Thankfully, the Millennium Bridge across the River Thames didn’t sway under my feet that day, giving lie to its other name, the Wobbly Bridge. But the chilling wind whipped at everything not tied down, painting a disagreeable redness on my nose and a deep-seated hunger in my belly. The aroma of roasting sugary peanuts floated … More A Dearth of Pleasure: The Curse of Modern Food Writing
Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again. ~ Julia Child Everybody says it happens, yes. Love at first sight. It happens. I must concur―it was true, at least for me, when it came to cookbooks. The summer I turned fourteen, I fell hopelessly in love with the … More Discovering Cookbooks, a Memory
You can have strong emotional reactions when you eat a food that arouses those deep unconscious memories. ~ Susan Krauss Whitbourne Even if I stood on my tiptoes, I still couldn’t see over the counter at Ferdinand’s Bar. But I could smell the waffled sugar cones cooking in the waffle irons and hear the Washington … More The Magic of Ferdinand’s Bar
The origin of the dressing is disputed. The Olympic Club in Seattle, The Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington, Solari’s Restaurant, Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog Restaurant and the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and the Bohemian in Portland all claim to be the home of the dressing, with the invention in either the 1900s or … More Crab Louie
I turn the calendar page and the tiny print at the bottom of the little square reminds me: Thanksgiving, November 26, 2020. After nearly a year of increasing horrors, many deaths, travel restrictions, and just plain fear of a still-mysterious virus, I find myself wondering just what Thanksgiving means to me now. This year, it … More Thanksgiving, in the Time of COVID-19
Until recently, I really never thought of exile as having anything to do with me. To speak of exile brings up visions of Napoleon Bonaparte languishing on Elba (later St. Helena) or Leonardo da Vinci doodling in the Château du Clos Lucé, near Amboise, France, yearning for his native Italy. Or the sad case today … More A Kitchen in Exile
I’ve been cooking for a long time. And it’s just not fun any more. I used to spend hours cooking, trying new recipes, thrilled to see the joy on people’s faces as they dug into one of my lemon meringue pies or my spin on curried chicken. And I remember when it all started. … More When Cooking is No Longer Fun: The Mental Load of Daily Cooking
