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
My late grandmother had the peculiar habit of never unpacking gifts we gave her. She would set them aside “for another time”, leaving them at my parents’ home forever wrapped and unopened. One of those Christmas castaways was a baking book with color photos. I spent many hours leafing through it, salivating over recipes like chestnut ice cream cake. This was in the mid-1970s, long before the Internet propelled lavish food photos into every corner of the world. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 