I made this recipe for Christmas dinner this past year. It is a great make-ahead dish that you can just pop in the oven about an hour before you’re ready to sit down and eat. Be sure and take the foil off the last ten minutes so get a nice crispy crust on top. This…

My grandmother, Winnie Waugh, walked with a wooden cane for the whole time that I was a little girl.  This cane was made of smoothly polished dark brown wood and was very plain – a simple curve on the end for her hand and a rubber cover on the tip to help grip the floor…

I am sitting at my kitchen table in North Central Texas tonight writing this blog. The big cabinet in the photo is what I am looking at right now. It feels almost like time travel that I can be chatting with my daughter in our kitchen in LA mid-morning today and be writing my blog…

Last night I worked until 10:30 with students (starting at 3) and I had a consistent stream of them again today. February 1st is a major deadline for some college applications and so the race has been on. But now, for the most part, all the work is done. I have three students who need…

Tonight I had my last session with one of my beloved students. He and I have been  working for the past several months on his college essays. He is one of my many college essay students and tomorrow he will have an interview with MIT. We finished the last of his essays tonight plus worked…

Around noon today, Ray looked up from his phone and said, “Kobe Bryant has died in a helicopter crash.” “Oh, no!” I said. “That’s terrible.” Soon, we would learn that it was even more terrible than we initially thought: Kobe’s daughter had died too along with seven other people. A truly tragic event. Late in…

Any of my personal essay students will tell you that I often say, “It’s important to use  writing as a form of discovery.” I contend that personal essays that set out to prove a point automatically have built-in constraints.  The writer has a plan, an objective, a purpose, which is to convince the reader of…

I made these muffins today and my taste tester (Ray) assured me they were excellent. (I also had a student tell me the same thing.) The flavor is rich and the texture is just exactly right. They will also make your house smell really good while they are baking. If you want an extra bit…

I am feeling impatient. I have been working all day and I am now ready to stop for the night. I don’t want to write this evening but instead would prefer to head upstairs, get ready for bed and watch television. I want to turn my brain off and let my body sink into my…

Our family is safely back home in LA after spending the last several days at Estero Beach in Ensenada, Mexico. This was a birthday celebration for grandson Nico (4), daughter Liz (34) and me (67). Liz posted the photo below this evening in celebration of our birthdays. It was taken by my oldest daughter Sarah when…