurt) is healthy. Eggs are pure protein. Combine the two and bam: you have a tasty alternative to the gloppy mayo-rich egg salad your grandmother used to eat by the spoonful. The yogurt adds a unique tang and binds things together in a way that almost makes you forget the mayo. Almost.

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When you get back from a weekend of binging in Las Vegas, you might find that you really crave salad. Not the wimpy kind with delicate garden lettuces, but a big bowl of raw vegetables that promises to cure all your ills. If you were a cheffy chef your first instinct might be to go to the farmer’s market to gather up your vegetables. If it’s Saturday night, though, chances are you’re too late for a farmer’s market. So you have two options: go to a restaurant that serves a big farmer’s market salad or make a salad from supermarket vegetables. Me? I’m the master of the latter.

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Yesterday, buried in my post about Vegas Uncork’d, was a mini tribute to Mary Sue Milliken and a rant about how Food Network, and Food TV in general, no longer features shows with deeply knowledgable, seasoned chefs with a flair for instruction. Then I realized it hardly matters because most of those shows I loved (love) are available online. So what follows are five shows, all watchable right now, that I consider the very best in recorded cooking instruction; shows I go back to again and again because every time I watch them, I learn something new.

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At Vegas Uncork’d, at the Border Grill lunch, a woman sitting near us received her first course, the corn arepa with lobster salsa and a fried egg and without touching it asked the waiter for some salt. The waiter paused for a quick second and then said, “sure,” returning moments later with a little dish filled with table salt. The fact that it was in a dish and not a salt shaker suggested that this request was not a common request at Border Grill. The woman proceeded to sprinkle salt all over her food and then, satisfied, she started eating.

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How many cookies does the average person eat over the course of a lifetime? 500? 5,000? 5 MILLION?

I’m not sure but since life is short, I believe it’s important to make your cookies count. Cracking open a box of Chips Ahoy might scratch an itch much like sleeping with a prostitute probably scratches a different sort of each. Neither is a good idea but people do it. I say, if you’re going to eat a chocolate chip cookie, there’s only one cookie to eat and that’s the best chocolate chip cookie in the entire world, the chocolate chip cookie at The City Bakery in New York.

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