Plant-Based Lifestyle Epiphanies

Educating Maria

January 5, 2013

 A long time ago I dated a charming young man from England.  We’ll call him Sandy. The first real date we went out on he took me to see a Michael Caine movie called Educating Rita. Sandy had been a student of mine in a writing class. He had been hard-working, respectful, and animated in [...]

Read the full article →

On Waiting

December 1, 2012

Advent is here, the liturgical season of waiting for rebirth. When I was growing up our family always had an Advent wreath. I remember the green boughs encircling a stainless steel holder for three purple candles, and one pink one, lit the third week, that meant we were “getting close.” I also remember my Dad [...]

Read the full article →

Interdependence Days

November 25, 2012

When I was 10, the orthopedist I saw determined that my heel cord had been stretched sufficiently that it was now only necessary for me to wear my brace at night. Of course I had looked forward to this day, hoped and wanted it to come. Because it would be an outward sign that I [...]

Read the full article →

The Spirit of Thanksgiving Past

November 15, 2012

This Wednesday evening my loved ones will pull into my driveway for the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the long day trip from Portland. The dog will run to the back door with his ears at attention, and I will wipe my hands on my apron or jump up from the computer screen and [...]

Read the full article →

The Power of the Plateau

November 11, 2012

When I was in the fourth grade, the orthopedist I saw for the cerebral palsy put me on a diet.  It was 1965, and I was 9 years old. The goal was for me to lose 25 pounds. His reasoning was that with the balance and coordination problems I experience with the mild CP, it [...]

Read the full article →

The Blue Cornflower Effect

November 3, 2012

The restoration of the flower beds shown in my previous post yielded this surprising beauty a couple of months after, in late October, a time long past when this sort of thing is what’s happening in that particular flower bed: I have not seen cornflowers in this bed since it was full of them the [...]

Read the full article →

Reading My Way to Straight Up Food

October 30, 2012

When I was growing up, my mother used to say, “If you can read, you can cook.” So from the very start of my cooking career, I carefully poured over the instructions in the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls, certain if I followed the instructions faithfully, my creations would turn out. This was reinforced [...]

Read the full article →

Setting the Table

October 26, 2012

Once upon a time, the family story went, when I was 3 years old, my parents and grandparent took me out to a meal at a fancy restaurant. It was the very last year of the 50’s, most likely, so “fancy” meant a white tablecloth, real silver, napkins folded in fancy ways and unfolded and [...]

Read the full article →

Next Entries →