We have all been there: Trying to plan a company meal around a guest who is—well, not a picky eater, exactly, but a staunchly unadventurous one. This can be especially fraught when your idea of familiar food is not your guest’s idea of same. Take roast chicken, for instance. One of my favorite things to […]

Scratching together a nourishing, delicious meal at the end of the day is one of life’s greatest challenges. Two staples that make that easier in our household are lentils and sausage, especially the smoked Polish variety called kielbasa. Lentils are one of the greatest pleasures of the legume world. They cook quickly (and unlike most dried […]

I greatly admire—scratch that. I’m in awe of those who can talk to a roomful of people about a single subject without benefit of notes. I could practice from now to kingdom come and never achieve their ease, let alone their ability to synthesize complex material on the fly, avoid tangential to-ing and fro-ing, form […]

On a frosty February morning, what brings me to a screeching halt is the sheer richness of color—ravishing purple and celadon green. I’m looking at kohlrabies*, shorn of the whirligig leaves that grant them an interplanetary status for much of the year. I do not have time for this. For cooking, that is, let alone mooning over […]