Cookin' Easy

This being the start of Passover, the kitchens of many people I know have been a real beehive over the past few days. Into the tumult comes some welcome relief. So if you’ve not yet had a chance to read today’s “Editorial Observer” in the NY Times, put the spoon down and take a gander. And, if you have the chance, look at the video on YouTube.

In this age, when Julia Child’s cookbook is all the rage again and The Food Channel seems to be the most popular choice every time I fly Jet Blue, Laban Johnson and Larry Bly remind us that cooking can be fun and doesn’t need to be a full-day affair. Or, as Lawrence Downes writes in the piece,

“Perfection belongs to God, not us, the Southern writer
Flannery O’Connor would have told you, her eyes boring holes in yours
as she poured Coca-Cola in her coffee.”

Gotta love it.

Happy Passover, Easter, or whatever it is you’re cooking for this week.

Square Foot Gardening

Today’s so cold and rainy it’s hard to believe that earlier this week I was working in the garden, turning the compost pile and “harvesting” enough pails of good rich compost to give the vegetable plot a good start on the early crops.

But the work that I did pales in comparison with that of Monica Flaherty, who I interviewed for the Larchmont Gazette. She’s inspired me to take up the square foot gardening method. So I’ve ordered the book and am getting ready to curl up with it this long rainy weekend.

Death comes calling again

Death came calling again -- this time taking Steve Doochin, a former colleague at the Union for Reform Judaism.

Steve had had a massive heart attack ten years ago while at a doctor's office. Because of that close call with death he recognized more than most that every day is precious.  He did all the right things - changed his diet, exercised, and more -- but, more importantly, he made sure to fill each day with love and hope and laughter.

I last saw Steve about a month ago when we met at the Nautilus for breakfast. He was as optomistic as ever about his search for a new position, sure that something was "about to fall into place." The ultimate networker, Steve had spent his life raising countless millions for Jewish causes, and there were large minyons of folks anxious to help.

A community of bloggers

Who knew there were so many writers blogging away in our little corner of the world!

The Larchmont Patch throws a light on all of us with interests ranging from ranch houses to chocolate, design to language, and lots of other interests in-between. Kind of nice. Makes you want to curl up with your laptop and read on.
Enjoy!

The first robin

I'd only been awake for a few minutes and needed to rub my eyes a few times to believe what I was seeing. But there he was: A big fat robin, perched in my lilac bush, waiting with the sparrows for me to fill the bird feeder.

I grabbed my camera and got the best photo I could – not great, but proof that this harbinger of spring really was really paying a visit on Valentine's Day.

I couldn't recall ever seeing a robin with this much snow on the ground.

Surely the worms are still buried deep in the ground, far beyond the reaches of this brave fellow. So I did a Google search to see when robins normally reach the Larchmont area and found an interesting website that tracks sightings of birds. I posted my sighting and found that robins had been sighted on Long Island earlier this week.

I'm hoping this means the groundhogs were wrong.