When I was a little girl, we cooked from two places: the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook, and my mom’s recipe box.  With five little kids in the family, we weren’t the most sophisticated diners, although we did eat together at the dinner table every single night.  We’d help Mom peruse The Cookbook, begging her to try new recipes like One-Pot Spaghetti, Cheesy Potato Bread, and Cowboy Caviar.  But usually she’d cook something from her recipe box: German Meatballs, Creamy Broccoli Chicken, Homemade Macaroni and Cheese.  My Norwegian grandmother lived in our basement, and occasionally she would whip up an exotic feast to nourish the whole family: Lefse, Potato Balls, Flötegröt.  She died nearly 20 years ago, but I still cherish her handwritten recipe cards, tucked away in my own tiny collection of recipes.  And on Saturday mornings, it was my dad’s turn to cook.  He made truly bizarre Wholewheat Pineapple Pancakes, but I loved them, although my favorite Saturday morning breakfasts were (and still are) Popovers, and Poached Eggs.

As I’ve matured, so has my palate, and throughout this past decade I’ve accrued a small collection of cookbooks to buttress my tastes.  When my oldest brother Dan returned home for Thanksgiving after he’d grown up and moved away to Vermont, he brought home The Joy of Cooking and set out to brine a turkey.  I made a Cranberry Conserve: “This is a luxurious form of cranberry sauce, with uncommon beauty, texture, and flavor,” writes the authoress, Irma Rombauer.  It was a revelation.

Cooking adventures ensued!  I lived in Rome one Spring, and became obsessed with The Silver Spoon and Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  That was the Spring I made hand-made ravioli with friends for the first time, and my roommate Alexis showed me how to sear and then slowcook a rump roast with nothing but salt & pepper, oil, and red wine. Continue reading →

My husband and I could not be more different from each other.  In a few ways, at least.  Case in point: I spent my childhood hiding under the covers with a flashlight and a copy of The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, while he spent his summers at Computer Camp programming the little Logo turtle to make triangles and squares.  I’m an avid reader and librarian; he’s a complete computer whiz who could program his way right into whatever industry he chooses.

When Aaron was just a little boy, his dad brought home the Commodore 64 that would seal his fate as a hot computer nerd.  As a mere seventh grader, he self-taught his way through a book of how to code in C.  While I was auditioning for high school plays, my husband was teaching himself database architecture via a little homegrown website called “Synthetic” that he’d built in his basement.  When he first wooed me, he wrote me a little program called “arrow_kill” to destroy all those nasty little carrots — “>>>>” — that show up in email trails.  I hate those things!  It totally worked.  Now Aaron predicts chemical / protein interactions using computer simulations.  This is cutting-edge, sought-after, super sexy stuff in the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry.

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