One of the first things I learned to cook really well was a calzone. I mean, could make delicious omelets and french toast and cereal, and all of my family’s recipes, but when I started to like cooking, the first thing I was able to create was a calzone. It was junior year of undergraduate [...]

Though I’m aware of how very close Thanksgiving Day is, I’m uncertain whether sharing my family’s traditional feast is relevant to the world at large. Our meal, which bears a precise resemblance to our Christmas dinner, consists of the usual things you’d expect in a ritualistic gorging of a plentiful harvest.

For years, my mother has made the same delicious banana bread from the same beloved Betty Crocker cookbook. The result, too, is always the same. With that small slide of butter across the first slice, the steam and aroma rising up in a vaguely romantic swirl and melting the butter into each of the nooks, [...]

The next big dinner with the folks is coming up, and I wanted to try something new. I looked in my cupboards and refrigerator for inspiration, but sadly, it was just before grocery shopping day. What I did see was an abundance of apples and a few bottles of Ithaca Pale Ale and Guinness draught.

I’m realizing the best meal ideas are the ones passed down through generations. Maybe it’s because there’s so much history and love that goes in with the other ingredients that make it all taste so good.

I recently made dinner for my boyfriend’s parents – Sue and Mike. A lot was riding on this dinner. Sue had never eally had anyone cook for her before, so that was a big deal. And since I’m the girl her son is seriously involved with, she needed to know first-hand that I could feed [...]

Over the years, my parents have suckered me into eating mushy peas, onions, and garlic. Even now, I can almost tolerate bleu cheese, though at one time, the taste was enough to turn my face inside out, much to my loving parents’ amusement. However, there are some foods that kids will never eat.

I don’t know what binds me to my family, or, especially, my father. I have always been a Daddy’s Girl, though not in the “he buys me everything” sort of way. I am not his little princess either. I’m the youngest of four, true, but what’s always been so amazing is the time we’ve spent [...]