Food Writer

What are people eating these days? What are chefs and food service companies looking for? And where do people eat most often? These are some of the questions to be addressed by award-winning food journalist Daniel Puzo during a breakfast meeting for members of Ventura County's agribusiness community Jan. 14. The presentation, sponsored by the Pacific Agribusiness Alliance, aims to help growers, shippers, packers and food processors stay abreast of growth opportunities in the industry.

Jonathan is an LA Times restaurant critic and columnist. He has previously written for L.A. Weekly, and Los Angeles, Gourmet and California magazines. Jonathan has won seven James Beard Awards for his reviews and in 2007 was the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

M. F. K. Fisher, the peripatetic author whose crystalline prose and keen observations raised food writing to the high art of literature, has died at 83, it was learned Tuesday. Mrs. Fisher had suffered from Parkinson's disease and arthritis. She died Monday at her cottage home in Glen Ellen, Calif., in Sonoma County, said one of her two daughters, Kennedy Wright. From her childhood in Whittier through old age in California's wine country and across thousands of miles in between, Mrs.

Forget the Oscars  - they're so last weekend. The real awards season - the culinary prizes - are just starting to heat up. The first round of nominations for the James Beard Foundation's restaurant awards were last week; today comes the announcement of the finalists for the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards . The big winners were not surprising: Yotam Ottolenghi, very much the cook of the moment , was nominated for his new “Jerusalem: A Cookbook” in three categories: chefs and restaurants, food photography and styling, and international.

When men find out what my wife does for a living, they invariably ask the same question: * "Is she a good cook?" "Of course she's a good cook, you ninny," I want to shout. "Why would someone be publishing her cookbooks if she weren't a good cook?" * But I don't say that. Reminding myself that each questioner is a potential book buyer, I think royalties and make nice.

The holidays had an accent at our house. My mother, an inspired cook, filtered American tradition through her French sensibility. It's there in the photos of our first few years in the States ? a crisp-skinned goose on the Thanksgiving table, and at Christmas, a bubbling cassoulet. As the seasons passed, American idiom crept into our kitchen. My mother experimented, learned to roast a turkey, to make cranberry sauce, to melt marshmallows on the yams. It was to this more assimilated holiday table that I first brought that most American of icons ?

That old American standby, the meat pot pie, has a long history. Back in the days of the Roman Empire, these pastries were served at banquets, sometimes with live birds under the crust, which must have startled unwary guests. In the 16th Century, the English gentry revived the ancient custom of meat pies.

I got back from Seattle dead tired from the flight. I know, I know, it's just 2½ hours, but I was seated in front of a family traveling with at least four screaming kids. (And I was unlucky enough to have been on the same flight with them going out as well!) I was starving. I set down my bags and pulled out the loaf of bread I'd bought at Sitka & Spruce , which my friend Roberta claimed was the best in the city. Must be, because the four of us devoured an entire loaf before dinner at her house.

Canning is having a moment. So is pickling, preserving, jam making and all around "putting up," as they used to say — and now do once more — of the season's harvest. And if that puts you in mind of a remote farmhouse kitchen, gingham aprons and a cellar lined with rows of apple butter, then you haven't been paying attention. At Food in Jars, blogger Marisa McClellan makes peach-plum jam from a most unusual perch — the 20th floor of a Philadelphia high-rise — and draws more than 100,000 hits per month.

Jonathan is an LA Times restaurant critic and columnist. He has previously written for L.A. Weekly, and Los Angeles, Gourmet and California magazines. Jonathan has won seven James Beard Awards for his reviews and in 2007 was the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

No, it turns out, we can't all get along. In fact, we can't even sit down to dinner together. At least that's the findings of a recent survey by the polling organization Public Policy Polling. In a report titled “Food Issues Polarizing America” , it found stark - and often funny - divisions between Democrats and Republicans over food choices. Among the highlights: Democrats prefer bagels and croissants while Republicans like doughnuts (but who doesn't like doughnuts, really?

Itching to write about food but don't know where to start? I just got an alert that there are still a few spots left for Cocinar Mexicano , “a food writing intensive and cooking immersion” week in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Culinary historian and food writer Betty Fussell   (“Raising Steaks,” “The Story of Corn,” “Masters of American Cookery,” plus innumerable articles) takes on the writing part of the workshop, while Magda Bogin, founder of Cocinar Mexicano, leads the cooking workshops with village women.

I got back from Seattle dead tired from the flight. I know, I know, it's just 2½ hours, but I was seated in front of a family traveling with at least four screaming kids. (And I was unlucky enough to have been on the same flight with them going out as well!) I was starving. I set down my bags and pulled out the loaf of bread I'd bought at Sitka & Spruce , which my friend Roberta claimed was the best in the city. Must be, because the four of us devoured an entire loaf before dinner at her house.

The holidays had an accent at our house. My mother, an inspired cook, filtered American tradition through her French sensibility. It's there in the photos of our first few years in the States ? a crisp-skinned goose on the Thanksgiving table, and at Christmas, a bubbling cassoulet. As the seasons passed, American idiom crept into our kitchen. My mother experimented, learned to roast a turkey, to make cranberry sauce, to melt marshmallows on the yams. It was to this more assimilated holiday table that I first brought that most American of icons ?

Canning is having a moment. So is pickling, preserving, jam making and all around "putting up," as they used to say — and now do once more — of the season's harvest. And if that puts you in mind of a remote farmhouse kitchen, gingham aprons and a cellar lined with rows of apple butter, then you haven't been paying attention. At Food in Jars, blogger Marisa McClellan makes peach-plum jam from a most unusual perch — the 20th floor of a Philadelphia high-rise — and draws more than 100,000 hits per month.

Ruth Reichl is a commanding and daunting figure in American culture. Beginning in the 1970s, she played a key role in revolutionizing food and restaurant journalism, wielded make-or-break influence as a restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and later the New York Times, and continues to loom large as editor in chief of Gourmet magazine.

Forget the Oscars  - they're so last weekend. The real awards season - the culinary prizes - are just starting to heat up. The first round of nominations for the James Beard Foundation's restaurant awards were last week; today comes the announcement of the finalists for the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards . The big winners were not surprising: Yotam Ottolenghi, very much the cook of the moment , was nominated for his new “Jerusalem: A Cookbook” in three categories: chefs and restaurants, food photography and styling, and international.

No, it turns out, we can't all get along. In fact, we can't even sit down to dinner together. At least that's the findings of a recent survey by the polling organization Public Policy Polling. In a report titled “Food Issues Polarizing America” , it found stark - and often funny - divisions between Democrats and Republicans over food choices. Among the highlights: Democrats prefer bagels and croissants while Republicans like doughnuts (but who doesn't like doughnuts, really?

A Los Angeles Times series describing the profound degradation of the world's oceans won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting Monday, the 38th time the newspaper has been awarded journalism's top honor. The five-part "Altered Oceans" project, headed by environmental reporter Kenneth R.

Sharon Tyler Herbst, a cookbook author whose "The Food Lover's Companion" became a kitchen staple with its thousands of definitions of edibles from around the world, died Friday of ovarian cancer at her Bodega Bay home, said her husband, Ron Herbst. He declined to disclose her age. The author wrote 16 books, some with her husband, including "The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide," "The Joy of Cookies" and "Never Eat More Than You Can Lift."