The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

It started on Saturday, when my daughter, who is in in Switzerland, told me that at a local music festival there, a booth in the food court offered roasted crickets. (Other options at the stand included fried larvae, but Elizabeth sensibly chose cotton candy.)

Then, on Monday, my friend Abby told me that there was a cricket duo in her bedroom, lodged in a wall unit, driving her insane. They chirped every thirty minutes or so, disturbing her sleep, but she’d been unable to find, let alone exterminate them.

What happened next was that, yesterday, I bought an iPhone, which, it turns out, has a “Crickets” ring tone option. (I didn’t dare install it: if Abby hears that ring she’ll snap spray the phone with Raid.) Read More

I’m told that even while Martha Stewart was in jail, she couldn’t stop cooking. She and the other inmates were limited to using a microwave, but she did her best with the materials provided to enhance the reportedly dismal jail food.

Apparently, she even harvested dandelion greens from the prison yard. I don’t know how she prepared them, but I know my family would rather eat prison food than anything that green.

Speaking of my family, if I were in her shoes, I’d view my incarceration as a lovely opportunity to not cook. I’d sit back, read my “Living” magazine, graciously accept my three squares a day, and revel in not having to think about what to make for dinner. Read More

Today it was announced that one hundred new words and expressions were being added to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, including “infinity pool” (first found in an English-speaking publication in 1992), “kiteboarding” (1996), which is not a new form of torture but a water sport, and a personal favorite, “wing nut” (circa 1900), which is slang for a radical person.

But the word on the list that caught my eye was “pescatarian” (1993), defined as a vegetarian who will eat fish. A secondary definition would be a pesky dinner guest with irritating food preferences, like my cousin Jack, who occasionally drops by unexpectedly, usually at dinner time. Read More