What happens when a reluctant gardener starts to compost? Read on to find out how through composting I found myself. If I’m completely honest, I never set out to be an urban gardener or an urban composter, for that matter. A few years ago, when my neighbor Ms. Diane flew…

Mom’s chicken was her signature dish. Roast chicken is a simple dish to make, yet it’s not easy to get right. Cook it too long, and it’s dry, losing all its flavor, and if it’s not cooked properly, it’s salmonella on a plate. After my Mom had passed, when friends…

It’s month thirteen of the pandemic. My house is trying to kill me. It’s working to expel us from the premises. Because I’m indoors all the time, I’m now allergic to it. My eyes are bloodshot, itchy, and water — all the time. My nose is a faucet. …

A chicken head in a Happy Meal, a finger in Wendy’s Chili, a tooth in a Milky Way; we all love a good disgusting urban legend about the gross stuff people find in their food. I’m on a getaway in Wisconsin with my husband Eric, and we discover a nearby…

When COVID-19 hit, I decided to make Sunday dinners memorable by roasting Greek chicken and potatoes the way my mom, Mary, had during my childhood. First, she’d bathe it in gallons of Greek olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, oregano, and of course, salt and pepper. To this day, my…

My captors can’t figure out why I am gestating. They said it was preposterous. I am too old. My insides are rotting like an apple core left out in the sun. My womb is full of mutating gummy polyps, and yellow and green pus-filled cysts. The lining, now thickened, with…

It’s so easy to “Google” words. Word has grammar and spell-check. There’s Grammarly to copy edit documents. The question is, as a writer, do you need a hard-covered old-fashioned dictionary? The answer is … Yes, you do. Here’s my brand new copy of Merriam-Webster’s Colligate Eleventh Edition dictionary with my…

Since lock-down anytime you log into social media, the question everyone is asking — “What are you watching?” At this point, we’ve all binged everything on Netflix, Hulu, and (gasp) basic cable has to offer. Or have we??? Here in Chicago, it’s 15 below, and there’s nowhere to go, so…

Writer’s block is so sneaky. One day out of the blue, it can hit you on the head like a ton of bricks. That’s how it happened for me. Proper prolonged writer’s block was something I had never experienced before. The minute my fingers touched the keyboard, the words would…