Until 2009, Herrell’s Ice Cream sat at the corner of Dunster Street and Mass Ave. in Cambridge. The ice cream there was good, and the hot fudge was better. Almost every day of college, I walked to Herrell’s in the afternoon, and I ordered a cup of Cookies ‘n Cream with Hot Fudge Sauce. I […]

Every so often, I feel like a college student. When I wear a backpack. On nights when I procrastinate by staring into space instead of doing the work I’ve planned to finish. At midtown lunches when I walk in with messy hair, wearing flat sandals and chipped nail polish and everyone else sports cute wedge […]

Tonight, after a packed day, I’m heading to our monthly girls’ potluck, still known as Mag Club in spite of not having adhered to the original meaning (we’ll all present an article from a magazine! and a dish the article inspired! yeah, right!) for years. These days, instead of dating and parties, we talk of […]

There are weeks when I think I could subsist entirely on oatmeal, grilled cheese, pizza, and pasta. Despite nightmares of leafy greens coming to attack me just so I’ll take a bite of something with nutrients, I’m not unhappy with this diet. Until I remember: this is no way for a grown-up to live. Grown-ups […]

Habaneros are hot yellow peppers whose capsaicin content can make your mouth sting, your hands turn into poisonous spice conveyers, and your eyes buzz with pain and tears. So, I added it to my soup. At a recent project kickoff, which I’ll tell you about soon, a brave chef added a timid portion of minced […]

For a while, I’ve been into the idea of eating meat-lite, but the trip to Thailand really reinforced the beauty of appreciating a dish’s noodles, sauces, and vegetables–and few bites of meat. Not that I had any trouble with that before. In fact, when I began eating meat again after my vegetarian days, I swore […]

I’ve started keeping a pound of frozen ground meat in my freezer at all times. Sometimes, it’s beef. Sometimes, it’s pork. Right now, it’s “bork,” what Fleisher’s, my Park Slope butcher, calls its mix of ground beef and pork. This feels like an apocalyptic urge for someone whose stance towards both the freezer and the […]

I looked at the calendar early this week and the December days that would have blog posts crawled into view in the few open spots left in the year. Three more in 2012, if I keep to my pace. Though the last few months have sped by, with their big stresses and their triumphs, and their […]

For much of high school and college, I dreamed of living in the country. A little house, a big piece of land, a farm even, maybe some chickens. The summer after I graduated from college, I researched for the Let’s Go: USA travel guide in the Great Plains region. My editor thought I was nuts […]