Loaves and Fishes
As a child, I was a finicky eater, pushing around on my plate those items that didn’t appeal—too mushy, too mealy, too pulpy—and concentrating on the eccentricities I favored. Sauteed mushrooms on...
View ArticleTraditional New Year’s Food
At the end of December I talked to a friend of mine who lives in Seattle. He was going to a New Year’s Eve dinner and was having trouble deciding what to contribute to the meal. “It’s strange,” he...
View ArticleFast-Food Funeral Procession
The line lurched forward one vehicle at a time, halogen halos radiating from headlights. Although it was eleven o’clock at night, I could not help but think of the funeral processions I saw as a boy,...
View ArticleRules for Celebrating: An Observation from the Way of Saint James, Part 1
My son graduated from college this past June. It took him seven years, due to a hiatus, a transfer, and several changes of major, and there were times I thought I’d never see the day. So when the...
View ArticleAfter a Thanksgiving Feast
I carry my failure with me. My embarrassment. My shame. It grows. It sets me apart from men in my life, the hard man with the violin, the thin man with the flask. See them in the photo. They have...
View ArticleThe Vegan at Our Chicken Slaughter
A few years ago, we invited the newest neighbor in our rural intentional Christian community to help us slaughter the chickens we had raised for meat. Our neighbor told us about his guest up the hill;...
View ArticleEat the Delicious Earth
A year ago, I started cooking and learning how to prepare and love food in new ways. How to spend time with it, think about how it comes apart and together, how it draws lines back to heritage and...
View ArticlePoetry Friday: “The Embrace”
Poetry can recall us to the sensuousness of ordinary experience. Elizabeth Smither does this in “The Embrace” through the pointed choice of particular details. We are invited into a room in which...
View ArticleWeddings, Women, Sweets, and Wishes
My heirloom cookbook was born during a Washington D.C. snowstorm in February of what was then called “The Year 2000,” in my final months of singlehood before I was to be married in July. That storm...
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