AntoniaJames

Piedmont, CA
Transaction Lawyer

When not cooking, or thinking about food, recipes and cooking techniques, I work full time negotiating and drafting global agreements for internet service and media companies, and the companies that do business with them. It's fun work. I also guest teach negotiating strategy and skills to MBA students and well funded start-ups in Silicon Valley. (I have my own law firm, which gives me more flexibility than I had when a partner in a big firm.) In the kitchen, I find great satisfaction in searching for ways to make any task I do easier and to improve my results. I'm always looking for new ideas -- and find many here, every day! (Thank you, everyone.) My time available for cooking and related activities is limited due to client demands, so I always make the most of it. I cook, and we eat at home, every night. My kitchen is my sanctuary. Taking care of the tools and other objects in it -- and that includes "cleaning up," a task apparently not enjoyed by others -- is actually something I don't mind. I take pleasure in restoring order to this corner of my beautiful world, and am deeply grateful for having the means to create, share with others and eat great food. Life is very good.

• What is the strangest food you have ever eaten?
  The anchovy and melted chocolate chip combination I recently concocted was pretty darn weird, but it wasn't too bad when paired with peanut butter. Taste tested alone from a small spoon, though, it was very strange, indeed.
• What do you cook when home alone?
  An open-faced smoked herring or smoked trout sandwich, on a brown rice cake with horseradish mustard. If I'm out of the fish, I'll spread the thinnest layer possible of peanut butter or almond butter, with a touch of homemade jam. Mmmmmm.
• Your most treasured kitchen possession:
  The time I spend there. After all, the best things in life aren't things.
• Your ideal meal:
  Anything prepared by or with either or both of my sons, served with a generous side of laughter.
• Something you'd like a chance to eat or cook:
  Wild Maine blueberries . . . . in Maine.
• The number of bottles of wine you own:
  6-8
• The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
  6 if we're serving indoors; 10 - 30 if we're dining inside and out.
• Kitchen pet peeve:
  None (Life is too short . . . . .)
• Your favorite cookbook:
  I don't have a single favorite. I own a few and check out cookbooks from the public library. To relax, I enjoy food memoirs and cookbooks by food anthropologists. My favorite kitchen resources lately have been the books I bought years ago on how cooking works (the physics and chemistry of it all). ;o)