Since I was at Esalen at Big Sur California during most of Hanukkah, I promised my son and daughter-in-law we'd have a belated Hanukkah celebration after I got home, complete with my home-made potato pancakes - Latkes - a recipe I've been making for years. So to get into the Hanukkah spirit I'm going to share tomorrow's menu with recipes for the chicken dish and the pancakes. I plan to serve cheese and crackers and an olive tapenade as appetizers, a spinach salad, and a broccolini side dish to go along with the chicken and Latkes. I don't yet know about dessert since my husband is in charge of that. Since I'm both lactose intolerant and gluten-free I can't eat the dessert anyway, so he'll choose something he likes. The following recipe for potato pancakes comes from a year's old issue of the now defunct Gourmet Magazine. Lacy Potato Pancakes 2 large eggs 1/3 cup beer ½ cup flour 1 teaspoon salt Fresh pepper to taste 1 onion halved lengthwise and sliced thin 2 … [Read more...]
Some old stories
In 2012 and 2013 I contributed to a website called Storylane. It inspired me to write very short pieces about a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, Storylane no longer exists, but packrat that I am I saved every piece I submitted. Here's a few: How I Got My First Job Out of College I graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and had no idea what I would do professionally after getting it. I had wanted to work as a journalist and actually completed all the course work for a degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin. But family illness caused me to transfer to UCLA for my senior year, and UCLA didn't offer a BA degree in journalism. So I was stuck in a city I didn't know, and hardly knowing anyone in it. I tried valiantly and unsuccessfully early on to get a writing job and then gave up. It was 1962. Not a lot of jobs for women writers in those days, especially in Los Angeles. Then someone suggested I try the growing aerospace business in southern California. And I … [Read more...]
How my memoir came to be
I wrote the following piece a little over a year ago for the Women's Writing Circle. I'd like to share it with you now. When I Knew I Had A Memoir I returned to writing regularly when our son Paul was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in March 1993. He had just turned 21 and was a senior at the New School in New York City. Early on during his illness I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992), and her suggestion to write morning pages resonated with me. Because I was employed full-time then, I didn't always write in the morning, but I always finished my three pages before the end of the day. So writing about my son's bipolar disorder and later about his 1999 suicide death became my therapy. Writing during the most stressful time of my life became an obsession and a balm. It gave me a way to organize my fears, pain, and thoughts. Besides journaling I began to take writing workshops at the UCLA Extension Writers Program and Esalen Institute in … [Read more...]
