On my desk is a box that used to contain a ream of typing paper but now holds a 400-page manuscript that I wrote.
Waiting for the snow
Snow is part of our reality right now. Almost a foot is expected over the next 24 hours.
Healthy Super Bowl chili
Cooking for the Super Bowl? This traditional yet healthy chili is my idea of a perfect game-day meal. Though it does contain meat, this recipe is referred to in my family as low-cal or vegetable chili, because it produces a chili lower in fat and more nutritional than the traditional kind. Something I like about…
Super Bowl Cookies from Bittersweet
As the Super Bowl approaches, thoughts are turning to game-day food. For Chicago tables, may I suggest Bittersweet Bakery‘s Super Bowl Cookies? Bittersweet’s hand-decorated sugar cookies are technically impressive as well as delicious. When my husband and I were there over the weekend, the bakery was selling Super Bowl cookies in several shapes: besides the…
Cold-weather Chicago
It would have been such a lovely photograph had my camera not malfunctioned. I was walking south toward the State Street Bridge after lunching with a friend at the Nordstrom Café. It was cold and windy and had just begun snowing, but I stubbornly ignored the conditions and took a few photographs with my trusty…
The Shamrock Club
The Brown Line snakes through River North toward the Merchandise Mart on a frigid day. The temperature is lifting toward zero in a city snoozier than usual, one just beginning to stir after a paralyzing storm. The backside of buildings opposite the Mart comes into view as the train snakes along. Snow outlines their fire-escapes,…
January desk
My January desk is gradually clearing. At the beginning of the month, it’s always the same: strewn with unused holiday stamps, thank-yous to write, December’s to-do lists (half-finished), receipts from the holiday spending spree. There’s a file of gift ideas for next year to be put away. Eventually I tie up the loose ends, at…
Joint resolutions
My sisters have agreed to join me in an experiment: to support and encourage one another in achieving our New Year’s resolutions. We agreed to talk by conference call periodically throughout the year about our respective undertakings and whatever obstacles and issues we are encountering. Today we had our first such conversation, and, I must…
Winter morning
One of my favorite moments commuting on the Brown Line comes when the train snakes along above North Avenue, briefly offering a broad view of Chicago’s skyline. This is how it looked on this winter morning.
East Ontario demolition
As I was wrapping up my Christmas shopping, I noticed a demolition crew destroying this building on East Ontario, just off Michigan Avenue. Not long ago, two or three buildings of just a few stories in height had taken up most of this block. Since I last noticed, they had quietly vanished. Now, this last…
The blue vase
I seldom arrange flowers in the blue vase, despite its being one of my favorites. In fact, I hesitated to buy it when I found it in an antique store several years ago, even though it cost only 50 cents. I loved it at once on account of its brilliant translucent blue. I liked its…
Wistful for the warmth
The other day, a long-lost photograph from my phone turned up. I took this picture in June or July, when a close friend had taken me to eat at Toni Patisserie for the very first time. This woman’s pink dress epitomized the spirit of that day. Seeing it now, when daytime temperatures are below zero,…
