Writing this post, my last about my trip to Greece, I'm sitting in an air-conditioned apartment in New York City; while the past few days have been wonderful, my legs are more than a tad sore and I'm two shades short of exhausted. There's a part of me that longs for home (oh, to cook…
They say that Milos is the island of lovers. It is Aphrodite's island, where the famous Venus de Milo (keep in mind that while in English we say, "MYlo," it's really "MElo") statue was found in 1820. To step off the boat and to see the crystalline blue of the water, as well as the…
Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or…
The "kaamos"--sunless midwinter--has weighed upon nature for months now. And when the sun appears on the southern sky it is the first sign of new spring's coming, a spring which is still many frosts, weeks and months away. -Urpo HuhtanenThis past weekend, I traveled to the Lapland and back. I had imagined many times before…
“I would far prefer to have things happen as they naturally do, such as the mousse refusing to leave the mold, the potatoes sticking to the skillet, the apple charlotte slowly collapsing. One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot.” ― Julia…
Being here in Finland, it's fairly tricky. I'm happy the temperature was above freezing today and that the snow is melting; the downside to this, however, is that there are now crazy puddles to navigate (my legs are short; I'm practically doing Olympic style leaps across the street). Also, without ever having studied the language…
Every day she got up, tucked her three cookbooks under her arm, shut herself up in the kitchen and cooked, listening to Vivaldi. The books were Elizabethan Cuisine, Plato's Symposia, and Renaissance Spices and Sauces. At night they all traveled together with their sense of taste: as they chewed they would become ancient Greeks eating…
It is a fabulous place when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam...But when the tide goes out, the little water world becomes quiet and lovely.-John Steinbeck (Cannery Row)While it may not be customary for a couple, right after a move, to go on a little trip, that's exactly what the Greek and…
Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic; San Francisco is a lady. -Norman Mailer This past weekend has been nothing but quiet. I've spent a lot of time with Don Draper, whose plight gets only more and more wretched…
But why should it be that sometimes one sees things clearly--I mean like when the camera is properly adjusted-- -George Seferis (A Levant Journal) George Seferis never completed that thought; in fact, it seems just to be a passing impression from his diplomatic travels throughout the Middle East in the mid-1950s. But yesterday, for some…
Dining with Dostoevsky 