Rich hues of purple beckon me.  The market in Mexico is full of colors today:  fire orange for zucchini blossoms, crimson red endless mounds of tomatoes, and rich coal-colored piles of avocados that promise a buttery light green inside.  I could gather them all and on most days I do, but today I go for the eggplants- they are the perfect size- nothing too pretentiously large, smooth and shiny with a dark skin as mysterious as the pond in Vermont I’d dive into freely as a child.  These babies are mine.  Today I will make them shine.

I take them home – just two is all I need, and the ritual begins. It is a slow process- I must gently char the outside over my beloved gas stove.  Easing in the smoke that will give my dish its distinctive flavor.   My …Read on

Ooooh.  I’m gone.

Zippo.

Not here.

On Holiday.

Right now, if you are reading this, you are probably escaping time with the in-laws.

That’s okay.

I won’t bore you with my travels, just yet.  I’ll wait til I return.  Because quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about a computer at this second.  I’m too busy winding my way down from Madrid to Morocco.  I could be anywhere, really.  I don’t even know myself.  The blessing of a spontaneous family and a car.  Anything can happen, but it all will come with good food. Promise.  More later.

Right now, I leave you with deviled eggs.

They’re easy.  Fun.  And big party favorites.  And really, they are one of those boring items you never get tired of.  Do you get tired of them? Ever? Right?  I mean, if you are feeling stuck, in a deviled-egg midlife crisis, you can …Read on

I.  Am. A. Foodie.

And then there’s the gym.  Have you  heard of that place?  Horrible.  People go and shvitz like it’s the coolest thing to do with one’s time.  I personally hate all forms of exercise.  My idea of being in a room full of sweaty, bopping people causes classic anxiety.  Just isn’t fun.  And not because they are sweating and bopping, but because they are all a good ten or fifteen years older than me and they are by far better than I am at it.  Stronger.  Resistant.  Firmer.

Beautiful butts abound.
Yes, I look.
Perhaps it’s surgical.  God, oh god, please let it be surgical.  But maybe not.  Maybe it’s exercise and celery sticks.

I tried that, temporarily, you see.  I subjected myself to such cruelties (exercise and celery sticks) for an interminably long time (two weeks, folks) all in efforts to …Read on

He looked at me with distrustful eyes: I looked like a gringa, after all, and Venezuela, a once open and accepting country, now lived in a climate of great anti-American sentiment. And still, his look locked with mine in a curious way. I stuck out like a sore thumb, I’ll admit, with my fair skin, blonde hair and light eyes, out in a dusty pit stop between the cities of Caracas and Valencia, in a sea of dark-skinned, dark-haired people. My husband and I had stopped for the prerequisite cafecito, a tiny plastic cup of rich caffeine that would curse through our veins until the next pit stop allowed a refill.

I sat in the parked car, watching the men and women saunter towards the goods beckoning at the counter: a box of …Read on

There were many hints of his impending betrayal, but, like any woman in love, I chose to look away.  I had been swept off my feet, what can I say, a phrase that would definitely make all my self-sufficient Barnard colleagues shake their heads in disappointment and mutter only this to me: tsk tsk, tsk tsk.  I was in love, maybe not with him, but most definitely with the idea of him: glamour, sophistication, and expensive lust. And we’d been together so many  years, so when  the smallest of signals blinked quietly but straightforwardly at me, I chose to look the other way.

First the brownies didn’t bake evenly.  No one else could tell.  In fact, all where mesmerized, entranced, absolutely orgasmic over my brownies.  But I knew something was up with Dacor then.  The baked batter leaned in a bit …Read on