Secret Ingredients

My grandmother was typically a pretty poor cook.  But then she’d knock out a Thanksgiving feast of such perfection that it might have gotten the European invaders to agree not to rip off the Natives.  (No, I mean REALLY agree.  And keep it.) WTF???  My mom, on the other hand, was usually a great cook.  Not so much in the lean years.  […]

Lesbianism – It Ain’t for Sissies Part 2

So there I was, entering high school, and along with all the other anxieties (‘Will anyone like me?’ ‘Can I pass geometry?’) was the worry that I might be a lesbian.  My mom had as much as told me I was after she caught me and a girlfriend kissing.  The gross tongue-stabbling I got from my first date pretty much […]

Lesbianism – It Ain’t for Sissies

Before I get into the heart of this post, I must comment on what it’s like to type the word “ain’t.”  I use it occasionally in vernacular speech, if I want to sound blue-collar-cool, or make some kind of point.  But I wonder if I’ve ever actually written it before.  If I have, I must have been on my second […]

Food and Drink and Love and Sex and…Health???

 So far, this blog is chronicling how I came to be interested in the topics of food, sex, love, relationship, health and nature – enough to link them in my book in progress, Licking the Spoon.  My first food was breast milk, the best food for an infant, only I don’t remember it.  What I do remember was the sexy […]

Innocence Lost and Found Part 3

In Innocence Lost and Found Part 1 and Part 2, I began describing the year I spent in a small New Jersey town when I was eight: Cool Walter who claimed me with his kiss in the woods behind the baseball diamond.  My upwardly mobile and disappointingly racist mom.  Jealous Melinda, rich Nancy.  African-American Cassandra being treated like a contagious […]

Innocence Lost and Found

When I was eight, I did a brief stint in prison.  By “prison” I mean a small town in New Jersey.  Don’t get me wrong; there were some lovely things about that town.  It was the pastoral small town of times gone by, with only two main streets, a lake in the middle, and the kind of safety that permitted […]