I’ve been doing some reading on food—where it comes from and how it comes to us. In her book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver…

I don’t think I’ve met you. My name is Margie. I said this as I held out my hand, warm and friendly, to a…

Faster [This essay first appeared in the December 1999 issue of Notes From Toad Hall.] December is a bad month for speed and stress.…

Matters of Perspective When we were staying with friends Leslie and John near NYC in October it was, I think, our second day with…

In some people’s thinking cuisine is ranked on the lower end of the scale of “the arts”—five star restaurants notwithstanding. Unlike other disciplines, cooking…

My daughter, Rachel and I sat down the other night to watch TV. She had been following Top Chef, so we flipped to the…

Christmas 2007 Gift Suggestions from Toad Hall Candy-freak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond (non-fiction) Totally, completely, this book…

One of the most intriguing and poignant of all New Testament narratives is Paul’s sea voyage to Rome. He is a prisoner in chains…

Kevin sits alone in his dark dorm room on a Tuesday night. To his professors and friends, this 20 year-old college sophomore is a…

There are few issues that have generated more political heat and extreme rhetoric, more anger and hatred, confusion and pain, than the issue of…