By Maria

Ponyo: Finally, a Great Family Movie

Ponyo: Finally, a Great Family Movie

If you haven’t seen it in the theatres yet, Ponyo, a new Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyasaki, is one of the rare gems of a movie that the whole family will enjoy, and that is worth seeing on the big screen. Our family doesn’t get out to see movies together very often. Between the […]

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Top 5 Greatest Mysteries of Housework, Plus Top 5 Records to Clean By

Top 5 Greatest Mysteries of Housework, Plus Top 5 Records to Clean By

You may disapprove, but I take a big deep breath of relief the minute my husband gets in the car with the kids to go to church on Sundays. Finally, I can assess the week’s damage, and gather my forces to bring order to the house. If, God forbid, he misses church for a week […]

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My Favorite Summer Salads

My Favorite Summer Salads

Ironically, fresh local lettuce is harder to come by in the heat of summer than in spring and fall—lettuce prefers cooler temperatures. Yet, there is no better food to fix on a hot night, when you don’t want to heat up the house with cooking. Here are two of my favorite summer salads that you […]

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Reading For Pleasure: My Top 5 Favorite Authors

Reading For Pleasure: My Top 5 Favorite Authors

By now, most people know I’m a lover of romance novels. I’ve been trying for years to break down some of the stigma and erase the shame. The truth is, I need romance novels to survive, and if they didn’t exist, I would have to invent them. The very reasons I need them all year […]

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Living Proof of the American Mediterranean Diet

Living Proof of the American Mediterranean Diet

My in-laws, Rita and Louie Cinquino, are both 88, and have been happily married for more than 65 years. That’s happy with a little h. They annoy the heck out of each other, and complain about each other behind their backs all the time, but after 65 years they are like a fine-tuned machine, even […]

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The Summer That Never Was…

The Summer That Never Was…

My 12-year-old daughter keeps begging me to go back-to-school shopping, and I tell her she may not ask again for at least two weeks…but then that’s only a week before school starts. ARRRRGGGHHHHH! I feel like summer never even started! Between the constant rain and cool weather (there wasn’t one single night where I lay […]

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Is It True That People Don’t Cook Anymore?

Is It True That People Don’t Cook Anymore?

A recent story by Michael Pollan in the New York Times magazine implied that the problem with Americans is that we actually don’t cook anymore—we just watch it on TV. He blamed it on the usual suspects, including our disconnection from where our food comes from, the corrupting influence of television, and a food industry […]

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Top 10 Tips for Sober Entertaining

Top 10 Tips for Sober Entertaining

I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in over 10 years, and I don’t miss it one bit (except maybe once in a while, after a hard day in the office). But it does make entertaining different, and slightly challenging. You don’t quite realize just how much entertaining revolves around alcohol, until you stop revolving around […]

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