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Many hands, light work.

Today’s show-off TV chefs would never have survived the Thanksgiving kitchens of my youth. The roasting turkey, oyster dressing, scalloped potatoes, tender rolls and sweet potato pie were all in...

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Lather, rinse, repeat.

Few chores accentuate the Groundhog Day aspects of life as well as cooking and kitchen cleaning. Boil, serve, eat. Tidy, scrub, sweep. Bask in the shiny kitchen millisecond, and then – BAM – do it all...

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The book tree.

The first Christmas we were together in Memphis, before we were married, before we had children, Bernard gave my mother a puppet named Book Worm that he purchased from a local bookstore. Book Worm was...

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Want to start cooking? Start cooking!

Whether or not you’re the resolution-making sort of person, it’s possible that somewhere in your mind is the idea that 2015 will be the year you get a grip on cooking dinner. Family dinner was my...

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Someday never comes.

It is late on the third day of the new year, long past tipsy midnight kisses and the initial fortitude of resolutions. Day three; this is where the rubber meets the road. Three-hundred-and-sixty...

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The no-snow weekend.

Here are 22 things I did this weekend, not in precise order: Watch everyone get snow, except for us. Well, it seemed like everyone. Exercise, because there was no snow to stop me. Dammit. Try to finish...

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If I can cook dinner, so can you.

The cold truth is that there simply is not enough time to do it all. For this very reason, as you may remember, once upon a time, I used to make a weekly dinner plan. Which is what I’d really like to...

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In vino veritas.

Oh, screw it; it’s 5 o’clock somewhere. Let’s talk about wine; everything else is too depressing. In our many family moves during my youth, there were a few belongings, in addition to clothes, dishes...

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Labor days.

It is Labor Day weekend, summer’s last hurrah. It’s the weekend many parents, mostly mothers, heave a sigh of relief. We made it. As Motherlode’s KJ Dell’Antonia wrote back in June, the 104 days of...

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Babies, tarnish and dust.

The part of this that is a story, at the beginning, is mostly true and very short – hardly even a story, it’s so short. But it’s true nonetheless, in the important ways, and amended appropriately...

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Rooted.

Twenty years ago, give or take a few weeks, on a cold, rainy Saturday, I was living by myself in a guest house a few blocks from the Joslyn Castle in Omaha. It was an old, historic neighborhood – not...

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Sorry, the number you’ve dialed has been disconnected.

We rose before dawn, in the dead of winter, when the only light was the moon’s reflection on the Nebraska snow. We lived in a small, four-room guesthouse – a generous term, as the “guesthouse” was a...

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A few notes: October 2017

A little more than a year ago, I started a new job, taking the helm of a well-established but fragile nonprofit agency dedicated to ending family violence. Someday I’m going to write about the...

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A few things: January 2018

“To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Our Christmas tree sparkled clear through Epiphany and beyond, lighting that particular corner of its room for...

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A few things: May 201

A few notes on writing, cooking, working, reading, from the long, hot month of May.

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Start on the right note.

OK, 2019, let’s go. Hoppin’ John and greens (and a spicy bloody Mary)? Check. New calendars up? Check. Christmas tree down? Not quite; but today (January 5th) is the last day of Christmas, so I’ve got...

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A few things: May 2019

It’s the season of honeysuckle and privet, of peonies, iris, and azaleas. Trees decked out in full, fresh green, unlike the worn-out color they’ll be showing come Labor Day. Walk outside and take in...

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A summer dinner.

Rise early, and head to the farmers market so you’ll have the best pick of produce. Or, alternately, sleep in and head to the market when you’re awake and have had some coffee. Don’t like farmers...

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Family dinner.

An actual family dinner conversation (and yes, I have shared this one before, but what follows it is all new): SON:  [to MOM] “So, why’d you move all that stuff and mess up the big room?” MOM: “I need...

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A few things: October 2019

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I would come home from (elementary and middle) school and watch TV and eat cereal and sometimes do homework. What I watched varied from year to year, but the...

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