As predicted, I have not been able to quite handle posting daily. However, I’m still feeling pretty darn good with the general uptick in writing I’ve been doing over here. It’s amazing how once I start being open to the idea of the mostly daily blog post, the ideas for the blog posts begin to [...]
I left work early today and walked down to the new Foster’s store on 3rd Street. I went to take pictures for work and then afterward, Scott and I had plans to meet up to grab some dinner and see the new Coen brothers movie, A Serious Man. I found I had some time to [...]
More than once, I’ve ruminated on the power of smell to send a person hurtling back through memories and into a moment of life that is far removed from the one that they’re actually standing in. There was the time with the nectarine, and other when a peach crisp impersonated my grandfather’s pancakes. The scent [...]
I’ve been working on a project that has me sorting through some of the earliest posts I wrote at Slashfood. I’m finding that there are quite a few that I’ve enjoyed re-reading and so I thought there might be a few of you who’d be interested in seeing what I consider to be my “Slashfood [...]
So Scott and I got engaged tonight. It wasn’t a surprise for me, because I designed the ring and I’ve never been particularly good with surprises. We made it official in the courtyard at City Hall, in the glow of the Christmas lights. Despite the lack of proposal ambush, we are both still totally delighted.
I’ve [...]
During my childhood, there was a stretch of several years when, during the fall, my mom, sister and I would drive out to Sauvie Island. We’d park in the grassy lot at the Bybee-Howell house and pick up windfall apples from the antique apple orchard there. We weren’t allowed to pick any off the trees, [...]
I lost about an hour this afternoon, looking through old pictures of Philadelphia on phillyhistory.org. They’ve scanned, tagged and archived many of the images of the city’s past on that site and all the pictures are searchable by address or keyword, which makes for hours of fun. In the past, when I’ve dug through the [...]
Click to play this video.
So the middle of summer might not be the best time of the year to cook up a big old pot of chili, but I gotta tell you, this stuff is darn tasty no matter what month you find yourself in. I make some variation on this dish at least once [...]
Last week, the weather in Philadelphia achieved that Spring ideal. It was bright, sunny and warm and the air made no demands. It gave people the ability to slough off extra layers and walk outside with appreciation in place of the regular disinterest or irritation. Over the weekend, our climate perfection slipped [...]
Friday night, when we picked up the desk, I also acquired a couple of boxes of family pictures, letters, keepsakes and other paper. My cousin Lisa took me over to a trunk of letters and told me to take several handfuls. I dipped my hand in four times and on the last reach, [...]
