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
PEPPERS, PUDDINGS, & FOOD FOR THE HIGH NOON OF SUMMER: A DINNER PARTY IDYLL
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
whimper while you work: life-density, writing, very dark chocolate
First, let me say how humiliated I am that I haven’t done a new blog post since (OH my GOD, this is ETERNITY in Blogland!) … since last July. Actually, I did do one. It was, juicily, about older babes who are still sex-positive in their late 50’s and onward, sometimes way onward. I number myself, gladly, among this group,… Read More
Maurice Zolotow & Roman Polanski (with a side of absinthe)
Re: my father, Maurice Zolotow, and Roman Polanski… Y'all know I am given to writing long, thoughtful, wrestling-with-big-questions blog posts — what my friend and fellow cookbook writer / memoirist Ronni Lundy called "blongs" (as in "blog" plus "long"). But you can teach an old dragon new tricks. This is a quickie. Every time I hear the coverage about Polanski's… Read More
creative discontent: lasting father-wit, & a writer/innkeeper’s ex-files
I used to be an innkeeper. I used to be a daughter with a living father. I am neither of these things now. Yet both reside within me. Both come into my present life at unexpected times. They did today, a moist, misty day, one in which I felt slightly out-of-sorts. Perhaps this very out-of-sortness is what brought to the… Read More
fearless French toast
Yesterday morning I was making French toast, and thinking about my upcoming Fearless Writing workshop, which will be in Little Rock this coming January: two seemingly unrelated tributaries of thought and action joining together. First, the French toast. Here in Vermont, there are lots of good artisanal bakeries. When I'm short on time, or don't feel like mucking up the… Read More
today is the first day of the rest of my blog: settling in after a month of cornbread travels
It was during the first event of last month’s great April book tour boogie (thirteen events! nine cities! One of those cities three times! Renting and a returning a car six times from various airports! Getting off and on an airplane 22 times!) that I realized: hey! I really no-kidding have got to start a blog! The book I was… Read More