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Barbara Hansen's TableConversation.com picks up where her ethnic food columns in the Times food section left off. Hansen left the paper last June and since December has been quietly posting recipes, travel items and restaurant reviews from Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Chicago. Hansen, who shared a piece of the Counter Intelligence column at the Times after Jonathan Gold left, has written for Bon App�tit, Saveur and Cuisine, produced five cookbooks and won the James Beard Award in 2004 for an article on mezcal in Oaxaca. "My own garden contains a Oaxacan avocado tree, kaffir and Mexican limes, small, slow-growing Indian curry leaf trees, a bushy guaje plant with edible pods, epazote, verdolagas, assorted chiles and much more. Koreatown is close by, and I can almost walk to the kosher shops along Fairfax Avenue....I'm never happier than when sipping rich coffee in a caf� in Buenos Aires, riding about with my favorite rickshaw driver and restaurant guide in Chennai or wandering along some shady street deep in East Los Angeles, where I've been told there's a great taco stand."
Also watch for: WitnessLA.com, "news of justice, injustice and life and Los Angeles and beyond," which goes live today from Topanga-based LA Weekly feature writer Celeste Fremon. She got some modest launch help from the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism.
Out: Journalist Shana Ting Lipton puts her blog in turnaround.