I like listening to classical music to remember my father.  It was the one detail I had not divulged to anyone else.  In the years of bitterness, anger, and deception that had slowly built a calloused wall between us, I still had that stream of pureness that effortlessly floated out as notes from Beethoven, Mozart or Brahms (his favorite) were played.  I’d find myself sitting in the quiet intimacy of my car listening to the music playing loudly and softly thinking of Sunday mornings long ago when the air was thick with youth and carelessness as the bacon gently sizzled and life was good, safe and sweet.

Mom was alive and very beautiful, wrapped in her mocha-colored terry cloth robe, always an odd shade in my young mind, yet, soothing in the way it contrasted the gentle blush …Read on

I could say if I just look at the slope of her nose (ever so slight with a generous finish) I’d recognize that it is exactly like mine and unmistakably connect us but I know what you are thinking: there is so much more to a face, so many more crevices and cracks to throw you off course. You’d say the eyes, the chin, even the hair. And I’d agree, one cannot gage another by merely the slope of the nose but in this case it really is all it took.  Because when she turned and I saw her profile, I saw myself in her; ten, maybe fifteen years earlier I was there, only with different colored hair and different colored eyes but still me and I knew right then and there, that even though we never crossed …Read on

In the abyss of a quiet night, when children have succumbed to their struggle of sleep and the spouse snores lazily on the stained blue sofa, I eat mayonnaise from the jar.  We’re not talking a light lick of the knife to cleanse it of its miniscule residue of spread, but rather a flat out, flagrant finger-scooping of the delightfully forbidden stuff. 

I readily swallow in big gulps of happiness.  It’s the same glee with which children gobble their chocolate pudding and in these moments of silence, with the glow of the refrigerator lighting my way my joy is complete, my crime only witnessed by Goldie, the obese hyperactive goldfish that would no doubt join in the fun if she could figure a way out of her cloudy fish tank and into the white delicacy of my family value …Read on

“Ma’am, do you want the cheese to melt or do you want it warm?”

I looked at her inquisitively and she returned the stare with utter impatience.  She was a petite woman with wavy black hair swept up in a hurried ponytail, a white shirt and apron emblazoned with the store’s cheery logo and a big pin that said “Hi, my name is Lucinda.”

Lucinda quickly categorized me as an incompetent culinary idiot for not knowing the immediate response to her apparently obvious query, but all I was thinking was how I’ve never before been asked what degree of warmth I wanted my Panini sandwich and leave it to some wanna-be quasi-gourmet food market in South Florida to be the first to pop the question.

“Won’t the cheese automatically melt once you heat it up?” I …Read on

The first diploma I ever got hung proudly in the one place I felt people would truly contemplate it: my bathroom wall. I had worked hard to get it and wanted it fully appreciated. The space was small and with few distractions, so I imagined that as folks would go about their business they’d be happy to meet face to face with my diploma and indivertibly contemplate its scholarly script. Plus, the diploma always got a response from the bathroom-goer. Nine times out of ten, any newcomer to my bathroom would exit with a surprised look and say, ‘Really? Columbia University? Bartending?’ and I would slowly smile and gloat (each time) filling with pride and a sense of endless accomplishment because I had snagged a coveted Ivy League education, even if only in the unscholarly art of mixing the …Read on

It is with great secrecy that I pull the tiny foil cube out of its box.  I admit to being temporarily riddled by a wave of guilt, no doubt hordes of culinary experts would immediately disregard me as a cook not worthy of gastronomic attention if they knew I housed these in my closet, let alone used them.

The conspirators are my tiny bright yellow boxes of bouillon cubes.  I have all flavors attainable:  “cubito de pollo,” “cubito de carne” and “cubito de pescado,” with a haphazard scribble of a chicken, cow and fish to clarify.  I always buy the box in Spanish, no doubt it tastes exactly as salty and processed as its English counterpart, but I believe most things sound and feel better in Spanish: deja de jurungear (stop messing around), dando y dando, pajarito volando (scratch …Read on

What she didn’t know is that I dream of being a fish, a dolphin, a whale; anything slick and fast that navigates easily through salty waters, pushing all worries away.  Night after night after night I’d become this aquatic creature and slip through miles upon miles of space with only speed serving as my guide.  Occasionally I stir things up a bit and jump to the surface, sporadically breaking the wall of water for a moment of bright blue sky, hot sun, and prowling birds.  But that is gone in an instant, because once again I dive low and deep and swim, swim, swim, fast and furiously.

“You’re here practically every day, honey” she noted, slightly amused.  She was an older woman from one of the islands and she’d been working here for years, parked between produce and …Read on

Okay, so I lied.  So sometimes it is not all about the foie gras and the truffle oil and the ganache but it is as simple as a confession to tell you that I dream of spooning out and gobbling up Mayo from the jar and I get uncontrollable urges for black pepper potato chips (lots of them) and the ultimate source of a home comfort lunch can be, yes, can be in moments of angst and trial and turbulence, a mortadella sandwich slathered with that glorious mistress mayonnaise again (shun any light version) and a thick slab of hearty tomato on nothing else than a dense and overly processed slice of potato bread.  Yes I could do the focaccia or kalamata loaf or even multigrain your-colon-thanks-you-greatly stuff, but no, it’s the mushy, soft, heavenly bread in the …Read on

Good things come in small packages, so goes the cliché, and this week the small packages included two kids with lots and lots of dirty tissues. I should have picked up on the red flags hitting me in the face when my daughter began her typical deconstruction of events.

First, there was the academic question:

“Mom, are you sure we can’t feel the earth’s rotation on its axis?” (i.e., I’m dizzy as hell.)

Then, the philosophical question:

“If I am sweating like crazy, but I am not exercising, am I still sweating?”

(i.e., I am burning up a wicked fever; please oh please shove a thermometer in my mouth, mother.)

And finally, the biggest signal of them all, the culinary question:

“Do I have to eat something?”

(i.e., if you …Read on

I knew from the six-inch label riddled with artificial ingredients that this was a bad idea.  It was anyone’s guess that muddled amongst the additives and preservatives was an egg or two, even if from an extremely non-organic hen.  Still, my daughter’s 10-year old birthday celebration eagerly awaited and according to her it could not be commemorated without our local grocery’s mammoth sheet cake spray painted with tiny glorious images of Zach Efron and his High School Musical entourage.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to bake you a cake?” I begged, knowing, in the back of my head that I must be supportive of whatever her wants and needs are and be flexible at this significant time, because after all it was her birthday.

I watched her lanky body standing next to me and duly noted that she was on …Read on