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I have stopped counting the questions. My mother asks me once again whether I will bring food for Yom Kippur, the recent Jewish holiday of atonement. I explain yet again that I am taking the train into the city from my home in the country two hours away rather than driving, so I can’t carry food easily. I repeat to her that I will buy groceries near her and make holiday meals for us to share.  Barbara's mother as a young woman.  Sadly, the repetitive questions often annoy me. I try to keep my cool. And when I’m calm and...

Editor's note: Read to the end to see recipes and to learn the correct technique for carving a turkey.  The younger generation and especially Millennials are supposed to be the ones who are shaking up the universe—moving on to new jobs more often than boomers did and often starting their own ventures; not rushing to buy a home since they’re content with apartment living which they’ve helped to make more luxurious; cooking up a storm, photographing every morsel and posting the images on Instagram for all to see; and rethinking how to stay in touch by bidding landlines goodbye, eliminating...

For more than 15 years, I have gone every month to the same beauty shop and to the same colorist. And after I go through the process of a single process to cover the gray in my once dark hair, I am sent to the shampoo section. That’s where a newbie, in training, is assigned to soap and rinse my tresses. And it’s invariably a different person each time. I’ll call her (sometimes a he) Shampoo Person. While Shampoo Person scrubs away, my tongue starts wagging. I have fine-tuned a standard repartee that I use with each new person. It...

Sweet stuff can have a less than sweet reputation. It can be bad for us, all that sugar and carbohydrates. But who can resist a spongy, cakey, buttery Madeleine cookie dipped in rich dark chocolate, a spicy Aspen cookie with cinnamon, raisins, mace and other flavors reminiscent of Fall, or the best American chocolate chip cookie, a hot circular crisp of butter, flour, sugar and chocolate (sometimes nuts, too) that’s delicious and flavorful. Though we’ve written together for 30 years and discussed everything under the sun, we never initially shared about our mutual love for cookie baking and eating that...

I live in a little hermetic world in an urban/suburban enclave in St. Louis County, Missouri. Now that I live alone and write from home, most days are fairly routine—writing in the mornings (and some afternoons), taking a 30-plus minute walk outside or on my treadmill in bad weather, saving most afternoons to interview sources for articles, set up meetings or lunch dates, going to the library, and doing volunteer work. Evenings are relegated to staying home, reading and watching old movies, happy hours with friends, going to concerts, or attending lectures or plays. Yet, life is never really that...