Is it possible to review a hotel you didn’t sleep in? I think so. At least, if a hotel is so good as a day guest that you know it would take an infestation of bed bugs and loud neighbors and no hot water to diminish your experience, it’s safe to give it a good…
Okay, fine, I have more than one recipe for soup that I call “poop soup.” And they all have proper names that sound a smidge more appetizing. But I like to call a spade a spade, and any recipe with more than four cups of chopped kale turns into a recipe that’s great for your…
Read more Poop Soup (Kale-packed Kind-of Italian Wedding Soup)
A few months before our trip to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos I planned a day trip, thinking we needed a way to break up endless days of beach and pool time. I didn’t appreciate how blissful beach and pool time would be, especially in the midst of building our home and a chaotic work season.…
Read more Turks and Caicos Day Trip: North and Middle Caicos
When I worked in news I’d tell aspiring journalists that the one thing guaranteed to get them a job in news is knowing how to find, order, buy and deliver food, anywhere, anytime. Students always laughed, but I was never really kidding. Need to feed cameramen stuck on a roof in Havana shooting live shots…
Every January I, and most of the rest of the self-flagellating crowd I know, lament too loud and too much that we ate too much over the holidays so we must cut back and deprive ourselves of all goodnesses in January to restart our diets and, therefore, our lives. As I’ve gotten older this desire…
Read more January-Approved Comfort Food: Eggplant Parmesan Boats
The scene is Christmas 2013. There are 13 adults seated around a too-small table in a too-loud striving Italian restaurant in Georgetown. One couple is divorced. Two siblings don’t speak directly to each other, just through the semi-newcomer who unwittingly sat between them. The grandparents are beloved, but their political views are not – and…
The holidays are over, and they were lovely. My one regret? I didn’t write a single thing down during them. I think the only thing I wrote, literally, was a Turks and Caicos Customs Entry form and a check. Now I find myself with a holiday hangover, literally and figuratively. My pants feel tight. My…
Read more The Thing I Should Have Packed for Vacation: My Writing Habit
Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, if you can pull your eyes away from the ocean, you might spy rickety looking train tracks. I’ve never given them much thought, assuming they’re just holdovers from a train-heavy past. I’d never actually seen a train on them, perhaps because I’m usually staring fixedly at the ocean –…
Read more The Pacific Surfliner – A Not-so-hidden Gem along SoCal’s Coast
Someone recently asked me what I was afraid of about starting a family. What am I afraid of? The better question is, “What am I not afraid of?” I am afraid of literally everything when I think about starting a family. There are lists of classes of concerns. The fears could be organized by family…
Read more Children – The Only Thing I Have to Fear is Literally Everything
There are five grownups living in Gwendom right now. Four of them own cars. All of them drink milk daily – two in their coffee, one with oatmeal, two with cold cereal. We have not had milk for 10 days. It is the Milk War of Attrition. Who will break first? I’ve bought milk twice…
The Outraged Eater 