[Alice Waters' Chocolate Cake, and my mom's birthday cake.]

[Pacific Ocean, December 2009.]
Love, of course, can be many things. It can be clear blue skies and an unexpected picnic in August. It can be your brother picking you up at the airport no matter what time you come in, in Maine and California and Greece, too, or a soon-to-be-sister-in-law saying what you [...]

[Coconut bread, and tea, January 2010.]
Quite a few years ago I read a book that would become one of my very favorites — My Dream of You, by the Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain — and which I subsequently have passed around to various loved ones. I first read it one long weekend in Ohio; [...]

It’s been cold here the past week or so. Not East-Coast cold by any stretch of the imagination (I find myself walking to the bus with my hands stuffed in my pockets and my shoulders perpetually hovering somewhere near my ears — don’t tell my yoga instructor! — thinking Did I really live in [...]

[Last bits of summer, September 2009.]
[Plus le Meme Chose, non?]
October slips in on a rush of 70-degree mornings and the sun beams down as if to say, Silly you. There are days more of me so do not lament those dark 6.30 wake-ups just yet. Coffee tastes especially good lately and I have [...]