Author: Ann Bauer

  • Wi-Fi Vampires

    photo by McClatchey News Service   It was, says Lisa Berg, a "humbling" note to write. The single sheet of paper hangs inside the restroom at her coffee shop, Blue Moon Coffee Cafe, and describes her plight. The place is nearly always full — in that there’s nowhere for walk-ins to sit — and people…

  • Diet Coke Will Make You Fat & Other Truths

    So it’s not just your imagination, it actually is true. Those zero-calorie sodas people are popping left and right and up and down, ordering with their cheeseburgers and large fries and drinking instead of coffee in the morning or wine at night, actually lead to (or, as they say in medical-speak, "are linked to") metabolic…

  • Mao and Asher, Now Appearing at 20.21

    Faces are changing fast at the Walker Art Center‘s 20.21. Chef Scott Irestone tendered his resignation abruptly last week. Executive sous chef Asher Miller — now acting head chef — said he was on vacation and returned to find that his boss of three years had left the Wolfgang Puck family, where he’d been working…

  • If You Give a Mouse a Nice Bottle of Portuguese Wine

    There’s a picture book called If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff, that I used to read to my children. It goes like this: If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he’ll probably ask you for…

  • Who Is Rachel Hutton?

    NOTE: This post originally appeared with a photo that Rachel Hutton herself asked me to remove — in a very nice note that said in part "I realize it’s impossible to stay anonymous. . . .but I spent all last week pulling as many images as possible off the S&S [Simon & Schuster] and BTM…

  • Blood, Sweat, and Chardonnay

    There is, perhaps, nothing on this earth so elemental as salt. It’s the flavor of the ocean, and of blood. Also sweat, tears, and — let’s be frank here — semen, that stuff which contains half the origin of human life. Salt has been used as currency. It is a mainstay of both religious ceremonies…