Today I want to share with you a few things that have either made me smile or have inspired my kitchen this week. I hope you enjoy them. And please share with us what inspired you this week in the comments.

First up, a few words of wisdom from tea towels! More

Uncertainty is difficult for us human beings. It jiggles at our foundation and worries our gut. We want reliability, to know what's around the next corner. We want to be prepared. We want to know what we're supposed to do and that we're going to be OK.

When I'm uncertain, I get myself into the kitchen and I bake, mostly because I find some comfort in it. And while baking isn't at all exempt from the whims of uncertainty, there are a few favorite recipes I can make without too much fuss and bother. Old reliables that are forgiving, that I can slip into like a well-worn groove. More

In famine, the number of dried beans in the cupboard; in abundance, piles of chicken bones and empty wine bottles. In sorrow, so many tears that they over-salt the soup; in happiness, the number of place settings at a wedding feast. In middle age, candles on the cake; in youth, the frosting roses. In celebration, bubbles in a champagne glass; in mourning, the number of bites taken from a sandwich, delivered to your door draped in a napkin (none). More

It's mid-July and I've got a pot of all-day Bolognese sauce blurbing away on the stove, steaming up the windows and filling the house with a rich meaty scent. While citizens of the Bay Area will immediately understand this, the rest of you are probably wondering if I've gone crazy. But you see, it's 53 degrees and cloudy in Berkeley right now and even though my internal summertime clock says to slice up the first of the fresh tomatoes and fire up the grill, my body is saying Bolognese. Especially my ice cube toes tucked into their wooly slippers. More

I like to let my fruit get really ripe before I eat it, perhaps because I like sweet things but also because I like intensely flavored things, too. This is a delicate endeavor as there is a fine line between ripe and rotting, and sometimes it only takes a slightly warmish afternoon in the kitchen to cross it. So it's important to be in a situation where you can keep an eye on things and pounce when the moment is right. Like the lovely bowl of apricots, pictured above. When I purchased them earlier in the week, they were hard and pale yellow, even greenish in places. When I checked them yesterday morning their skins were slightly wrinkled and they felt soft and heavy in my hand. I knew it was almost time. More

There is a boundary to looking,
And the world that is looked at so deeply
wants to flourish in love.

-Rainer Maria Rilke
More

I've been uprooted and traveling a fair amount, so I haven't had a kitchen to call my own for several weeks now. This has been a lot of fun, in an expanding-my-horizons kind of way, for I enjoy a good adventure and new discoveries. I love visiting my friends and family, cooking in new kitchens and shopping the local farmers' markets. I've even managed to extend the asparagus season a few extra weeks by following it from the west coast to the midwest and on to the east. More

My father taught me a lot about cooking and the love of cooking. While he wasn't responsible for the endless daily sustenance my mother churned out, he did have his memorable repertoire: cinnamon swirl bread, canning up pickles and applesauce, fudge, Belgium waffles and, of course, the weekly Saturday night ride to Mc Donald's on my mum's night off from cooking. I remember vividly riding shotgun, the black vinyl seat of our yellow Chevy Impala sticking to the back of my thighs, the fragrant white paper sack perched between us, the ritual tasting of a hot salty french fry, 'just to be sure they were OK.' More

I like new things and new situations: I find them exciting. Being out of my element sharpens my awareness so that there's a freshness and vitality to everything I encounter. I'm especially noticing this in my new kitchen, a lovely room in the back of my Berkeley housesit that features an enormous amount of satin-smooth butcher block counter space and a stained glass window that glows with the setting sun. More

I've been away for this past week, deep in the wilderness where there's no technology or cell phone connection or TV but plenty of extra-blue sky and forest critters and hot springs that burble up from the earth to warm my body straight through to the bone. More