The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

The Japanese, apparently bored with watermelon’s traditional shape, have gone and invented a square one. Using a pretty obvious technique (you grow ’em in square containers), they’ve created a charming cube-shaped melon that will set you back about $75. I know what you’re thinking: what idiot would pay that for a fruit? But the square melon does have its advantages. For one thing, t won’t roll around in the back seat of your car, like an oblong one does, escaping fom the grocery bag, crashing around, crushing the eggs and the strawberries in its path. (I admit that I have cursed out a few roller-melons.) Read More

My friend Geoffrey, who is an excellent and discerning cook, prepares gourmet meals for his wife on a regular basis. (I know, lucky bitch, right?)

But Geoffrey tells me that, when his wife is not home for dinner, he  reverts to his old bachelor habits, forgoing the fancy stuff and making, instead, Chili ‘n Fries. He will make the dish, pop a beer, watch the Lakers, and be in heaven—the same heaven he was in when he was twenty. Before his wife comes home, he tidies up, switches channels to PBS, and pours a little brandy.

Here’s his dainty recipe for Chili ‘n Fries:

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I know it’s Easter and we’re supposed to be eating marshmallow Peeps but instead, I’m treating myself to another sweet thing: Jo’s chocolate-covered graham crackers. Jo’s been making them since the forties, in your choice of dark or milk chocolate. I buy a mixed box, because Tom likes dark and I like milk The dark are gone in sixty seconds, while I tend to hoard the milk, saving them for special occasions, like Easter, when, what with the girls gone to college and my aversion to marshmallow sprayed with yellow dye #6, I see no good reason to purchase Peeps. Read More

With both kids at college, the holidays just ain’t what they used to be. There was no trick-or-treating last Halloween, no pre-Christmas gingerbread house construction, no homemade valentines, no leprechaun pinching on St. Patrick’s Day, and today, for the first time ever, there’s no Easter egg hunt.

Last year, when Easter fell at a more convenient moment, a few of Elizabeth’s college pals came over for a hunt. Although all three of them were large men who looked  comical carrying the cute Easter baskets necessary for egg gathering, they were more enthusiastic about the hunt than my own kids had been in years. They tore around the yard, competitive as the Green Bay Packers, and then ate the spoils of the hunt until they were just barely pre-nauseous. This made me very happy. Read More