It’s all a balancing act, isn’t it? Whatever we do, work, parenting, marriage, home, we spend all of our days juggling. Add to that the little luxuries of life, cooking, shopping, visiting friends, visiting interesting places. Reading and writing. And it’s a veritable circus: juggling, balancing, tightrope walking, taming wild animals…. A friend, spending two ...
Six
Six years. A lot happened in six years. Whirlwind. Changes. Our little boys grew up. The one rowdy and bright eyed, the other rather mournful and private became men, smart and vibrant. And handsome. And have something of their uncle about them. Our young men went to college; one became an architect, the other a designer. One graduated ...
Honey Whiskey Bundt Cake with Honey Whiskey Butter Glaze
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.' - Alfred Lord Tennyson The Jewish New Year edges its way through the tail end of summer, pushes through the last warm days and the start of the rain, bringing with it something melancholy. Maybe it is the sudden oncoming of ...
Breakfast
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. - Vincent Van Gogh Six months we have owned and been running the Hôtel Diderot and I have rarely slept through the night. Knowing that my alarm will ring at six sharp, that I prefer to be (need to ...
Nectarine Jalousie
Summertime. It’s the little bundle of memories we carry with us from our childhood, year after year that makes summertime what it is. Whether stifling hot days and balmy evenings or chilly, gray dampness seeping through the cracks of tightly closed windowpanes and drawn curtains, June, July and August are infused with something intangible, special that ...
Happy Birthday, Julia!
I was given a set of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 1986 just after I had moved to France, which was, when I come to think of it, a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle or, as I did, bringing a pasta machine to Italy. Although I have always loved my copies of "Mastering," it ...
Black Currants and Lemon Cake
Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them. – Nancy Mitford I sit next to Jane comfortably and convivially at the white plastic picnic table in the shade of the overhang, a tangle of branches heaped upon the table. We each have a plastic ...
Roasted Cherry Tomato, Feta, Rocket, and Pine Nut Quiche
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby My husband has been bringing me treasures from the garden, fresh mint heady ...
One More Day
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo ...
Learning Curve
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut Shortly after I married, I began working as an interpreter in a large, prestigious cooking school in the center of Paris. The gentleman for whom I worked had created the Anglophone section at said cooking school ...