Oh my goodness, let me tell you about the one time my mother and I nearly ruined Thanksgiving over a cake. It wasn’t even a fancy cake. Just an apple cake — dense, a little sunken in the middle, the kind that looks unimpressive on a plate and then disappears in about four minutes flat. ...
Oh my goodness, let me tell you about Mrs. Kowalski, who lived two doors down and was, for about a decade of my life, the reason I ever learned to actually cook anything. She wasn’t family. I want to say that clearly, because the way I talk about her, people always assume she must have ...
Oh my goodness, let me tell you about my grandmother’s kitchen, because I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten over it. Every Sunday, without fail, there was soup. Not because anyone asked for it, and not because there was a special occasion — Sunday just meant soup, the way Sunday meant church bells three streets ...
Oh my goodness, let me tell you about the one meal in my house that was never, ever my mother’s job. Saturdays belonged to my father, and specifically, to pancakes. Not because he was some secret culinary genius — he genuinely could not tell you how to boil an egg on any other day of ...
