Once relegated to the scrap heap, trendy restaurants all over have revamped the short rib and transformed it into contemporary rustic cuisine. After marinating some in red wine for two days and braising them nice and slow for a few hours I can definitely see why.

Short ribs have long received the same bad wrap as the Boston butt roast (pork shoulder), but that's due in large part to people who have been cooking them improperly. These fat marbled, cartilage ridden cuts of meat require a nice, long, low-heat bath to slowly transform all that greasy fat and yuck into meltingly decadent, fork tender meat that quite literally falls of the bone with the merest of touches.

These are a great weekend meal because they do require attention every 45 minutes for turning - in total about 3 hours or so of braising. But, braising is great because even though it does take a significant amount of time to cook, most of that time is hands off. 

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One of my favorite things about wintertime is the profusion of citrus fruits. I can stuff myself day after day with navel oranges, honey tangerines, ruby red grapefruits, clementines, blood oranges - you name it, I'll eat it.

I suppose, if nothing else, I'll never get scurvy.

That being said, I found myself with a few too many fruits the other day. I had forgotten about the five pound bag of oranges I'd bought one day and came home the next with an eight pound bag. That's a few too many for our house even.

After indulging in fresh squeezed orange juice for a couple days I decided to make a navel orange sorbet. However, even though my ice cream maker attachment was frozen solid and my sorbet base was chilled thoroughly, it refused to set up. I fell back on popsicles, but even then they weren't too my liking. The navel oranges just don't offer enough in complexity of flavor to make a satisfying frozen treat. Best eaten directly out of hand, or squeezed.

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I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with scallops. I remember having them several times with my mother when I was younger - then, for several years, I decided I didn't like them. I've no idea why I decided this, there wasn't a bad experience. I just decided that they weren't to my liking.

That is, until my sister and her husband reintroduced me to them this past summer. As I've mentioned before, they delivered a beautiful little bundle of joy in June - a bundle of joy that is slowly, insidiously changing my mind on having on children. He's just so damn cute.

In celebration of his birth, and of my sister's bad-assery in delivering him like a champ, we went out to dinner to their favorite seafood restaurant in Daytona Beach. They ordered a dish of seared scallops with a mango salsa, and while I haven't yet discarded my hatred of fruit salsas, I rediscovered the joy that is the scallop.

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Thomas Keller is easily my favorite chef. Classically trained in French cuisine, and with a toe in both the 3-Michelin-star and family-style-meal worlds, he is everything I could ever imagine a chef to be. Even if my experience at Bouchon was less than I expected it to be.

One of my only regrets in my, admittedly short, life is that while living only three hours away from the French Laundry for nearly two years I never took the opportunity to go. Granted, it starts at $250 per person, but for a once in a lifetime experience I think that's a small price to pay.

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I think one of the most difficult aspects of moving about the country every couple of years is the quick disappearance of regional flavors. I grew up on the West Coast, mostly in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State and then spent the last near-two years on the Central Coast of California. And, just as in other regions of our fair nation, we had our indigenous delicacies and delights that are near impossible to find anywhere else.

One of those particular favorites was the Meyer Lemon. Until I departed the Left Coast I had no idea that Meyer lemons were a largely regional fruit, grown mostly in California. Although, to be fair, there's no such thing as a true Meyer lemon anymore, considering that I was born well after the 1950s I'm not going to gripe too much.

Meyer lemons are milder and sweeter than your typical grocery store Eureka lemon and, sliced thin enough, even the peels are edible.

Here on the East Coast I discovered that Meyer lemons are nigh impossible to find unless one knows a grower personally.

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