by Robrt L. Pela There’s plenty to love about this one: Its diminutive size; the fact that it’s a hardcover (rare in small, old cookbooks); its great cover graphic, which carries over to the back cover; and, of course, its concept. I love, too, how it opens with a rather…
There’s a lyric from one of the Richard O’Brien tunes in his intergalactically famous The Rocky Horror Show that goes, “It was great when it all began/I was a regular Frankie fan.” It’s a lyric that has proven more true than the then-starving young playwright could have known when he…
For months, I thought it was a Chinese restaurant. Good, I’d think as I drove each morning past the grand, pagoda-like monster being erected at 29th Avenue and Northern. The spring rolls at Golden Dragon suck. Then the crosses went up. Oh, I thought. A monastery. Or a Buddhist temple!…
by Robrt L. Pela This just in from the Snooty Boots Dept.: Mr. Grossman and I only consume olive oil imported from France. I know, I know. I’m pretentious. But the trouble is we bought some of this stuff from a moulin in Callas, a Provencal village known for its…
by Robrt L. Pela Okay. I know I said I’d bring you a recipe for Ring Around the Fruit Mold, but after flipping through The New Joys of Jell-O, I came across this one for Pink Lady Pie. I don’t care what this tastes like; the name is brilliant, and…
I’m not a praying man. If I were, my prayers — especially those offered up after watching a performance of Nunsense, Amen at Desert Stages Theatre earlier this week — might sound something like this: “Deliver us, Lord, from funny nun musicals, especially those in which each of the characters…
by Robrt L. Pela Mr. Grossman and I buy crap that we don’t need. It’s wasteful, but it pleases us to own stuff that just sits around looking nice. Like this dried-out artichoke. It’s sitting in a bowl in the kitchen. It’s actually not something we bought just because it’s…
by Robrt L. Pela I know. I promised a Jell-O recipe this week. But indulge me a little here, while I share with you another absolutely terrifying photograph from The New Joys of Jell-O. I’ll make it up to you next week, I promise. Meantime, check it out: Someone, circa…
Summer shorts are typically made of light, wrinkle-free cotton and are de rigueur in July and August. Less typical and much more entertaining is the Summer Shorts Festival at Theatre Artists Studio. The company, founded just a few years ago by such theater stalwarts as like Judy Rollings and Patti…
Neal Green remembers when downtown Phoenix spilled into neighborhoods filled with hundred-year-old adobe houses surrounded by acres of land. He remembers groves of towering trees and the thrill of nighttime drives through the Papago Mountains and seeing downtown’s lit-up neon signs as you crossed into Phoenix from Scottsdale. “It always…
by Robrt L. Pela She rested on the kitchen windowsill of my childhood home all through the Sixties, dressed in a little ceramic dress, standing next to a giant ear of corn. In the parlance of the day, she was what was called “Colored.” And then one day, when I…
by Robrt L. Pela I know—it’s too easy, right? Pulling a recipe from an old Jell-O cookbook is like shooting fish in a barrel. I figured I’d open to any page and just start transcribing, but the page I opened to first was this double-truck of a Jell-O party, circa…
It’s that time of the year again, when playhouses are mostly dark and pretend awards take the place of real entertainment. This, the fifth Robbie Awards, is a black-tie event, so strap on your imaginary evening wear and take your make-believe seat. And remember: No text-messaging during the boring bits…
by Robrt L. Pela Here’s a friendly note to my friends and family: Stop buying me salt shakers. I’m done collecting them. I have 136 of them now, and that’s enough. So, seriously, enough already. Thanks…
by Robrt L. Pela I’m not a fussy eater, but I draw the line at eating stuff that’s going to be tasting me while I’m tasting it. And if I were going to eat tongue, I certainly wouldn’t want it in a casserole. With corn. Trust me. This little number,…
Much of what once made it bustling and lovely to look at is gone, but the shadow of downtown Phoenix casts a long memory. It’s a dark shadow filled with pretty sites: The San Carlos Hotel on Central Avenue, with its street-front portico and its swoopy neon sign; the Henry…
Considering all the public whimpering and hair-tearing I’ve done about the routine razing of really great old buildings, I have to hand a palm to the folks at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, which has made its new home in downtown’s historic Monroe School. Rather than plow down this imposing…
by Robrt L. Pela It was raining, and we were both on deadline. Neither Kate nor I wanted to go back to our apartments to write, so we went shopping for pepper grinders instead. I don’t remember if we knew we wanted pepper grinders, or if we both just found…
by Robrt L. Pela My copy of Beth Bailey McLean’s Modern Homemaker’s Cookbook is signed by the author, whom the cover jacket proudly proclaims is the director of Martha Logan Service. Just what exactly that means is as mysterious as is this peculiar recipe, one among many in yet another…
You’ve met them before, and you may have even loathed them in high school: the nerd, the jock, the popular girl, and the quirky/arty chick. But you haven’t met the versions of these 10th-grade archetypes who populate Nanette Burnstein’s lately very much admired new documentary, American Teen. Burnstein, whose The…
I’m sorry. It was my intention to review Desert Stages’ production of South Pacific this week, but I’m afraid I was so distracted by the obnoxious teenager who talked and yawned and text-messaged her way through the show’s opening-night performance that I missed much of what was happening onstage. Desert…
by Robrt L. Pela Do people use cookie cutters anymore? I have a big round box of them in my kitchen cupboard, but I never use the fucking things. I like to bake, but I don’t know that I’ve ever read a cookie recipe that included the direction, “Using a…
