Today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, is a most wonderful day. It's all behind us now. All the doing and making and planning, all the peeling and measuring and tenting with parchment paper, all the successes (pie) and failures (mashed potatoes, ironically) are over and done. The traveling to and fro is done. The drinking of red wine poured from wax-covered bottles is done. The candles are gutted and the carcass is picked clean and turned into stock (or tucked into the freezer.) More

This is what I did late this morning when life stared to get a little too full of that pre-Thanksgiving, computer-breaking, turn-on-the-news-and-it-sure-looks-bad, project-failing, house-needs-cleaning, must-cook-those-leeks-before-they-turn-to-mush kind of crazy around here: I made a cup of tea and I went back to bed. More

There are as many ways to approach the stove as there are ways to kneel and kiss the ground, to paraphrase Rumi. Some of us are optimists and when we cook we engage in hope and a desire to nourish, finding pleasure in feeding and being fed, providing ourselves and our loved ones with the strength to carry on, all which are optimistic notions. Some of us are perhaps a little more pessimistic, although I would argue that cooking well is basically a optimistic endeavor—but is this true? Pessimists, please plead your case in the comments!

But sometimes, often, we cook out of duty. We have a family to feed, or some sort of entertaining debt to pay off, or even our own bellies to fill. Sometimes the day-in, day-out obligation to get something on the table is nothing more than that: an obligation, especially when purse strings are tight and there's no escaping it through a stop at a restaurant or take out. It can feel like drudgery, or at least very hard work, and have I used the word 'relentless' yet? We only stop eating when we're dead, or nearly dead. So there's really no end to it. More

Sometimes you just have to bake a cake. Right? Because it's been quite an emotional week, what with the very close election looming and the very big storm descending and Halloween/Día de los Muertos sending all sorts of shenanigans out into the world. And let's not forget to mention (in my neck of the woods at least) the Giants winning the World Series, complete with wildness in the streets and parades. Quite the roller coaster. More

I'm not a rich woman by any means, although I suppose that's a relative statement. I don't own a car or a house or even have an insurance policy, but I eat very well, live with an enormous amount of beauty and kindness, and have a pretty terrific set of friends and family and neighbors. Still, there's not a lot of extra cash in my life for things like vacations or the latest tech gadget or party dresses. So when a neighbor gave me a year's worth of old Saveur and Bon Appetit magazines, it was quite the treat. I stashed the glossy pile in a shelf near my bed, anticipating the joy of working my way through their rich and bountiful pages. More

The persimmon tree that grows on the property where I live lost a big branch the other day. The tree was loaded with fruit which are heavy and dense and the branch suddenly gave out, leaving a rough and ragged scar and scattering persimmons everywhere like a riotous, Mad Hatter billiard game. It's a good thing my neighbors and I are a community of cooks because quite abruptly we were faced with a rather alarming amount of persimmons. More

One of the more pleasurable things about cooking is that it expresses our belonging: where we have been, where we are now, who and what we hold allegiance to, what season it is, what time of day it is, what kind of life we've built for ourselves. What we choose to eat, and how, and where and with whom. And why. Of course, not all of this is always in our control, but that too is an expression of our lives, what we value, and what's shaping us. More

When my landlady was tidying up the yard the other day, she left a handful of apples, some sage and a calendula flower on the steps leading up to her apartment above me. This clutch of stuff — ingredients? still life? compost? — snagged my attention with its careless, thrown-together beauty. Like a tiny altar, it begged me to pause before it with a sense of appreciation and wonder. Was it going up the stairs or coming down? Would the sage go into a stuffing with the apples or float in a hot bath with the calendula petals? Or was it all going to the green compost bin? More

One of the things I love about early fall is that it is an excellent time to take on big kitchen projects. The months of September and October are the perfect time to do this, when the weather has cooled some but the produce, at least where I live, is still rolling in strong. The kids are in school and the holidays haven't hit yet, so there's a little extra time to devote an afternoon (or an entire day) to the kitchen. More

The Autumnal Equinox happened yesterday morning at 10:49 EDT. What this means is that on this day and time the sun crossed the celestial equator, neatly dividing day and night into equal segments. More specifically, the very center of the sun sets exactly 12 hours after it rises, although we won't experience it as exactly 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours darkness due to the fact that the sun's rays are refracted over the horizon. Still, it's a time when darkness and light are balanced and we can officially welcome in autumn. More