Top Chef: Imaginary Food Category

Spring is my favorite season, but I do love fall cooking. Soups and stews and roasts--and Jewish apple cake, which may seem a little weird given that I'm the Korean daughter of an English and Italian family. But however the recipe reached us, it's a longtime family favorite, and I have always loved it. I baked one today and gave Allison Clare a little mixing bowl and wooden "foon" to play with on the floor.

I turned around a moment later to see her toddling up to the barstool in the kitchen and perching the bowl precariously on its top (which spins) to try to mix her imaginary ingredients. Somehow I found this incredibly touching--as if in all her studious watching, she had observed that you don't mix cakes on the floor; you put them up high and mix them there. A dining room chair seemed to better suit her height for her mixing and tasting, mixing and tasting.

I even managed to get a few seconds on video, an increasingly difficult task because she loves to watch herself on the camera playback, so most of our recent videos consist of her catching a glimpse of the camera, running up to it, and reaching for it while imploring "Baby! Baby!" Here is rare footage of her doing something other than that: