WE’RE INTO TURKEY season, and you probably have more than a few recipes in your stash, as well as a few stories accompanying each recipe. And, if your recipes are like mine, some of them are better than others. Recently, in search of yet another method, I wiled away hours reading my mother-in-law’s recipe box. And whammo: What I found might shock you.
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More From the Recipe Files: T-Shirt Turkey
November 18, 2011 By 6 Comments
Spam Chop Suey Reveals Genetic Code!
November 9, 2011 By 4 Comments
SEVEN INHERITED RECIPE BOXES make up my collection. I’ve had them with me now for so many years that I can remember at least four different places they’ve resided in my office, each for long periods of time. Amulets, icons–call them what you may–I always work with them in view; they are that important. And then recently, I discovered that they contain the code to life itself. [Read more...]
Finding Memoir Amid the Jell-O. Oh Yeah.
November 7, 2011 By 11 Comments
WHERE I COME FROM, the word “salad” means lettuce. Perhaps that lettuce will be accompanied by onions, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, crumbled cheese, or all of the above, but lettuce—and I believe I speak for all my homepeople when I say this—would be the foundation of all things “salad.” And, being a New Yorker, I went along thinking my way was the highway until fate stepped in and threw a man in my path some 23 years ago who, when he said “salad,” was speaking a different tongue. So we got married, and mixed things up. [Read more...]
Your New Best Friend:
The Deadline Calendar
GO ON, TRY my interactive calendar of emotional high holy days, regular-version high holy days and more. Hover your cursor over a cinnamon-colored date to see what pops up. Use it to start personal essays, radio pieces and op-eds to submit on deadline. How? Look three months out for radio ideas; six to twelve for magazine pieces. Pick it, write it, submit it. You’re a writer. That’s what writers do.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Apr | Jun » | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5May, 5 2012Cinco de MayoIt is Cinco de Mayo, commemorating the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces in 1862. This is a great one for everything from a memoir about someone else’s cultural holidays, some food memoir perhaps, or a piece of memoir placed at celebration for the day. | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12May, 12 2012Hurricanes Finally Get Named for Men, As WellIt was on this day in 1978 that hurricanes also were named for men. Previously named only for women, this seems like justice, however late. What’s in a name? My sister has something to say about that, named as she is, for a racehorse. I told this story on NPR’s All Things Considered. Have a look. | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16May, 16 2012Fiddlehead TimeIt’s Fiddlehead time. Fiddlehead ferns that is, sold and eaten while they are still rolled up. Fiddleheads are the unfurled fronds of a young fern harvested for food consumption. Called a fiddlehead because it resembles the curled ornamentation (called a scroll) on the end of a stringed instrument, such as a fiddle, it is It is also called a crozier since it also resembles the curved staff used by bishops, which has its origins in the shepherd’s crook. Got some food memoir? I lap it up, and write it down here. | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23May, 23 2012The Father of Taxomony is BornOn this day in 1707 was the birth of Carl Linneaus, the man who created order out of chaos by creating a classification system for naming and identifying plants. I created one of those, though mine divides by people, asking if you are either a burger or a burrito. Check it out. | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27May, 27 2012Rachel Carson’s BirthdayOn this day in 1907 was the birth of Rachel Carson, one of the greatest advocates the earth will ever know. The New Yorker magazine took a chance on her, first publishing her in 1951 and in 1962 serializing Silent Spring, in which she took on the subject of the ravaging effects of pesticides. The book is still regarded as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. She inspires me, and I might write a piece of memoir about reading that book or what she has meant to me. You? What creative inspiration does she provoke in you? |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |||
In the Kitchen, Cooking Up Memoir
November 5, 2011 By 8 Comments
OUR MOTHER DIDN’T cook. To be more specific, our mother was something of a spectacle in the kitchen, cooking a few things, always as dramatically a possible. The simple stuff eluded her: a chop, a steak, a baked potato. Instead, we got such offerings as Beef Wellington and once, memorably, reindeer meatballs. [Read more...]
Food Memoir: Finding Story Amid Recipes
October 31, 2011 By 23 Comments
RECIPES ARE POWERFUL storytellers. Never was this point driven home to me like when I first encountered the Hart Family Round Robin Newsletter, a tradition of my mother-in-law’s and her seven siblings, all children of the Depression, and prolific recipe-swappers (always on their homemade stationery, of course, above). [Read more...]
My Burger or Burrito Genetics
October 28, 2011 By 4 Comments
BURGER OR BURRITO? Which are you? Maybe you didn’t know that all people can be divided along these culinary categories. They can. Grab something to munch on while I explain it all to you. [Read more...]
