Remembering what we love about the fragrant, festive holiday fruitcake, plus a delicious recipe for the easiest fruitcake ever. We promise.
Magazine
Edie Clark
Magazine
The Rise and Fall of October
All this talk about the stock market and its fickle fortunes reminded me of this column I wrote ten years ago, when the stock market did its last dip and roll. What is it about October? Here’s my column from October, 1998: My mother was born in the month of October, a fiery month. According […]
Magazine
The Bluebirds of Wall Street
The news on the television is pretty grim these days. I’ve decided not to watch. I have moved my laptop from my desk to the kitchen table where I can watch the colors change while I work. In most places, yesterday was a gray and drizzly day, but here, we are a bit above the […]
Yankee
A Stash of Perfection
With a frost warning up, last week I picked all the tomatoes left on the vines. And I do mean vines — these tomatoes were among the most vigorous, the most aggressive I’ve ever grown. I planted them, probably ten or twelve plants, in early June, as usual. I had dressed the garden with a […]
Magazine
Hot Stuff on a Foggy Day
A few weeks ago I went down to the Worcester area to interview the World Champion Chili Cook, a guy named Jerry Buma. I’ve written about him for our upcoming January issue so you can read about him then. In the meantime, he invited me to come to the Chili-fest in Wells, Maine, this past […]
Magazine
In the Orchard
I felt true sadness this morning when I saw a notice in the local paper about the death of Dwight Miller, Jr., a veritable icon in the northern world of fruits and vegetables. When I lived closer to Miller’s orchard in Dummerston, Vermont, I used to go there to pick apples in the fall or […]
Magazine
Queen Bee | Mary’s Farm
Last fall, a young man who lives nearby knocked on my door. He wanted to know whether he could keep his hives in my field. He explained that his bees, living on the side lawn of his house, near the woods, had died. He didn’t know why. He thought they might do better in my […]
Side Dishes
Canning Recipes | Best Cook Verna Soini
Verna Soini of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, shares two of her blue-ribbon canning recipes from the country fair. Verna Soini’s plump hands are stained red from the beets she’s peeling as she prepares her favorite relish. On the stove, jars are jostling gently in a hot-water bath. In another kettle, freshly packed jars of pickled green beans are […]
Magazine
Give Us This Day Our Daily Storm
The only thing people have been talking about these past few weeks is the weather. Not only has it been stormy but it’s been cold. In the past week, I’ve visited two neighbors who had hearth fires snapping in their living rooms. We all pulled up beside these fires as if it were October. I […]
Magazine
Kindling a New Romance?
It should probably come as no surprise that I am a book lover. Every room in my house has shelves of books and stacks of various volumes, new and old, appear here and there since the bookshelves have long since run out of space. I am not unaware of the debate concerning the demise of […]
Magazine
Moonrise On the Beach
On Friday I drove out to the end of Cape Cod to attend a memorial service for an old friend, Arturo Vivante who wrote beautiful short stories, some of them for this magazine. I had planned to visit with him this past April. We had picked a date but when I called a week ahead […]
Magazine
International Picnics
I’ve been on the road for about a week, with more miles ahead of me. I sometimes tell people I don’t write for a living, I drive. I once calculated that I had driven a million miles in the course of my work for Yankee and that was some time ago. If I have to […]