I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
My early childhood was mostly lacking in trauma, but there is one glaring example of distress I suffered about which I am reminded annually in the heat of midsummer. As a young child, I rarely had a birthday party. It was pain and suffering that …
Every year it happens. The weather gets hot and sweaty, and the zucchinis grow from finger to baseball bat-size in a matter of hours. I am swamped. It’s the equivalent of a zombie apocalypse in the garden. They can be so prolific, it’s almost obscene. …
I am hesitant to talk about the current state of my garden in the same way that when traveling I don’t discuss the traffic, lest a sea of red taillights appears around the next bend in the highway. I don’t want to jinx anything. But …
Some of the happiest days of my youth were at overnight camp. Camp Onas became an integral part of my childhood, adolescence, and development. I was a camper for five years from age 9 to 14 and a staff member for five more beyond that. …
I am thankful that during the heat wave currently enveloping the eastern United States I have air conditioning in my car. As a child, that was never the case. To fit three rambunctious boys in the back seat, our cars were always the size of …
When my children, Ariana and Jacob, were eight and ten years old we frequented a small Italian restaurant in town for the year or two it was open. It was by no means a fancy establishment, but they served solid food and had a pasta …
My maternal grandmother, Jeanette, was hardly a vision of health. She smoked, did not exercise, and ate lots of traditional Jewish foods and baked goods that one would never classify as nutritious. When we drove to visit her in Atlantic City from our home in …
Many years ago, before children, my wife Marci and I took a trip to Mexico. Our trip was not a resort vacation, sitting on the beach in Cancún. Rather, we were there to see the country and eat the food, knowing we would only be …
In the early to mid-1970s when I was about seven my parents first rented a cabin with a handful of other families not far from Kutztown in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Each family would get their own weekend about once a month throughout the year and …
When my wife Marci was pregnant many years ago, she had morning sickness; the aliens growing inside her refused to let certain foods go down and caused others to come back up. And then there were items she could not get enough of. With my …
