Broad Swath

     We had a fabulous time visiting you in Louisville. It was really the first opportunity Martha, Owen and I had to get to know you, and it was a huge pleasure. Witnessing whether Hazel could keep a secret about that trip to the gourmet popsicle shop, how Eliza reacted to losing the finger puppet we had given her just an hour earlier, and that time Augie put on a mask and spied on us through the crack in the door, gave us windows into the kind of adults you will become. In gratitude we are sending you a gift. It is with great honor that we present to you this skull, what we hope is your first. There is a whisper of a tradition in this family of sending skulls as gifts. Ask your dad about it.      If a picture is worth a thousand words, a skull can tell a thousand stories - particularly the haunted ones. The stories this skull can tell include the following:      1. "I was an old raccoon. In fact I probably died of old a...

     If you are a home cook that makes apple pie I'd be curious to know how you acquired your recipe and pie skills. I'm guessing that if you polled people and made a pie chart of that data the largest piece would be labeled, "From My Mother." I learned how to make apple pie from my mother, Marilyn Aileen Johnson, née Howard. I can say without hesitation that it is the best apple pie I've ever had.  That is not just a son talking - I have found better versions of many of her recipes - no offense Mom.  Saying any food or recipe is "the best" is pure opinion, but I can describe and share exactly what makes this pie great.  You are going to want to scroll down to the bottom of this article now if all you care about is pie.      I was surprised when I first learned that my mother did not learn pie baking from her mother.  Grandma Howard was famous in our family for her cinnamon rolls but I never saw her make a pie. My mo...

     My brother Bruce was eight years older than me. That age difference and distance were obstacles that thwarted me from having a close relationship with him as we got older.  That's a bit tragic,  because he died unexpectedly at the age of 42, twenty two years ago. His last two years of high school were probably our best - he was still living at home and I had perhaps become less annoying. And it was in those years that we shared something that lives with me still -  we collected skulls together. This was not some morbid, proto-goth thing.  It was about a love of biology.      There is a special place in hell for bad high school biology teachers. They are given some of the most compelling subject matter - reproduction, DNA, photosynthesis, predator-prey relationships, evolution, ecosystems - and asked to communicate it to kids on the brink of adulthood, primed to soak it up in all its beautiful, gross, compelling details....

  Life is hard for people who give a shit. As you soldier through these days, weeks, months, of the worst presidency in our nation's history (years?...) find serenity in the thought that it will be generations before Jared and Ivanka are on a list of trending baby names.

If you look at the calendar, spring is here.  If you look out the window, not so much.  We were treated to several inches of heavy snow on top of ice last Saturday, and today (Wednesday) the first of what is supposed to be four more inches has started to fall.  But it's going to feel like spring eventually, and with it comes asparagus. Martha and I make a reasonable effort at eating with the seasons and asparagus may be what we do best in that way.  We pretty much refuse it for 11 months and binge eat it for one. There are two terms I have started to use for recipes/foods that I feel really hit the mark.  One is "flavor-blasted."  I have co-opted that term and given it it's rightful place in my food lexicon with no apologies to Goldfish. I don't want to know how Goldfish become "flavor-blasted."  The other term I like is "the bomb."  You will find that attached to some of my other recipes. This flavor-blasted dish is here thanks to Madison ch...

The first dozen or so names I wanted for this blog were taken.  "Monkey Head," "Finger Music," "The View from Here."  Even "Message in a Bloggle" wasn't available.  Who knew?  I forgot to check "Who Knew?" but I'm sure it's taken too. The title I ended up with comes from a famous passage in Walden : "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to route all that was not life.  To cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then t...