Believe it or not, I never encountered an eggplant until I was well into my 20s. I’m absolutely positive I never heard of this vegetable as a kid.

My husband and I really enjoy staying at bed and breakfast inns. We’ve met some really interesting people, the hosts as well as the other guests.

Having beef stroganoff for dinner at my house means that company’s coming.

The most dreaded date on my children’s New York school calendar was the mid-winter vacation.

I’ve loved mushroom soup for as long as I can remember. Mother kept lots of it in the pantry when I was a kid. Naturally, it was Campbell’s brand. I thought it was the greatest mushroom soup in the world.

As a kid, I thought it was really clever to shout, “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!”

I was probably about 6 years old when my father took me with him to deliver Thanksgiving dinners to the “poor people.” It was the day before Thanksgiving and, now that I think about it, Mother was busy cooking and probably asked him to take me along just to get me out of her way.