C’est Moi

Hi there. I’m Nicole (or ‘nicolina’ for the purposes of this here little blog, but really you can just call me Nicole). I live in San Francisco and wow, this is a great city. If ever you visit I have a list of fun things to do a mile long, so please do get in touch!

I grew up in Sonoma County in a small town where I spent many happy hours exploring fields and trees and coast. Some of my most vivid memories are of picking blueberries in my backyard with my brother, shooing away crows and cramming in as much fruit as we could stand. I went to college on the East Coast and stayed for ages — Washington, DC, for the most part — before finally moving back to the Bay Area four almost five years ago. I’m so happy to be home.

I write about food, California, and life — but mostly food. I contribute regularly to NPR online’s Kitchen Window series, and have written for the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Home and Garden section, the New York Times, Washington Post, chow.com, Backpacker magazine, and Reuters, among others. If you’re interested, there are lots of clips on my website.

I’ve been writing here since 2005, though I really picked it up after I moved to San Francisco in 2006. I’ve been cooking since I was a kid, but after renting my first apartment in Washington I found myself spending countless hours in the kitchen poring over Gourmet magazine and ancient cookbooks, trying out all sorts of things (hand-rolled pasta?!) and plying my very patient friends with my experiments. I haven’t stopped since. My major achievement remains a 17-person, six-course, sit-down dinner party in my studio apartment in DC (I might still be recovering), but of course any night I get to have people over for dinner is a good one.

I’m a vegetarian but I cook fish/etc. (for others!) on occasion; I bake a lot, sometimes veganly; I love to try new recipes, but always hang on to my tried-and-trues; I take photos of all and sundry and truly love my camera. I have a wonderful farmers’ market in my neighborhood that gives me gorgeous produce year-round (we Californians are so spoiled; I try never to take it for granted) and which has taught me the value of eating locally and in season.

Some things I like, in no particular order, include: baking decadent treats, roasted cauliflower, avocados, sharpsharp cheddar, black labs, swimming in the ocean, West Marin, backpacking, small towns, yoga, organic leafy greens, Woody Guthrie, farmers’ markets, Scotland, chard, freshly-laundered sheets, my frère, Dylan Thomas, Ravenswood Zin, getting out of town, GREECE, new books from the library, heirloom tomatoes in season, Rochester, NY, dark chocolate, John Steinbeck. Some things I don’t like include: eggplant, goat cheese, being late, turbulence on airplanes, missing phone calls.

When I’m not in the kitchen, I can usually be found out for a run, playing with my doggie friends, with my head in a book, drinking coffee, or getting outdoors as much as possible, preferably along the coast.

Please let me know if you try my recipes — I’d love to hear how they turned out for you.

You can reach me at cucinanicolinaATgmailDOTcom, become a fan of cucinanicolina on Facebook, see my photos on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicspir, or follow me on twitter at twitter.com/cucinanicolina.

Cheers!