MAPLE SYRUP SEASON APPROACHES!

Today, I should be writing the next installment in my series On Being Fat. (I promise that the next installment will be coming soon.) Instead, I’m going to write about maple syrup. I just can’t help myself. I am so keen on maple syrup that even the merest hint that the season is about to [...]

TALKING ABOUT SOUP AND ANNATTO WITH ROSA AT THE FLAKY TART

Yesterday was a gray winter day, raw with spitting snow and slippery underfoot. My friend Claire picked me up late morning for lunch at The Flaky Tart in downtown Winthrop, and as I walked to her car, I slipped in my own driveway. Fortunately, I did not fall, but it made me extra careful. (Later [...]

BROILED BREAD

On Sunday, we invited our friends Jim and Dawna Leavitt over for one of our simple suppers of soup, bread, and salad. In the freezer, I had a turkey carcass leftover from Thanksgiving, which would be the base of a soup that would also include potatoes, carrots, and additional meat from roasted chicken thighs. The [...]

JANUARY 27, 2012: BITS AND BOBS FROM THE INTERNET

From Bloomerg: A piece about food waste worldwide. It includes this sobering statistic: “The FAO has said global food output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9 billion from 7 billion.” Food not wasted would go a long way toward achieving this goal. From the New [...]

ON BEING FAT: PART III—WHAT’S UP WITH WILL POWER?

When it comes to weight, there are various types of people. First, there are the people who are naturally slim and have been since they were children. They can eat like truck drivers and never put on a pound. My sister-in-law, Rose, falls into this category, and she is as pretty and as trim now [...]

A BUSY WEEKEND, ENDING WITH A LECTURE BY HABIB DAGHER AT UMA

A very busy weekend, that started with a bang. On Friday evening, our friends Debbie and Dennis Maddi joined Clif and me for soup and homemade bread. I decided to be bold and try to reproduce the soup I had made out of odds and ends in mid-December. (Here is the post where I describe [...]

NEWS ALERT: FROSTY’S IN BRUNSWICK TO REOPEN

News alert from the Bangor Daily News! Scrap the diets and head to Brunswick where Frosty’s Donuts will soon be reopening for—get this!—seven days a week. Frosty’s fans will recall that this shop, which made incredible melt-in-your-mouth honey dip donuts—had what might called flexible hours. Toward the end, they were open so infrequently that I [...]

JANUARY 20, 2012: BITS AND BOBS FROM THE INTERNET

From grist: Tamar Adler’s and Kurt Michael Friese’s gentle but firm appeal for Americans to get back in the kitchen. Tamar Adler is fast becoming one of my heroes, and I will be reading more of Kurt Michael Friese. From Rob Hopkins’s blog Transition Culture: A map of Guildford, England, back in 1793, when food [...]

ON BEING FAT: PART II—A LITTLE MORE PERSONAL HISTORY

In my last post, I gave a brief history of being fat in the United States, and I also included a bit of personal history. I’d like to expand on the personal history before moving on to biology and will power. I went on my first diet when I was 10 years old and was [...]

ON BEING FAT: PART I—A BRIEF HISTORY

A few weeks ago in the New York Times Magazine, Tara Parker-Pope wrote an excellent piece, “The Fat Trap,” which is, of course, about being fat, a problem that plagues many Americans and seems to be spreading to other countries as well. As I have dieted off and on since I was young a girl [...]