Goodness is a large, often a prospective word; like harvest, which at one stage when we talk of it lies all underground, with an indeterminate future; is the germ prospering in the darkness? At another, it has put forth delicate green blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are ready to be dashed off by an…
Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive…
We are always after some new thing. Which is fine in many ways, but in matters of food often disastrous. We are so busy running after the latest dish, that the good things we have known for centuries are forgotten as quickly as the boring things. -Jane Grigson (English Food) The wise Jane Grigson wrote…
The game starts again from the beginning. The end is always another beginning.This nightmare of eternity in time, this is our fate. -Margarita Karapanou (Rien ne va plus) It's strange to think that this series of posts has been going on now for seven weeks. There's a small part of me that wants to resist counting…
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. -Henry David Thoreau (On Walden Pond)When people find out that my car of choice is a…
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. - Edgar Allen PoeI didn't know what to expect upon my arrival in Greece. So much…
"What made Madeleine sit up in bed was something closer to the reason she read books in the first place and had always loved them. Here was a sign that she wasn't alone. Here was an articulation of what she had been so far mutely feeling. In bed on a Friday night, wearing sweatpants, her…
But there is great dignity in allowing oneself to keep clear about what is good, and it is what I think of when I hear the term "good taste." Whether things were ever simpler than they are now, or better if they were, we can't know. We do know that people have always found ways…
It is hard for many of us to look forward to cooking a meal that's just for ourselves. It's not just laziness, but some feeling that it's not quite worth the effort when it's just for us. That we're not worth it! [...] When people say they take the time to shop and cook well…
I can hardly believe that, less than a week ago, I was rambling through Carmel, Monterey and Point Lobos, almost without a care in the world. To put it mildly, all of that seems like a lifetime ago. The Greek and I returned to various tasks in Berkeley last Tuesday evening and now, one Greek…
Dining with Dostoevsky 