All I Want for Christmas ... Is to be Served in a Restaurant


Roasts, nogs, chestnuts ... mess. Maybe you're exhausted by holiday prep and prefer to dine civilly this year, seated at a restaurant table, with prepared foods delivered to you, the clean-up not your concern. Here are three tempting options.

Café de France

Café de France is an intimate French restaurant right on Winter Park's main drag, with seats in the small dining room and ...

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The Newest Bites: 18th Epcot International Food & Wine Festival

The mania builds for months before the six-week Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, which, on September 27, will start its 18th year. You'll find all kinds of seminars and classes and lunches and dinners, all well-run and well-done.


My favorite part is the simplest: the marketplaces. All around Epcot's World Showcase, little kiosks serve up a trio or so of ethnic ...
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The Door Bore

So now it’s doors. Every three hours, it seems, I must replace a part of my home.

Blame Florida heat and humidity, cheap 21-year-old builders’ materials or plain old age. Whatever the culprit, it siphons off loads of cash I’d rather keep. And is, specifically, no fun. At all.

Today’s project is the front door to my house. It’s a double-door, wood, painted green right now, with little glass panes. The glass gets filthy, the wood is weakening, the ...

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Our (Temporary) Ultra-Jewish Immersion

Once I got to Tel Aviv, I found the Israel I expected — a bunch of brunettes who looked like me and my family living lives similarto ours.

That’s not what I encountered traveling to Israel.

Our ultra-Jewish adventure began in the Newark airport as we waited for our connecting flight. After a lunch we didn’t need in case the airline meal was awful, we packed up the remaining half of my son’s Subway turkey ...

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How to Stay Connected While Traveling: Brilliant Kid Version

We were four over-connected Americans traveling to Israel. Between us we had three iPhones, one regular cell phone, one laptop, one GameBoy, oneKindle, and three iPads. Cheapy me, though, refused to buy a new converter for plugging American devices in overseas outlets. Two is enough, I insisted. We'll share.


Not enough! my 16- and 20-year-olds agreed. So they came up with a solution: a circuit breaker with space for plugging in several ...
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Try Lunch at Cask & Larder

I rarely blog after a media meal. I think it's cheesy to fill space with free publicity for a restaurant just because I fueled up on its dime. If thefood is worthy, I'll write about the flavors, the portion sizes, the plate presentations, in magazines, books, and online features as opportunities arise.


But oh my heavens, I just returned from sampling a few items off Cask & Larder's lunch menu, which debuts ...
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In Israel, Itching for a Cure

We were hustling through Tel Aviv to get to the Palmach Museum, where we were scheduled for a tour to learn about the young men and women who worked underground to help Palestine become Israel. We didn't yet know that we'd grow attached to the characters in a sort-of re-enactment (and that I'd cry. Twice.), or that we'd see a photograph of

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Israel, in Bits and Pieces

So clearly my plan to blog about Israel isn't bustling along. I've been home for nearly three weeks without posting a word. So let's do this inbits.


Bit No. 1: Instead of touring on our own or with a group, we splurged and had a private tour guide. A cousin recommended a guy named Nir Nitzan, who owns a company called Nirtours4U. The name doesn't appeal so much ...
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This Chick Has No Need for Speed

I’d made it three times around the track already, heart thumping, sincerely scared. Yet I hadn’t knocked over any orange cones or barrels, hadn’t tipped the $270,000 Lamborghini LP570-4 Superleggera on its side, hadn’t accidentally bloodied the bored young man in the passenger seat.

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Welcome to the WannaB Inn

 

The folks who handle tourism for Charlotte Harbor and The Gulf Islands were kind enough to invite me on a media tour of the this pretty coastal area. Please indulge my sharing the highlights.

I just checked into the WannaB Inn, a pretty hotel down a quiet block with 900 feet of beachfront. Lemon Bay is one side, filled with dolphins and manatee. The Gulf of Mexico is steps in the other direction. The hotel has been around ...

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