The part of my life that I feel is quintessentially Californian, especially when I’m outside its borders, is food.

When you know that you should be eating more vegetables, but the thought of preparing the type of salad that you’d pay $20 to eat seems like too much effort for a Thursday afternoon, then it’s not too much of a stretch to end up with a bowl that’s nutritional but bland.

Over the course of the last two-plus years of the pandemic, I found myself coping with two solutions: wine and Bravo.