There’s nothing more unsettling in an editor’s world than sending a big, best-y Best of the Year issue to the printer—complete with adulations of the most influential people of 2012—mere days before a nail-biting election in which we’re voting for a president and a governor, among other things, including a historic piece of civil rights…

The discussions we have as we select images for our food covers are always a little amusing—and maybe a little less than appetizing. “We can’t put that on our cover—it’s foaming at the mouth.” “Is that a cell phone under that food?” “Are those ears on that plate?” The dish that ultimately lands on our…

When we were coming up with a list of adjectives to describe the beauty and grandeur of Northwest lodges, a word used in excess these days by my 10-year-old son (and further creatively mangled by him, as in the headline, above) kept coming to mind. It was undeniable: “Epic” is the only word that does…

My husband grew up in New York City, but wanted to escape what he calls “the hustle.” Though I was born in Washington, I grew up in suburban Racine, Wisconsin, and longed for city life. (Any chance I’d get, I’d head to Chicago, just 45 minutes away; it’s still one of my favorite cities in…

It’s that time of year when Seattle’s gardens are in full bloom—or in my case, bloomed, spent and in desperate need of a good watering and dead foliage trimming. This was one of the lushest seasons I recall in recent memory, at least in the microcosm that is my Ballard backyard. Everything seemed to be…

Our city is in the midst of a multidisciplinary—dare we say postrecession—renaissance. The 50th anniversary of the Space Needle and the opening of Chihuly Garden and Glass have reinvigorated the city’s creative spark, getting many of the most jaded cynics excited again. The Pike Place Market remodel is complete, and it’s all gussied up in…

Come late spring, the yearning begins for the days when the sunlight lingers past 9 p.m., the air gets (a little) warmer and my family finally emerges from hibernation inside our cozy 1,400-square-foot home. These are the days when our back door is constantly open, our kids are running in and out, and we gain…

Sometimes in the process of producing an issue, our editors inadvertently create a “word of the issue”—a word (or words) that we are suddenly, unintentionally in love with, so much so that it pops up repeatedly throughout a story (if not the entire issue). This especially happens in stories with multiple writers, such as this…

Three things are very important when we produce our Best Restaurants issue: 1) The story must reflect how we dine out locally now, (oh, how fun it would have been to cover the 50s and 60s eras of wedge salads and fancy Jell-O desserts!); 2) it must include a mix of affordable and fine dining…

I knew when our youngest son got the birthday party invitation in January that it was time to bite the bullet. The party was in Bellevue, which meant crossing the bridge, and that meant finally getting one of those bridge-toll passes (or start paying through the nose for Container Store runs and trips to Woodinville…

Although technically it didn’t get its start here, the burger has become the ultimate American dish, and I love seeing how the iconic sandwich has evolved in different cities across the country. In L.A., you’ll invariably find an option served with a pile of avocado slices. In Wisconsin, land of plentiful beef and cheese, cheeseburgers…