I got the idea to do the first list from the 69th issue of Australian magazine Frankie, in which they asked five artists and writers to share 20 things they did the previous year. I think it’s such a wonderfully simple way to record your year. It also gives you a chance to look back…
Category: Cooking
Reading Cookbooks
I first learned that there are people who read cookbooks from Luisa Weiss’s My Berlin Kitchen, which I read in 2014 before going to Berlin for the first time. Only up until recently I thought cookbooks were for consulting, not reading pleasure. I’m not talking about memoirs with recipes like Weiss’s first book or the…
On First Drafts
It’s been difficult to get words on the page lately. I’ve mostly been composing in my head, but for whatever reason, my thoughts, words, and sentences are accompanied by a nagging sense of fear and guilt. I did punch out two theatre reviews a few weeks ago. But I’m also working on a story that…
A Loving Food Memoir
I just finished reading Molly Wizenberg’s first book A Homemade Life. And what’s not to love about it? Most of us with a food obsession probably know Wizenberg. I first heard of her blog Orangette back in the mid- or late-2000s. I checked it out briefly, without bothering to find out who the blogger was….
My Father’s Salad Dressing
My father didn’t grow up cooking. And this salad dressing is his one and only culinary legacy. His one and only recipe. It has been in our family for almost three decades. And since his death almost eight years ago, it’s become a reminder not only of the level of his culinary skills, but also…
Braver With Beans
Last evening, I came home from grocery shopping and almost immediately began to cook my dinner. A very simple one of boiled broccoli, flattened with a spatula and tossed in a pan with spaghetti, olive oil, and garlic, and sprinkled with Parmesan. This morning, just to put something in my stomach before my morning workout…
How I Cook
Before we go any further, I think you should know how I cook, where I am at in my cooking, and how I grew up cooking, or not cooking. So here we go… 1. I am not a good cook. Yet. But I’m working toward becoming a great home cook, not necessarily MasterChef-level great, because…
Long Way Down
My family used to drive everywhere like there were no other modes of transportation. When my siblings and I went to boarding school in Quebec, Canada, we stuffed the back of our car with suitcases and drove up from our home in Maryland semester after semester. When I went to college in Boston, we drove….
Eat, Read, Record 