being not doing

Rear: tomatillos, arugula, and watermelons. Front: tomatoes, eggplants, sweet potatoes, and ‘Peachy Mama’ peppers.
Today I picked up the last box of our summer farm subscription (one of the food sources described in an article co-written by our neighborhood drop-off coordinator). This week’s box was one of the most bountiful of the summer, and […]

Last night’s dinner, baked salmon with a red onion confit, was a test run of a recipe I’m considering cooking for friends at some point next month (shh, don’t tell!). It comes from an old copy of The Mediterranean Kitchen, by Joyce Goldstein, that I bought earlier this year at the used bookshop. […]

Dinner, day two.
Last week I made stuffed squash for the first time. It’s not the kind of thing that I ate much of growing up, nor is it the sort of thing I would order in a restaurant. But it appeared to be one of the few ways to actually eat a squash […]

As part of my ongoing effort to learn how to cook and eat all the vegetables, I bought okra at the farmers’ market on Saturday, from one of the old guys who remind me of my grandfather. I had an okra dish that I liked the last time our friends brought over Indian food, […]

‘When the puppets cut their strings / there’ll be fireworks for the world to see / when the puppets cut their strings / there’ll be hell to pay in the ghettos of the whole damn world.’ — Icemakers of the Revolution
Diane, Tammy, and Shawny, at a show outside the Union in 1991.
I’ve referenced the Icemakers […]

But whenever I’m honest, something in me / still looks for fresh water that feels like the sea. — Carrie Newcomer
standing on the southernmost tip of Canada
When I was a kid, I used to go to the beach at Point Pelée nearly every summer with my grandparents. I didn’t swim in the ocean until […]

I loved The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and found the balance of humor and pathos just right. Maybe it takes the voice of a young narrator to really convey the hilarity and heartache of childhood, or maybe it’s the more direct relationship to Alexie’s personal biography, but it moved me in […]

I hated this book. I know that it’s super popular and everyone has raved about how Khaled Hosseini is a rising star, and The Kite Runner is an ingenious and personalized look at the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, I wanted to throw it across the room every few pages. […]

This book I did very much enjoy. I purchased it after reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and was looking forward to another novel where I could give myself over to the writing free of expectations. Although it sat on my shelf for some time before I got to it, Kafka On the Shore […]