Moving
What’s a year in the scheme of things? It’s been a big one, and I have gone way internal, and am coming out the other side. And we’re moving. Up the road to a beautiful, bigger house in Woodland Valley…
Italy Retrospective: More Thoughts on Ordinary Food
It’s been almost four months since we returned from our Italy trip. I am still digesting, if you will, the whole thing, especially my happily evolving relationship to food, and foodishness. So I would like to begin a little series…
Writing From the Middle of a Conversation You Didn’t Know We Were Having
I recently returned from a family trip to Italy. We visited Assisi, home of Saint Francis and his sidekick, Chiara, otherwise known as Clare, founder of the order of Poor Clares. She was the first woman to to write a…
Aw, Shucks
It’s here! The book, The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage, is now available in stores near you. In it, you can read my essay about how my dad, who annoyed the hell out of me, taught me how to cook, how…
This is My Baby-Cousin’s Chair…Take it Away, Mark Benedict!
(Art by Peter Brandstatter (1917-) My younger cousin, the blond on the far left of this Thanksgiving at Barothy Lodge family pic, on someone’s shoulders, is not so young anymore, and is graduating from Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program this spring….
Praising the Lord for This Sick Day
I have spent so many years trying to cultivate gratitude, and occasionally it appears in my heart, unmistakably. This usually occurs in the dark, in silence, in the middle of a sesshin (a silent meditation retreat that lasts up to…
Granny’s Prune Roast Makes Me Happy
I came across this picture of me, my cousin Sara who I have always adored, and my Grandma Beryl, Granny’s daughter. It is, by far, the happiest-looking Little Me I have ever seen. I loved being with the Jewish side…
Holy Humiliating: The Day I Took My Husband to my Tennis Lesson (Part One)
I have done so many dumb things in my life I could start a new blog for each category of stupid (risky behaviors I did for men, e.g. tattoos, breaking and entering, etc.; things I quit and the lame reasons…
I Never Knew I Cared: A Reverie on Ding-Dongs and Thanksgiving
Amidst the news of more war between Palestine and Israel, another power-dude sex scandal, and an impending fiscal cliff, this morning, on the treadmill, luxuriating in my TV fix, I heard that Hostess is going out of business. Now, as…
A Dispatch from Post-Sandy Manhattan, by Evie, my First Guest-Blogger
My good friend, and on the weekends neighbor sent me this last week and I asked her if I could reprint it here, which would make her my very first guest-blogger. Welcome to my world, Evie! So this is a…
