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Lydia

A small city kitchen in Boston's South End

Since 2006, food blogging at The Perfect Pantry®, for the first 9 years from my log house kitchen, and now from my city apartment. Publishing e-cookbooks from The Perfect Pantry® kitchen.

Interests: travel, cooking, reading, photography, art (seeing and making), trying to get tomatoes to grow in my herb garden.

Recent Activity

By now, if you're more organized that I am, you've been making your holiday gift list, and checking it twice. If you've still got a few holes on your list, it's hard to imagine any family or friends of any age who won't like the card game Ouisi ("we see").... Continue reading

Posted 18 hours ago at Lydia Likes It

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Breakfast for a week, or for a crowd. Or for dinner.

I can't remember when I began inventing egg casseroles. Years ago, certainly, and more regularly, as often as once a week, over the past two or three years. Each casserole uses a dozen eggs and a 7-8 ounce bag of grated cheese, providing six servings. Packed solid with chicken andouille... Continue reading

Posted Nov 26, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Chain of Fools?

Awesome. Wow. Whoopie. She's not Aretha Franklin, who recorded this in 1968; she's Gezel Bardossi, a 12-year-old Australian girl who sang this for her audition for The Voice of Australia in 2023. Close your eyes when you listen to Gezel. You'll swear Aretha is singing in your ear. (Thanks to... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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They Arrived Homeless. Now They’re Helping Others Make New York Home.

This article appeared in the New York Times on November 11, 2023. It made me happier than almost anything I've read in a long time. ********************* At a makeshift welcome center in the Lower East Side, those who came before help those who are new, and a community begins to... Continue reading

Posted Nov 13, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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The volunteering life {looking ahead}

One of the things my husband Ted and I like most about Opus Newton, the nonprofit senior living community where we'll be moving in 2025 (and which, as you can see above, is still a hole in the ground), is the volunteering requirement for all residents. Yes, Opus will have... Continue reading

Posted Nov 7, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Collage kits for all ages

When it comes to art, sometimes it takes an artist to convince a nonartist to, well, give art a chance. My friend Laura Laramie, who graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, showed me a bit about the world of collage, and now she's found a great way to help... Continue reading

Posted Oct 27, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Layla, you've got me on my knees. Again.

First recorded by Derek and the Dominos in 1970, "Layla", a hard rock classic co-written by Eric Clapton, was inspired by a love story that originated in 7th-century Arabia and later formed the basis of The Story of Layla and Majnun by the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi -- the... Continue reading

Posted Oct 15, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Welcome blankets

For the past, oh, five years at least, I've been crocheting small blankets shaped like giant granny squares, for donation to refugees and immigrants arriving in the United States. These Welcome Blankets are part of a large project created by Jayna Zweiman, an architecturally-trained multidisciplinary designer and social entrepreneur whose... Continue reading

Posted Oct 9, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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What goes with what?

Are you hooked on Connections? After a few months of beta testing, this terrific New York Times puzzle has passed the popularity test and been granted permanent game status alongside Spelling Bee and Wordle. Each day you'll find a grid of 16 words. The aim of the puzzle is to... Continue reading

Posted Oct 1, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Cole slaw, and so much more

If the bag offered "shredded cabbage" in big letters on the front, would you buy it? Doesn't sound very sexy, I know, but that's exactly what you'll get in a bag of cole slaw mix from the supermarket, and it's one of my all-time favorite kitchen timesavers. A combination of... Continue reading

Posted Sep 26, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

1

Ponyhenge update

We went, we saw, we laughed, we rode ponies in a field in Lincoln, Massachusetts. What fun! If you're in the greater Boston area, take yourself -- and your kids -- to Ponyhenge. Continue reading

Posted Sep 22, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Magazines with benefits

Remember when magazines were printed on paper, and delivered by the post office every week or every month? If you were like me, you read some of them right away (New York Magazine, Seventeen, Mad), and others, like The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly and cooking magazines, piled up for... Continue reading

Posted Sep 16, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Gentle little murders

My husband Ted and I love few things more than to end a busy day in front of the TV, him with a clipboard full of word and number puzzles (Sudoku, crosswords, KenKen, cryptogram, Two Not Touch), me with my bag of crocheting whatever welcome blanket is in progress (currently... Continue reading

Posted Sep 9, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Have you seen these potatoes?

