Smoked Salmon on Potato Crisps ~ PRAIRIE FIRES, by Caroline Fraser

Christmas 2020 For social distancing purposes, we spent this past Christmas in adjacent cabins in the Catskills. The book I brought with me was Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, given to me by my mother a Christmas or two ago. My mother read me the whole series before I could read…

Oatmeal Cookies ~ THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY, by Daniel Pinkwater

“I’m bored.” “Well, then do something.” “What?” It was a good question. No Coney Island, no flea market, no farmers market, no Cafe Pedlar (our favorite Cobble Hill coffee shop), no Carroll Park, the same old two museums we’d done a million times, the same old apple-picking. “Read a book.” “What book?” Stella scowled when…

Coconut Apple Crisp ~ “After Apple-Picking,” by Robert Frost

Over Apple-Picking If you live in the Northeast United States and have children, chances are you’ve taken said children apple-picking at some point. Who doesn’t love apple-picking? The apple cider donuts for sale, the wagon ride into the aromatic bounty, the bracing autumn air, the ensuing apple pies and cobbler and chutney and sauce. It…

Halloween Dinner ~ LITTLE WITCH, by Deborah Hautzig

I rediscovered the Little Witch books by Deborah Hautzig in 2008, the year the market crashed and I got divorced. As do most witchy stories, Hautzig’s offer an alternate vision of family—an alternative to mainstream society’s preferred template. Her witches, like others in film and fiction, are outsiders, oddballs, and single mothers by choice. I’d…

Miso Salmon ~ MISS HAPPINESS AND MISS FLOWER, by Rumer Godden

As a very young reader I loved anything by the late, great Rumer Godden, and especially Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, which tells the story of two homesick Japanese dolls and one homesick little girl. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, as are so many of Godden’s novels, is a story of making oneself at home…