à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Food
Ratatouille for Two
“That smells really good,” said my house-mate’s boyfriend the other evening while I stirred ratatouille in a small pan. He was leaving and she had escorted him to the door. “Are you using a recipe?” she asked, returning to the kitchen. “No,” I said, because I wasn’t following someone else’s instructions. But I was relying … Continue reading
Notes From the Potato Patch
While I’m terrible with houseplants and have never tried gardening, I’ve long had an unexplored curiosity about how food is brought from the earth. Traipsing through hundreds of miles of vineyards and other agricultural land in Spain last fall, along El Camino de Santiago, brought that interest closer to the surface. And now I’m living … Continue reading
El Camino with a King Size Bed
“Life is a journey, not a destination.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson I thought of this oft-quoted phrase when, on a Thursday at the end of May, the final Delta flight on my route from Denver to Montreal was cancelled. That it was aborted after we had boarded the aircraft, taxied onto the runway and then, … Continue reading
Ponderings: Passover in Two Places
I spent Passover’s first half in Israel. The day of the Seder, I traveled by bus to Jerusalem’s Malcha Mall with my oldest niece. She was meeting a friend, and I was on the hunt for comfortable shoes. At the entrance we went our separate ways. While I failed to find footwear, I wandered around, … Continue reading
A Pilgrim Goes “Royal”
Arab men fill the airy and glass-walled lobby of the Royal Rimonim Hotel. They sit on upholstered chairs around low tables and play cards at this gleaming tower along the shore of Israel’s Dead Sea. Some rotate rosaries through fidgety fingers. Women in diaphanous white head scarves and black outfits cluster around other tables, drinking … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
Recent comments