I immediately recognized in Kuniko the essence of the woman who nourished equally her guests, her family, and herself.  Her meals brought such joy to everyone at the table, myself included, and I was eager to absorb everything she could offer. She represented a holy grail of cookery, a seemingly unobtainable well of information and […]

We are hungry in the anticipation of spring. Returning songbirds peck at the film of ice covering a dormant pot of water lilies on the deck where they’ll alight to drink and bathe in warmer times. The weather is as restless as we are. The skies flit between clear and brilliant, then dark and stormy. […]

With the warmth of the wood stove at my back, I gaze out the window. Below me the broad roofs of Hanako’s studio to the right and my mother-in-law Kuniko’s house to the left stretch like the wings of the cheeky ravens that often perch upon their peaks. The layered ridge lines of mountains ripple […]

If Kuniko, my mother-in-law, were to write the story of her life it might read more as a menu than a memoir.  Kuniko was a young girl during WWII in Japan. One day she was told to evacuate from her family home in the center of town to her grandmother’s house in the countryside a […]