I’ve finally decided to climb out of the Himalayan mountain range of paperwork and get some fresh air in the kitchen… [Read more →]

We’re finally moved in.  Thank goodness. [Read more →]

Ok, normally I would tweet rather than post something like this, but Roger Ebert’s latest blog entry struck a long and loud chord that will reverberate for a long time.

Any commentary I could offer wouldn’t do it any justice, so I’ll let it speak for itself:  Nil by Mouth.  Read it.

Out with the old…

I actually started this post a few weeks ago.  In the original entry, I expressed great excitement for the new year, for the monumental progression that was about to take place, the kind that only grown-ups can be really thrilled about.  But Life’s latest curveball caught me off guard, and well, things have changed.   [Read more →]

As a young child, I used to play “musical conductor” with my dad.  A vinyl Wellington’s Victory would be taken out of its weathered sleeve, placed on the turntable, and blasted at a minimum 50 billion decibels through a set of speakers that outsized my five-year-old-self.  At the sound of the first trumpet, dad and I would raise our bamboo chopstick “batons” and wave them at an imaginary orchestra.  We would conduct our way through the reverberating sounds of booming cannons, strings, wind and brass.  When the symphony ended, we would take a bow. [Read more →]

THE COW
The Cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.
- Ogden Nash, 1902-1971 [Read more →]

Is it really almost Christmas again?  As I watch the first, heavy, white flakes of the season begin to fall on this wet December day, I am reminded of how quickly time flies.  The older I get, the shorter each passing year seems to become…nonetheless there is always time for dessert.

Christmas decorations have adorned the streets and local shops since Thanksgiving, which means its time for some customary gingerbread.   [Read more →]

The large spoon which adorns the top of my website is a Gray Kunz spoon. Not just any Gray Kunz spoon, but MY Gray Kunz spoon.  There’s a reason why I chose to have it serve as the header when I started this blogging adventure.  Its the one kitchen tool that defines me.  I know that sounds weird, but I don’t know how else to explain it… [Read more →]

1:39 AM, November 24, 2009
It was the same every year growing up:  we’d set the table in the dining room with the fancy china and tablecloth.  The decorative porcelain salt and pepper shakers would make their annual outing and sit authoritatively in the midst of buttery mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, mountains of stuffing, wild rice, cranberry sauce, gravy, and of course, a massive roasted turkey.

At one end of the table were always two requisite pies.  The first was usually a lattice-topped apple.  And the second…the second would be made of that famed squash which Linus van Pelt waited all night long for, that orange vegetable which sits on our stoops every October, that giant gourd-like mass that served as the head of a certain horseman in Sleepy Hollow (imagine if it had been a butternut, not so scary.)  Of course, I’m speaking of the Pumpkin. [Read more →]