When I met my husband, he had been living alone with his two children, 8 and 10 at the time, for several years. I was a 30-something having little experience with children, let alone ever any responsibility for anyone except myself, and an only child at that. As I slowly began to settle in the vast and unknown terrain of parenting, the kitchen was the place where I felt the most comfortable. Continue reading
French do it, Arabs do it, Indians, Dutch and Germans do it… grandmothers and guys do it… non-cooks and cooks do it: bring back typical foods from their home country that are impossible or difficult to find in the United States, or very expensive, or not the real thing. Continue reading
Although I never lived in the house, the place in Germany that I associate the most with “home” is my grandfather’s ancestral farm and mill in east Westphalia. It is filled with many happy childhood memories. That’s where I learned to ride a bike, snuck into the pig stall, got muddy playing in the stream, and lingered around my grandfather’s two older brothers (my grandfather died in the Second World War) as they were working the fields with Ella the draft horse. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 