holidays

’tis the season already — we’ve installed a real tree for the first time in five years and our house is softly perfumed with the scent of the outdoors. For the last few years in San Francisco we had a tree that was cut…

My Thanksgiving menu is set, a good thing since I’ve just realized the holiday is next week. Strange to commemorate a holiday that celebrates the harvest, autumn, and the earliest inhabitants of another continent when one is living in a (granted, also a former…

Me again, the one who is still kind of on the Northern Hemisphere’s schedule despite the purple jacaranda trees, birds merrily singing us awake before 6 a.m., the grass turning green and temperatures inching ever upwards — all signs of spring in most parts…

My lists are getting ever longer — what cookies to bake when, what to look for at the store if they don’t have the kale I’m hoping to incorporate into my meals, when to do the pumpkin pie I’ll serve on Christmas afternoon (for…

Thanksgiving this year, our third away from the United States, will involve an overpriced turkey imported from France, lots of roasted and sauteed vegetables, butternut squash risotto, and two pumpkin pies plus a pumpkin-chocolate cake. I’m trying to keep things simple yet traditional, with…