City Living (Boston)

Vegetarian Thanksgiving: The Omnivore’s Appeal

I have been vegetarian for broke, no income college student reasons but also because meat is not high on my must haves list. Truthfully, I am perfectly satisfied with a rotating menu that includes vegetables, breads, mollusks, fish, fruit and liver. The rest of meat I can do without. When it comes to vegetarianism I…

Perfumed Crystals: Going Beyond Plain Sugar

There is nothing more simple than making flavored sugar and it adds a wonderful dimension to baked goods or sprinkled over just the right thing. My pantry has vanilla sugar in a big bin, which ends up being the sugar I use for almost all my sweet baking. Any time I use vanilla seeds for…

Canadian Cranberry Sauce à L’Americaine

When I was little I remember my mom doing so much cooking with my class, bringing in food and other traditional objects to my teacher, reading a story or sharing a song. I even remember taking my entire class (okay so it was only 7 people from K-W Bilingual School in Waterloo Ontario) to our…

Bedtimes Bites…I mean Books

The problem with reading bedtime stories (Chapter Books no less) like Everything on a Waffle and now Dumpling Days is that by the time you get downstairs all of a sudden you’re craving dim sum or you feel like cooking up a batch of perfectly boiled potatoes. We started off just listening to Polly Horvath‘s…

Boston Ballet: So Much More than Nutcracker

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the ballet. Not because I don’t love it, but I was spoiled by my “hometown” ballets in Canada and New York. After moving here, my first Boston Ballet performance was a huge disappointment. In the 90’s Boston Ballet was perhaps a little lost on the ballet…

Fall Recipes

Slightly Citrus Cranberry Sauce Cranberry Roquefort Tartines

A Week in Phrases: Dance Moms & Idioms

This week has been about phrases, the dance kind and phrases as in sayings. If you’ve taken dance classes ever or you’ve become a closet Dance Moms lover, then you know that dances are split into phrases. I’d say I’m definitely not a dance mom, but until recently a mom that used to dance. Now…

Yom Kippur: Variations on a theme

Family photo taken at Mass MoCA (artist – Sol LeWitt photographer – me) This year, as I do every year, I am fasting for Yom Kippur. Isabelle asks why we fast. I explain that we fast to feel discomfort and do something hard. Then reflect on how, in our particular lives, we rarely have discomfort…

Being Pampered: Wet Paint Nail Spa & Corbu

I don’t get my nails done often, but I do appreciate a good manicure. The other day as I was sitting at Wet Paint Nail Spa waiting for my nails to dry, a very pregnant mama or mama-to-be waddled into the spa. I reminisced about how I felt I had to have a pedicure before…

Reflections on a birthday

So today is my birthday and it’s nice to get the calls, the cards, and the facebook wall wishes, but I think about what is so often said, “Do you feel any different?” The good news is that you don’t have to wait a year to feel different on one day. The other good news…

Hot and Spicy on a Sunday Morning

I know, I know, its not exactly the image you were hoping for given the heading, but if you need to recover, just go turn on the Olympics. This is just the result of an unusual Sunday morning and the goop on my face is just a mud mask. But let me start from the…

Zen Lessons on the CSA Farm

This week we’re picking blueberries and sugar snaps. It is hotter than hot, but somehow it’s almost always just a little bit cooler on the farm. After a week of city heat, and sloth with everyone’s nerves growing together like tangled weeds it feels good to leave the kids on the stone wall to eat…