SOMETIMES YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. YOU’RE USUALLY WRONG. AND THAT’S PROBABLY NOT A BAD THING. I used to teach in a program called Artists-in-Schools, as did my longtime friend, musician Bill Haymes. I’d come into schools, a visiting writer helping students (sometimes very young, sometimes teenagers) write. Bill did the same, but with music and song-writing…. Read More
OH those first tomatoes; the kind, we eat out of hand (from our own garden, if we are lucky, a tomato eaten as one would a piece of fruit, parting that hairy aromatic foliage to find that first globe, still-sunwarmed). These are the tomatoes we wait all year for; even after we tire of them plain, mostly of us still wouldn’t… Read More
THE ONLY SUMMER SOUP RECIPE YOU WILL EVER NEED. SO SAVE YOUR GORGEOUS SUMMER-RIPE TOMATOES FOR SOMETHING ELSE. BECAUSE, FRANKLY, THIS LEAVES TRADITIONAL GAZPACHO IN THE SHADE. It got up to to 96 degrees yesterday. In Vermont! And it wasn’t even quite July yet! This struck me as cruel and unusual punishment, because part of the reason I adore Vermont… Read More
This week I am sharing with you our Widowhood Wednesday message via video for reasons I will explain at the end of the message. Our monthly call will be at 8 pm eastern on Wednesday, May 30th. The call is a pay what you will if you can, or simply join us. Registration is required, so that the teleconference call… Read More
I would like to tell you, dear fellow members of the Club No One Wants to Join, especially those younger to widowhood than I am, that it gets easier over time. And I can. For it does. It gets easier over time. I would also, so very much, like not to tell you that you never get over it. But… Read More
There’s no doubt of this: New Orleans is a city which knows its beans. So when Camellia Beans, a well-respected and well-loved brand of dry beans based in that municipality approached me about using some of the lima bean recipes from my book Bean by Bean, of course I gladly said yes. They have just put up the post featuring three… Read More
I call it, “the club no one wants to join.” I look back, seventeen years as I write this since I joined, absolutely against my will… so much against my will that when the local paper, reporting on Ned’s death, referred to me as his widow a few days after his death (a bicycle accident), I actually phoned the editor…. Read More
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
“Daddy,” I said admiringly, “You should run for president.” I was six. Sitting on the dirty clothes hamper in the bathroom, my back to the window, watching him shave late one afternoon. He stood, in his white boxers, facing the mirrored white medicine cabinet. At that time, he was a Broadway critic, and if he was going out to an… Read More
Last Friday, I finally made it to my doctor’s office for a full physical. I had tried, sincerely, a few weeks earlier, on a hot, hot humid day. But only partially succeeded. A tree got in the way. But in a larger sense, perhaps, a tree was the way. Disruption. What a weird gift it is. *** If a tree… 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
High noon, on the year’s clock. That’s what it is right now. I know technically, literally, that summer’s high noon would be the Solstice, towards June’s end. But subjectively, I place it about a month later. That’s when the overflowing, abundant generosity of my local farm-stand makes me swoon with possibilities, and it’s hard not to overbuy. All that produce!… Read More