Whenever I'm planning a trip, or a staycation, or a holiday weekend in Boston, I reach for my iPad and log on to Atlas Obscura, which calls itself "the definitive guide to the world's hidden wonders." The Atlas, a crowdsourced site, features -- for example -- 113 wonders right here... Continue reading

Posted Sep 2, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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One of the most well-known songs of Mardi Gras is “Iko-Iko,” made popular after an impromptu jam session was caught on tape by songwriting greats Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In 1965 New Orleans girl group The Dixie Cups were recording for Leiber and Stoller’s Red Bird Records in a... Continue reading

Posted Aug 27, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage

Perhaps because I am one (an old lady), I squealed with delight when I read in the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter and the Christian Science Monitor newspaper about Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (OLAUG), an absolutely real group based on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Since 2017, the group --... Continue reading

Posted Aug 22, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Cucumber ribbon salad

What's now called Boston's Leather District used to be a gritty few blocks of warehouse buildings filled with tanneries and industrial yarn makers, and publishing companies looking for cheap office space. Forty-five years ago I worked for one of those publishers, in the top floor of a converted loft space... Continue reading

Posted Aug 13, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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The volunteering life {how to find your gigs}

If you're looking for love, you can log on to any of a number of apps (among them Tinder, OKCupid, Her, Match.com -- there's even one called Coffee Meets Bagel) and swipe your way to a first date. If you're looking for a project, a program, or an event that... Continue reading

Posted Aug 9, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Elevated Access

Let's face it: women's health care just ain't what it used to be a few years ago. Those of us who live in the Northeast, who have access to quality care and the resources to afford it, are luckier than we can imagine. In much of the US, women's reproductive... Continue reading

Posted Aug 2, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

2

Comments on, comments off?

Most blogs, including this one, allow readers to add comments to any post. The comments can be read by anyone, and occasionally will start a conversation that adds to the topic the blogger has posted about. I love hearing from readers, but on this particular blog, it seems most people... Continue reading

Posted Jul 31, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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The volunteering life {one on one}

Right at the moment, I'm enjoying a summer break from my regular ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) volunteer gigs. I'm nearly finished with a new edition of There's a what in my where?, a book I wrote in 2022, and the postcard group is working away on important... Continue reading

Posted Jul 23, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

2

Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind, you'd know how much I miss Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. His "best of" album, Gord's Gold (pictured above), contains almost all of my favorites from the 1960s and 1970s, with one exception that came out a few years later, in 1976. The Wreck of... Continue reading

Posted Jul 19, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Seeing in color {cinema palettes}

Color makes the message, especially when it comes to setting the mood of a movie. Cinema Palettes, a Facebook page, breaks down scenes from films old and new into a palette of colors (above, Rear Window, a 1954 Alfred Hitchcock classic). UK-based designer Gaby Smith posts scenes from films of... Continue reading

Posted Jul 4, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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The oldest public park in America

We don't always appreciate what's right under our noses, and Boston Common, the oldest public park in America, is literally right under my 23rd-floor-apartment nose. Founded in 1634, the Common is a 50-acre pentagon smack dab in the middle of the city, bordered by the Beacon Hill, Back Bay and... Continue reading

Posted Jun 28, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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Harry Belafonte, musician, actor, civil rights activist

When I was growing up, my parents often played folk music in our house. (Well, opera too, but I tried not to listen.) I never heard folk music in any of my friends' homes. It wasn't until later, when I moved out after high school, that I appreciated how growing... Continue reading

Posted Jun 21, 2023 at Lydia Likes It

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