My sister sent me a text about a green spread that said, “you have to make this … love it on sandwiches, crackers, eggs, etc.” And she was right — this green spread is a sandwich genie. It is also a great way to get a few more vegetables in your diet. Better yet, it’s […]

NEW YORK If you buy tomatoes from John Banscher at his farmstand in New Jersey, he’ll recommend keeping them out of the fridge or they’ll lose some of their taste. Now scientists have figured out why: It’s because some of their genes chill out, says a study that may help solve that problem. Cooling tomatoes […]

For the past three decades or more I’ve planted the bulbs of spring-blooming plants every fall. Some years it was just a couple of dozen, other years more than 100. October is a good time to plant them, though one year I was traveling and didn’t plant my bulbs until November. I had to shovel […]

The first time I tried to speak French was in 2001. It was pre-9/11 and Dustin was deployed on the USS Enterprise. When the aircraft carrier made a stop in France, most of the wives flew over to meet their husbands. Because I don’t like to fly, I volunteered to stay behind and feed everyone’s […]

Cheesecake is usually served cold. So brace yourself for something a little different. The first time I made this recipe, I pulled it out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. The plan was to chill it overnight in the refrigerator. But my dear daughter — also known as The Girl […]

Now that it’s Oct. 1, along with many others I know, I will be participating in an unofficial fall game that once seemed so twisted and unnecessary to me when we moved to New England eight years ago. This extreme sport, if you will, involves waiting until the last possible moment to turn on the […]

Garlic is the least work of any vegetable I grow: I plant it, mulch it, harvest it. Some years I need to weed it once, too. But properly mulched in a weed-free bed, little or no weeding is required. And it’s essentially free: I will plant next year’s crop from this year’s harvest. October is […]

I love coffee. My standard order is simple: coffee with milk, no sugar. I don’t veer off into milkshake-land or over-sweetened hot chocolate type drinks with folds of fluffy whipped cream. So when bulletproof coffee — usually a mug of joe blended with butter — became trendy a few years ago, it was a non-issue […]

ABILENE, Texas Vicky Gao thinks back to a book she wrote when she was younger, “The Super Power Girls.” Reading that work now, she finds it “childish.” Vicky is 11. The Craig Middle School sixth grader was spotlighted recently as a locally published author at this year’s West Texas Book Festival. Yes, she was the […]

In 2008, when we first learned that the Navy was transferring us to Bangor, I went to various Maine message boards and asked people what I should know. At that point, I had never been north of Pennsylvania. I asked people questions like, “Does it really snow alot?” and people responded with variations of, “I […]