I wish you all a peaceful, loving, delicious holiday, darling readers. You enrich my life so much. xo from over here.

I have started and stopped this post five times so far, because every time I try to start telling you about the fruit cake I made (and loved) last week, I am overcome with the feeling that it is nothing less than obscene of me to be writing about food and holidays and other such…

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the brilliance of Food52, the community cooking site founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs that is chockful of incredible recipes, good stories, gorgeous photos and more. (My favorite thing about the site? Well, one of my favorites, anyway. Sneaking a peek into Amanda's kid's lunches! So…

Every year, I am surprised by the sudden arrival of the holiday season. And every year, I run around like a madwoman in late November and December, trying to get my act together and feeling supremely incompetent in the process. It is tiresome in the extreme. So this year, figuring that Hugo wouldn't exactly allow…

Last week, I found a recipe for Turkish potatoes in a gorgeous English cookbook that I'd bought at TJ Maxx (known as TK Maxx here in Germany) in the spring. I wanted to tell you about finding that English cookbook (in Kassel, incidentally, where Max works during the week, and where Hugo and I spend…

Oh, people, I am just sick over the images and stories coming out of New York right now; half the city in the dark, elderly folks stranded in high-rise apartment buildings, cars floating in water in the East Village a few nights ago, my friends' gallery flooded and untold art lost in Chelsea, NICU babies…

Well, folks, I am still pregnant. I am in that strange no-woman's-land you get to after a due date has come and gone and let me just say, I don't think I like this place very much. Not only is it strange and unknown, but not a single map seems to exist for its shrubby…

This is what things have come to over here. I decided that the anemia rendering me a black-eye-shadowed zombie needed to be given a swift kick in the you-know-whats and started adding ground beef to my daily diet of a double dose of iron supplements. The verdict? So far I am feeling slightly less catatonic…

Two of my best friends were here this past weekend from New York and they've just left and I'm feeling bereft. They'd never been to Berlin before, so we spent the days zipping around the city and eating white asparagus. I'm not really that mobile anymore, so I had to keep taking breaks to keep…

Here in Berlin, today and Monday are holidays, so the city gets all quiet and serene. Shops close, streets empty and peacefulness descends onto our red-roofed buildings. It's lovely. On Sunday, I'll be having a bit of that magnificent, sweet, yeasted rooster for breakfast, moist and tender and studded with marzipan eggs. We'll be over…