Within two days of arriving in Greece, all the worry and anxiety of the days before evaporated. We traveled by ferry from Athens to an island called Serifos, staying in a house that a cousin of my mother's lent to us. With no Internet connection and no phone line and hardly a soul around us,…

Shopping in Paris. Do you also have visions of impossibly chic little bags or dainty, bebowed shoes right now? A gossamer scarf or patent leather sandals? That used to be what I thought of when I thought about shopping in Paris. But then you start a food blog and write a book and spend most…

I'm not big on New Year's Eve. I mean, I'm happy to have an excuse to drink Champagne and it's fun to yell down the countdown to midnight together, but I've never really felt that you need to have a big party to transition from one year to the next or that if you find…

I saw a shooting star the other night; I was standing in front of my grandfather's house, though I have to learn to call it my mother's house now that almost three years have passed since he's been gone. I was standing there, with my neck folded back so I could stare at the Milky…

I got off the airplane at JFK last week and the first thing I noticed was that warm, breezy air wafting around me, tinged slightly with the scent of jet fuel, but warm and welcoming all the same. Hello, New York. This old view, from a highway in Queens, used to make me gape every…

Skiing was so much fun, it really was. But one afternoon, our energy levels pooped out entirely (the infamous third day!) and so a few friends and I decided to go souvenir shopping at the local grocery store in the next town over from our little village. Ooh! We found some serious gems. Here's what…

When in Austria, do not leave without eating at least one serving of Tiroler Gröstl (approximate pronunciation help: GRR-ESH-TL, helps if you go all guttural on the "RRR"). You should receive an individual cast-iron pan filled with crusty fried potatoes, big chunks of bacon and ham, topped with the most perfectly fried egg you ever…

I was thinking the other day that with my days in New York drawing to a close (my heart literally just constricted as I typed that, like, spasmed) it might be nice to draw up a list of my very favorite places to eat, from the simple to the sublime, in this gem of a…

Despite my best-laid plans to spend my week in Berlin splayed out on its grassy splendors, basking in northern European sunshine, it rained pretty steadily at some point of every day that I was there, and was as chilly as any autumn I have experienced in recent memory. It took me a while to sort…