“It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be magic. You shouldn’t weep happy and then sad and then happy again. But you do. And I do. And we all do.” – Ray Bradbury, The Cat’s Pajamas In l...
http://coffeeinthewoodshed.com/2018/03/11/what-will-be-left/
Curing onions. July 2011, Virginia. On the long list of watershed decisions in my life, that moment in the summer of 2015 when I hit “send” on the invitation to our first weekly potluck has g...
This afternoon I walked, alone. My usual course is straight back from the house, around the barn and away from the road, through the hedgerow of milkweed and phragmites and multiflora rose and go...
It’s been a big week. Count me among the devastated. But the list of things bringing me quiet solace right now feels a mile long: the perfume of the thorny olive blossoms; lingering woodsmoke i...
http://coffeeinthewoodshed.com/2016/11/14/a-hard-day-on-a-hard-week-monday-thanks/
I spent almost a month in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest in late August and early September. It was a wild and wonderful trip, full of tasty food and even tastier conversations with people I h...
http://coffeeinthewoodshed.com/2016/11/07/monday-thanks-or-i-can-certainly-raise-my-glass-to-that/
Imagine, if you will, an enormous industrial stovetop. Six back burners. Imagine every burner with a pot on it, every pot asimmer. The whole kitchen smells like waking to somebody already cooking...
1) DINNER | Melissa Clark’s Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes (via Luisa at The Wednesday Chef) I would love to tell you my farm kids eat everything, but HARDY HAR HAR, says the universe, DID ...
I want to be a writer. I’m not talking about someone who sits back while her muse serves up exquisite turns of phrase on a silver platter. I don’t daydream about an advance that pays the bill...
http://coffeeinthewoodshed.com/2015/08/16/my-haphazard-phenology/
A week ago Sunday I made myself a second cup of coffee and settled myself not into my spot at the end of the couch against the bay window, and not onto a warm patch of bayside sand while my child...
It is, almost unbelievably to me, nearing ten years since I left New York City. When I lived there I worked as part of a small anti-poverty non-profit, accompanying families as they dealt with th...