Is there anything that makes a woman feel guiltier than eating a bowl of pasta?  Fortunate women who choose the food that comes their way are perhaps uniquely subject to this neurosis.    But those women would rather start their day with the dentist and end it… Read full post »

The Puget Sound, despite its fight with pollutants, is still full of delicious creatures: oysters, clams, mussels, salmon, Dungeness crabs, and shrimp.  That's how I like to think of them: delicious.  Oh, don't get your tail in a bunch.  That's how they… Read full post »

While there will be money coming back this year from the IRS (which simply means we did not caclulate our deductions deftly enough) the two universities we are currently supporting will inherit that windfall directly.  You're welcome. 

Counting pennies does… Read full post »

It's not every day a corporate giant like  McDonald's shows a Big Mac–sized sense of humor.

Of all the April Fools Day online pranks, this one took the prize for deliciousness.  My nefarious colleagues at www.grist.org  ran a fake report about the fas/… Read full post »

 

The first asparagus plant I ever saw appeared deep in the heart of Washington, D.C.  It made an embarrasing show of itself, that plant, crowding a tiny front yard plot of a very old rowhouse.  I had no idea the flamboyant fern was asparagus, but P… Read full post »

 

I grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland, during the late sixties and seventies, when the ratio of hippies to Seventh-Day Adventists in that town stood at about fifty-fifty.   The smell of weed from a commune house next door was replaced, overnight, with the smel… Read full post »

 

Photo Courtesy of CORZO     

I'll say this about V-Day, even if you're past the naughty underwear phase, you've got to love a holiday that revels in chocolate.  It turns out, in fact, that  with enough chocolate in your system,  the naughty… Read full post »

 

My kids, growing up, loved bananas more than any other fruit.  We worried that Paige,  who ate them like a jungle animal, might be more chimpanzee than human.  For a time, we  could actually comb the dark hair on her toddler back, which we pointed out to fr… Read full post »

 

I have betrayed the etouffee.  But I have done so with a pure heart.  In fact, in the interest of my heart. 

There I was, leafing through Saveur, enjoying it the way some men pant over a Victoria's Secret catalog.  On page 82  I spied  a crawfish etou/… Read full post »

 

We wake up Sunday morning to the thundering silence of empty beds.  Listen carefully, that's the sound of zero squealing girls.  And if you train your ears in the right direction, you can make out the retreating swagger of 21-year-old boy bravado.   Ah, an orderly re… Read full post »

 

Dear Francis Lam,

You torment me.  I am too late to lob in this pale entry to the weekly SKC.  Why?  I did not want to make molasses candy.  Did not.  Did not.  Did not.  And yet, what else could I do? 

Here’s the first memory I have… Read full post »

This recipe is adapted from "Ricki, The Cheese Queen" Mozzarella and Ricotta Kit Recipe Book.   Okay... I know, it's a long way around the barn, but here you go:

Bed Bread

Ingredients

2 packages active dry yeast

1 Tbls. granulated sugar

1 cup warm water (100-115 degrees F)

1/3 cup butt… Read full post »

We are an island-dwelling family, though not always on the same island.  Drew, my oldest, is a senior at the University of Hawaii on Oahu, clever boy.  Twice a year he comes home to Bainbridge Island, where we stare at Seattle from across the Puget Sound.  Kayaks replace/… Read full post »

 

I was born into a houseful of crazy women.  Not straight-jacket crazy, but legend has it that things were touch and go for a bit.  My mother Ann, who eloped with my father after having known him a full two weeks, wisely ran home when it turned out he… Read full post »

 

 You’ve gone and done it:  agreed to have the whole stinking bunch over.  All they needed was a small opening, and you gave it to them.  “Sure,” you said, in a moment of weakness, “we could have dinner at our house this year.  Why not?&rd/… Read full post »

There I was, thirteen years old, wrapped in a beach towel and glued to a television sprouting foiled rabbit ears.  (Shut up, punks.  Go ask your parents.)   A saggy-faced  guy waved from the steps of a helicopter, then off he went.  Buh-bye. 

It was bad enough that… Read full post »

 

 Leftover turkey is like the boy you used to love.  Once hot and steamy , it gives way to cold storage, inducing  a slight nausea born of having overindulged the day before.  How fleeting is our love for the big bird. Yet,  from this, Salon wants us to make some/… Read full post »