Tami Fertig

People who decorate cakes for a living make mistakes. It's inevitable: They misspell the occasional "birthday," run out of room in the middle of an inscription, craft swirly brown blobs of icing into barely recognizable dogs. The best of this work winds up on Cake Wrecks. The blog, started in......

Where to find a good, authentic cheesesteak in Los Angeles? It's a question that sparks heated debates among Philadelphia transplants. And who better to put the issue to rest than Carolyn Wyman (pictured). This food historian sampled more than 50 greasy sandwiches in and around Philly to write The Great Cheesesteak......

Lora Hall needed guidance when her chicken got sick. The Echo Park gardener had been keeping several in her backyard for more than a year, but she'd never handled a serious illness. What was the most humane way to put a sick chicken down? Her friends couldn't tell her. Neither......

Michael O'Malley remembers every detail of the wood-fired pizza he ate in Barcelona. The Pomona College art professor was there to study Gaudi, but it was the dough that really moved him: "The tender, chewy crust. The hint of ash. The dryness of the oven embedded in the crust. I......

Most of us tend to think of tea as being calming, peaceful, quiet. Not Beatrice Hohenegger. For the past 10 years, the author of......

Tara Kolla knows gardening can be daunting. Take her case: She works her half-acre backyard and business, Silver Lake Farms, almost entirely by herself. For the past three years, she's been showing beginners the ropes with semi-weekly workshops in her neighborhood. (The next one is Thu., July 30.) At this......