When Dad gimped out of Walter Reed Hospital in 1945, he knew he’d rather make a living playing stride piano than return to engineering school in the tundra. He also knew that his stern Swedish mother didn’t raise her son to hang out i… Read full post »

      When I kick the bucket, my kids will ask two questions: 1) how much cash is left in the mattress for them and 2) who’s going to make artichoke soup when the old broad is pushing up geraniums?

      &n… Read full post »

My feet are firmly planted in midair. Unresponsive to a desk, my continuous flight of fancy is fueled by Ravel waltzes and chocolate. When inspiration drags me from ennui to the easel, this is the view from my corner of the world. 

When I need a n… Read full post »

“The melody’s in the right hand, not the left!”

I was practicing, or as my mother would say, “annihilating,” a Mozart sonata before school, before breakfast, and before I was capable of anything other than brushing my teeth. With the… Read full post »

My mother was kicked out of college after having an affair with a married professor and sent to the Stodgy U of higher learning for women only. Where she studied creative writing with William Inge who taught her to make French 75’s and Arroz con Pollo.… Read full post »

Mom used a vodka bottle to roll out pie crust. When frustrated, she heaved the gloop against the wall, banked it into the trash and called Svens Danish Bakery. She taught me everything I know. And…I learned how to use four letter words, not how to… Read full post »

My hormones might come in a bottle but I’ve found that I can still learn new tricks. 

When it comes to entertaining, two challenges torment me: what can I make that everyone will enjoy and how much can I prepare in advance?

To my utter… Read full post »

I live in the plumper and I love apple pie. It’s dad’s fault. Nothing delighted him more than the sight of two things: Nana’s perfect pomme de pie or my mother in a slinky black dress, both carefully archived in our home movies.

With… Read full post »

 Things were pretty basic at Camino de Chaos on Thanksgiving. My guests brought their limited palates, expressing gratitude for the simple fact that on this sacred day, a plate can be filled to capacity with absolutely nothing green.

It was the annual feast of the fussy. A celebration… Read full post »

 I’ve changed costumes more than RuPaul. By the time my hormones arrived in a bottle and the last train to Clarksville long left the station, I’ve written more game plans than Vince Lombardi. Just when I thought I had all the answers, they flipped the questions. Such is… Read full post »

I haven’t purchased a bathing suit for 17 years. Buying one ranks right up there with the joy of root canals, mammograms and cleaning Thanksgiving turkey grit off the bottom of your oven.

You smell what I’m cookin’, I know you do.

Nothing is as much… Read full post »

In 1876, a fellow named Carl Conrad from a little hamlet in Bavaria developed the pasteurization of beer. That is, he figured out how to put beer in bottles. Terribly clever for his time. 

Because he was my great-great grandfather, his patent hangs in my kitchen next… Read full post »

It’s Father’s Day in just a few weeks. Although my Dad has been in that great piano bar in the sky for almost 30 years, keeping time with his left foot while playing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” I’m the lucky one… Read full post »

Blue Danube Bean Soup 

The square corners of his handkerchiefs stood at allegiance from a bucket of starch. A man of propriety who “bowed” in respect, my father’s noble and elegant dignity matched his crisp attire.  

Yet his greatest personal… Read full post »

The Oh-So-Merry Margarita

If getting juiced was good enough for Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, just think about what the essence of carrot-raisin-beet-rutabaga-dirt clod could do for this old broad who is getting closer to the last tango?

On a slow Sunday morning when… Read full post »

I’m the result of too many Mai Tais and Nat King Cole. Or so I heard. My kooky, irreverent mother who danced the Times step on our linoleum floor and pounded out Chopin etudes more easily than round steak would casually tell her friends about the conditions surrounding my concepti… Read full post »