I broke up the beef with the back of a wooden spoon until it was no longer pink and spread it with the fat and spices and aromatics into a weave and stood there in my apron, regarded myself, got… Read More ›
foodie
We dropped the flyer for the middle school orchestra concert between the bleachers and left the chicken on the refrigerator
I got so mad at the chicken I roasted I couldn’t even eat it. I started working on it at 2 PM but it wasn’t ready, and out of the oven, until just after 6, right when Lily needed to… Read More ›
Viking graffiti inside the burial chamber, Orcadia
Just as you’d think they would, the Vikings came upon a structure of religious and historical significance that had already been there a few thousand years, punched a hole through the roof because they couldn’t find the door, pulled out… Read More ›
‘Tight framing of shots,’ 1974
It’s like I’m caught on flypaper, trying to leave the Scottish bar: they’re on to me, an American tourist here for a week, all of them asking questions. It starts with the old guy and his dog who’s sniffing my… Read More ›
Red Virginia Creeper
Sitting in Laurent’s kitchen over an old farmhouse table he’s trying to describe what Capon means, the castrated cock he cooked the last time we were here in Metz around Christmas, and when he says castrated cock he suddenly looks… Read More ›
Listening to the band Suicide in an Amsterdam loft
When we leave Germany, the vines growing up my mom’s house have lost most of their leaves and her courtyard has a battered look to it with all the dead and the dying lying on top of each other —… Read More ›
Prague 3
My left heel hasn’t been right since I tripped down the steps in the Bahnhof on the way to a beer festival a couple weeks ago, the traditional Bavarian Trachten shoes a half-size too big, making it that much harder… Read More ›
Meet me at the cemetry gates
We dropped the kids off for their first day of German school, their first class French — French taught in German — and I walked to the cemetery by the Realschule, where we’ve started our third week of German classes,… Read More ›
Leaves clawing the cobblestones
When the French arrive, it’s with armsful of things from France: breads wrapped in brown paper bags, coolers full of cheese, boxes of wine, even duvets for their beds. It feels like a hotel and we lose track of how… Read More ›
Pigs in zen
We thought something was burning in the house, but it was just the Backhaus up the road, where the women gather to bake bread and gossip in the fall and burn clippings from the grape vines. We journeyed to Stuttgart… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 