I’m in New York at the moment, with my boyfriend. I woke up early, suddenly and fully this morning, filled with reasonless happiness. He was asleep, warm beside me. I started thinking about what to make for breakfast. Out of nowhere, in that funny discursive way memory has, biscuits and gravy came to mind. THE SUN KITCHEN I used to… Read More
FOREWORD: I wrote recently here about traveling to the awards ceremony for the International Association of Culinary Professionals,\ with one of the first-time nominees. Our conversation made me recall a post I’d written immediately after I had won an award for one of my books, Passionate Vegetarian, back in 2003. It was a book which had also been nominated for and lost… Read More
All at once, the circle turns, the green world going gold, yellow, red. Instead of the zucchinis in an excess about which we loved to complain only a few weeks ago, we now coo over adorable gourds and minis-squashes, admire big honkin’ pumpkins and sweet bright creased or crook-necked winter squashes. They’re so pleasing aesthetically, sculptural and decorative, signal of the… Read More
I’d had friends over last Friday, for dinner. A couple of the dishes I’d served them required a little fresh dill. Now, you can’t buy a little dill. You buy it by the bunch. That bunch is usually, especially this time of year, preposterously large. This is problematical. I live alone, except for when my boyfriend comes up from New York to spend a few… Read More
I am in the waiting room of the Springfield, Vermont office of Dr. Richard Lane, absent-mindedly, slightly anxiously, working on a jigsaw puzzle (blue Victorian house, hanging flower baskets, edges almost complete). This is my first visit. I was referred by my regular eye doctor, because I needed minor outpatient surgery. I know it’s minor but jeez, it’s my eye, plus there… Read More
Note: the recipe for my lovely, nourishing, satisfying (if not too photogenic) Almond Iced Tea is told, italicized, in the photo captions, while the text tells a story. It is loosely part of my #DinnerwithDragonwagon series. Though I usually drink tea not at dinner but in late morning/early afternoon… too caffeinated for later in the day, for me. My mother’s great friend,… Read More
The Alpha Male in my life was still asleep. He’d leave later that day, on the 12:30 pm train, Vermont to New York. I knew, when he awoke, that we would almost surely dalliance (which I wanted as much as he would). I also knew we would inevitably run short on time. And yet, I also wanted to make him… Read More
In Ruth Reichl’s first novel, Delicious!, the protagonist coyly alludes to a secret gingerbread recipe. At the end of the book, she shares it. Reichl joins a large, diverse party of writers who’ve referenced gingerbread in a non-cookbooks. There’s Chaucer ( “royal spicery/ Of gingerbread that was full fine/ Cumin and licorice, I opine…”), Shakespeare (“…had I but one penny in the world, thou should’st have… Read More
“Um, Bill, so it turns out I have to be in Nashville this winter, for a month or so,” I said to my old friend, who lives alone (contentedly), in a small house in that city. “I was wondering, could I possibly stay with you?” “You know I love you… ” said Bill. He, and I, let the words hang. We… Read More
This is the second of four poundcake-centric posts. Poundcake and the usual: life, death, love. This is also the one with the actual recipe. If a poundcake recipe is so good that Maurice Sendak (see related post) is willing to give you the rights to quote of anything he wrote, in perpetuity, why, even if thirty years had passed since… Read More
Janus, the Roman god who gave January its name, was two-faced. Not in the saying-mean-things-behind-someone’s back way: rather, he had two faces on either side of his handsome head. Thus, he could look forward, into the future, and backwards, into the past. Notice, though, he had no face for “now”, which is — moment to moment, second by second —… Read More
I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. But when it comes to hosting a nice, relaxed New Year’s Day brunch, that’s a whole different kettle of black-eyed peas. To the first point, resolutions. To me, the two most sacred phrases in our language are begin again and start over. So the idea that an entire culture would set aside… Read More
