The past few weeks have been several shades of brutal. No matter what I've been doing, whether speed reading a book with a looming library due date or keeping up with the piles of dishes that always manage to accumulate when I'm looking the other way, I've felt more than a little pressed for time.…
Several weeks ago when I was reading Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, I discovered one of the most comforting meals you could ever have: Aushak, i.e. Afghan dumplings that are stuffed with scallions, served on a layer of garlic-spiked Greek yogurt and then topped with a gingery tomato sauce and roughly torn mint leaves. While…
The path to paradise begins in hell. -Dante AlighieriEach time I go to Greece it's as if I fall under a magical spell. It's a place of pristine blue skies, endless sunshine and food that fills both my heart and my belly with nothing but joy. I feel like myself, as well as a better,…
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,In proving foresight may be vain:The best laid schemes o' mice an' menGang aft a-gley.An' lea'e us nought but grief an' painFor promised joy. -Robert Burns ("To a Mouse")Last Friday we discovered that there was a mouse in the house. Needless to say, this was a horrifying discovery; I…
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” -Helen Keller"It's life," she said. These were the words my dissertation adviser offered me when, in our final meeting of the semester (of my…
I'll be the first to admit that, when it comes to food, I'm terribly susceptible to kicks. In my third year of graduate school, when I taught the horrible 8-9 a.m. section of a reading and writing class, I used to get up at 5:54 a.m. everyday to make myself stove-top oatmeal with banana and…
Dining with Dostoevsky 