It’s weird — every couple of mornings, I hear the girl upstairs wailing and crying and screaming “I hate you” to her boyfriend. Every night I hear their television, and what sometimes sounds like a first-person shooter video game. Dan hears their TV at 4 AM when he gets up to go to the bakery. [...]

Today Bix turns two. I fed him a big breakfast and let him go back to sleep in our bed. This is not so much different than his normal routine — he’s a lazy dog, and doesn’t get out of bed until we do, and likes to return there once he’s done with breakfast. Later [...]

Oh, hello. Is it really halfway through June already?
So, the wee garden I’d worked so hard to cultivate this spring was reduced to a withering heap of green last week when a relentless and brutal heatwave descended over the Berkshires for three days. It was the talk of the town: at the library, the sweaty, [...]

A sure sign of spring in New York City is the arrival of fiddlehead ferns and ramps in the Union Square Greenmarket. Through the wet, gray winter I’d pined for those first green leaves’ arrival, and nearly leaped for joy when I finally spotted them some late April morning on the way to my old [...]

Today we received our first spring greens from semi-local Sidehill Farm. We carpool with friends to pick up veggies from their greenhouse. This week: teenaged chard (above — I’m calling it that, since it’s not baby, but not big), bok choi, white radishes, pea shoots (LOVE), salad mix, and spinach. Spring is here!
Tonight we sauteed [...]

My weekend was something like this hallway, a shadowy-but-bright, under construction, secreted away wonder. Toward the end of the week, spring finally peeked out from behind weeks of bitter cold, and the sun settled in for a day or two at its old job. I ate bread from a wood-fired oven and explored New England [...]

Chiming in here to m. heart’s Winter Blues Week, because boy do I have ‘em.
A few days of bright skies and above-32-degrees weather had me pining for sunny spring, but I should have known better. Today the gray sky is hanging low with wet clouds and snow is starting to come down in big fluffy [...]

Two fun things happened here in the country this weekend. Surprise!
The first fun thing was a show at Williams College. Vampire Weekend played.

The show was in a dining hall and I think the band was on the floor. I couldn’t see them, and I was terrified of squeezing myself into the crew of waify girls [...]

The doorbell rang at seven; we knew they were not lost. We ate spaghetti with garlic and broccoli, a pear martini, a bottle of Zinfandel, a slice of apple pie, home-brewed beer, vanilla ice cream. Puff pastry with figs and gorgonzola, herbed olives, brie-style cheese from Vermont, Shelburne Farms cheddar. Someone said I was a [...]

I still haven’t been to Chez Panisse, having not yet attained the kind of financial freedom that allows for spur-of-the-moment California trips and $150 dinners. Still, I have always admired what Alice Waters has to say, even if, at times, her preciousness grates. It’s important — now more than ever — to be conscious about [...]