Market Challenge: Eggplant

September 9, 2019

When the kids were little, in the interest of Palate Expansion, we used to give them ten bucks at the farmer’s market and tell them to spend it on something brand new. Something they’d never seen before or something they’d always wanted to try. This is how they ended up falling in love with “dinosaur egg” plums and pickles on sticks,… Read more »

Friday Eating & Reading

September 6, 2019

What we’re reading and eating this week: How to Cook for Every Back-to-School Meal, by yours truly. I’m late on this one, but if you missed Stephen Colbert on WTF talking about faith, sci-fi, depression, joy, all interspersed with recitation of poetry and Shakespearean sonnets, please listen immediately. My kind of anniversary gift. (How sweet is that?) Everyone I know is… Read more »

Some News

September 4, 2019

Every New Year’s Day for the past few years — and by New Year’s Day, I of course mean, the first day of school — I’ve had the same resolution-y thought: We need to eat less meat in our house. It’s a low-rumbling call year-round, but something about September and the ramped-up schedules and textbook pile-ups on the kitchen counter… Read more »

Yuzu Gin & Tonics

August 8, 2019

I don’t know if it’s laziness or contentment, but it really takes a lot for me to switch up the routine these days. It’s tomato season, for instance, and every time I come home with a mini haul, I imagine grand plans for tarts and pies for dinner, but just wind up slathering mayo on good white toast, topping them… Read more »

Anatomy of a Summer Sunday Dinner

July 22, 2019

4:00 Drop off daughter at camp in Western Mass; settle in for 3-hour drive home. 4:15 Realize the kitchen waiting for us is basically cobwebs. We have no fresh food except possibly half a red onion. 4:17 Pull over at first farm stand we drive by (I see you Pioneer Valley!); pick up 3 ears corn, a bag of sugar… Read more »

Reading What Your Kids Are Reading

July 17, 2019

Remember that heartbreaking scene in Catcher in the Rye when Holden drops the record he bought for his little sister and it shatters into a million pieces? Or when Sylvia says she can no longer be with Dorian Gray because their love is interfering with her art? Or the deeply sad ending to Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men? Wait, what,… Read more »