Introductions

Hello Yankee readers!

Since this is my first blog entry, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. Or reintroduce myself. If you’ve subscribed to the magazine for a while, you may have noticed my name in these pages before. I was Yankee‘s food editor from 2002 until 2005, when I left to spend a few years with my husband in San Francisco and work for Sunset magazine. California was a wonderful adventure (my then-blog, California Eating, chronicled our time there), but we learned that we were New Englanders at heart and returned to the Boston area in 2007 to start our family and settle down for good.

Since returning, I have been food editor and then contributing editor at Boston magazine. I’ve also written my first book, The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which will be published by W.W. Norton this September. And now, I’m back at Yankee as Lifestyle Editor, covering food, home, and garden. This is a very happy development for me. The stories I have most enjoyed telling over the course of my career have been the ones I’ve covered for Yankee.

My goal for food, home, and garden coverage is to inspire and help you. I want to bring you to the best food sources in New England—the restaurants, farms, and shops that make this such a wonderful place to live and eat—and then translate that inspiration into delicious, accessible recipes for your home kitchen. As a food editor, I understand how important it is that our recipes be fresh, interesting, and locally inspired. As a working parent, I also understand that they can’t be overly complicated. We all have to get dinner on the table every day, and I want to help you make that dinner manageable and delicious (while also offering some wonderful special occasion and holiday menus).

As for home and garden coverage, I’ll be sharing more of those plans on another forthcoming blog where I’ll also be chronicling our efforts to renovate a 1920 Arts & Crafts house in Brookline, Massachusetts.

And now, a New England gem: I’m writing from the Wenham Tea House on Boston’s North Shore. It’s a delightful throwback to the days of Ladies Aid societies, when homespun crafts and foods were sold for the purposes of charity and civic improvement. The Tea House continues that mission, with some proceeds going to support the Wenham Village Improvement Society.

The menu is wonderfully retro and downright feminine: quiche Lorraine, lobster pie, cream tea, hot milk sponge cake, and, for dessert, heart-shaped chocolate ganache tarts topped with candied violets. I’ve been sitting here for about an hour without seeing a single male, though men are, of course, allowed. I feel as though I’m at an alumni luncheon for my alma mater, Smith College. And I mean that as a compliment. I can’t drive through this neck of the woods without a stop here. This menu, with its healthy smattering of Yankee and old-school Continental fare reminds me that as much as I’m always looking forward to what’s next in food, there is a heritage in New England to remember and savor.