TBILISI (AFP) ― In the kitchen of one of the most fashionable restaurants in Tbilisi, the chef is cooking up hearty peasant food using recipes long forgotten by most of his countrymen.“Nobody cooks a bird like this these days,” said chef Malkhaz Maisashvili, raising his carving knife to sweep slices of chicken into a pot. “I discovered the recipe in a small village.”Keen to assert itself as an att

Travel April 29, 2011

I was weaned on bottled dressings poured over iceberg lettuce salads.There were three basic choices. When my two younger brothers dared to drizzle dressing on their salads ― and most of the time they chose (shiver) dry lettuce ― they adorned it with something called “Catalina,” a vivid orange, very sweet dressing.My personal favorite was blue cheese, or as we called it at my house, Roquefort. Our

Food April 29, 2011

LOS ANGELES ― Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling have glimpsed the future. And it looks a little like “The Jetsons” meets “Spinal Tap.”In the not-too-distant future, they say, stadium concerts as we know them will be passe. In their place, humans will jam onstage with hipster robots that will perform previously unheard sounds during mind-blowing multimedia shows that are three-dimensional, interactive

Performance April 28, 2011

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ― Book dealer Ken Sanders has seen a lot of nothing in his decades appraising “rare” finds pulled from attics and basements, storage sheds and closets.Sanders, who occasionally appraises items for PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, often employs the “fine art of letting people down gently.”But on a recent Saturday while volunteering at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Uta

Books April 27, 2011

VIENNA (AP) ― Hollywood actor Jude Law is among the stars of “360” ― a new movie partly set in the Austrian capital in which the British heartthrob plays a man whose marriage has hit a lull.The film is directed by Fernando Meirelles and inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s play “Reigen,” or “La Ronde.”While storyline specifics are being kept under wraps, screenwriter Peter Morgan told reporters Tuesday

Film April 27, 2011

It all started with a move.Not a downsizing, but an upsizing to a place with more storage and a bigger kitchen.But when I opened the cabinet where I store my cookbooks, magazines and thousands of recipes that I’ve been saving for the past couple of decades, I was horrified. Had I become a hoarder?I started pulling them out and making giveaway piles, but it wasn’t long before the stacks were so tal

Food April 27, 2011

I‘ve long been an admirer of Greg Mortenson, the author of the phenomenal best-seller “Three Cups of Tea.” The book tells how he began building girls’ schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan after making a pledge to the villagers of Korphe, who had rescued him from a failed attempt to summit the world‘s second-highest peak, K-2.To see his work, I traveled with Greg in 2007 to visit schools he’d built

Arts & Design April 27, 2011

Han Song marries hanji and natural dyeing to create eco-friendly jeansThe following is the second in a series of articles on the contemporizing of Korean culture -- Ed.In the fickle world of fashion, where trends come and go every few months and new items fill the store racks virtually every week, a designer who devotes years to a singular vision is a rarity.Han Song whose eponymous Han Song Jeans

Arts & Design April 26, 2011

TOKYO (AFP) ― Hundreds of middle-aged Japanese flocked to a cemetery in Tokyo on Monday to bid farewell to a popular actress amid national mourning for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.Yoshiko Tanaka died at 55 last Thursday after a long battle with breast cancer, ending her showbusiness career which began with an all-girl pop group, named the Candies, who took Japan’s younger genera

Performance April 26, 2011

LOS ANGELES ― Jeans for this spring and summer have gone from basic blues and intense indigo to Technicolor versions of playful Crayola shades. It’s all very 1980s a la Esprit or Benetton, but this time there’s nothing junior about colored denim. It’s coming in sleek skinny shapes and cropped lengths that liven up simple T-shirts or button-downs and work well with neutral sandals or flats rather t

Arts & Design April 25, 2011