I've never been an outward rebel, but inside, I just rebel deeply.

On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they're also allowed to take candy from strangers - the scariest thing of all.

Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasn't flown halfway around the world, that didn't travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasn't been sitting in a supermarket's refrigerator case for days.

My blog is a celebration of the unexpected, settled, happy life I find myself living in Portland, Maine, at the ripe old age of fifty with someone I deeply love and am very happy with. That's part of why I started the blog.

I realized that I've had a really rocky relationship with food - it has not been a gauzy, beautiful summer of ripe melons and perfectly buttered toast.

The phrase 'blue plate special' has always been one of the homiest, coziest, most sweetly nostalgic phrases in the English language for me.