Latest
12
Apr
Hope on a Plate: the Power of Comfort Foods
I had craved the warming spices of the chai, but someone smiling at me with genuine warmth was the comfort I truly needed. In a world that often feels numbingly cold, comfort food and human community are both essential sources of warmth, and they are best served together.
4 min read
05
Apr
Bittersweet Spring
Spring is time for feasts and festivals of renewal and rebirth—Easter, Passover, and Iran's Nowruz (literally "
3 min read
05
Apr
Tea Is Our Wine: Tea and Manners among the Tuareg of the Ténéré
Tea is our wine. We drink it morning and night.
5 min read
09
Mar
Squirrels in the Walls
Pondering the Enlightenment while defending the castle.
5 min read
22
Feb
Thriving in New Soil: French Pancakes in Parish
French Pancakes: we ate them all the time as children, generally for dinner, mostly in winter. Standing at the stove of our Southern home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
4 min read
15
Feb
Perennial Blooms: on Love the Day after Valentine's Day
I was sitting here thinking about the kinds of love—how no matter what the movies try to sell us, nobody can make it on eros alone.
3 min read
08
Feb
Tennis Matched: An Iranian Love Story
I told a version of these friends' love story for Valentine's Day two years ago. They are always the first people I think of when trouble boils over within Iran and between Iran and the U.S. It seems like a good time to retell their story...and to share Solmaz's world-famous walnut cookie recipe.
4 min read
01
Feb
Waste Not, Want Not: Grandma Jessie's Secret Ingredient
Food and stories: in the case of my old Jewish relatives, it's impossible to separate the two.
5 min read
25
Jan
Seeding the Story Vault
I think we tell and hear too few kinds of stories about ourselves...
4 min read
25
Jan
Hidden Grace and Hot Soup
In our digitally intertwined, always-on lives, one of the more startling windows into another person's day is the
2 min read