Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Dec 4, 2009, 8:31 am
Although I am not a fundamentally querulous person, there are things that I really, really hate.  Many of them , including clowns and bridal showers with games, are easily avoided if one eschews the ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Dec 3, 2009, 10:11 am
Every Saturday morning, even if Mercury is retrograde, we go to the grocery store. In this part of the world there is no such thing as Whole Foods, and the nearest Trader Joe’s is an hour away. ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Dec 2, 2009, 9:00 am
My favorite word in the whole world is “sprezzatura,” Italian for “effortlessness or ease,” “careless grace” or “nonchalance.” In my life, it stands for...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Dec 1, 2009, 9:23 am
Being pretty much a pacifist, I am horrified by my son’s fixation on guns – Airsoft guns, which shoot plastic pellets, paintball guns, and virtual guns used to shoot aliens/enemies/glitche...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 30, 2009, 9:52 am
The other night when there was “nothing on TV,” and I was not yet ready to retire with a good book, I got caught up in a “What Not to Wear” marathon. If you are unfamiliar with...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 29, 2009, 11:04 am
On my 21st birthday my father sent me a card in his distinctive, backward-slanted hand. He had written out a quote from Yeat’s “A Prayer for my Daughter:  “May she become a flourish...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 28, 2009, 7:40 am
I still remember the night in 1979 when I looked out the window of the Oberlin Inn and watched snow fall on Tappan Square. I felt a peace, and a rightness about my audition for the Oberlin Conservator...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 27, 2009, 10:05 am
“The price of peace is eternal vigilance.” -Attributed to Leonard H. Courtney This is not about making a Christmas list, although I should do that, I guess. It is about my need to check ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 26, 2009, 8:14 am
This is the day when Americans focus on all the things for which they are grateful, as part of Thanksgiving. I am always grateful for my family, the roof over my head, the good food I eat, my access t...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 25, 2009, 10:29 am
I wasn’t going to write at all today. Nobody is reading blog posts the day before Thanksgiving; I myself should be making cranberry sauce, shredding Brussels Sprouts and dicing celery and onions...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 24, 2009, 8:42 am
Last night I watched “House.” This is a religious observance for me, and it has long been my belief that Gregory and I are soul-mates destined to be together, regardless of the facts that ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 23, 2009, 10:26 am
Imagine that you are a parent, and that your child comes home from school and tells you that she is being tormented by a group of other girls. They call her names, they exclude her from group activiti...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 22, 2009, 10:08 am
It has come to my attention that Martha Stewart has thrown down the (hand-crafted, freshly-cleaned) gauntlet as the first strike against competitor Rachael Ray. In her first interview since concluding...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 21, 2009, 8:23 am
I am not a fan of the “connected” lifestyle. The notion that I am reachable at every waking moment does not make me feel at one with the universe; it makes me frantic. In the same way that...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 20, 2009, 9:35 am
I am not, by any means, a curmudgeon. I remember many totally enchanted Christmases, particularly my ninth. My parents’ friend Mr. Hammond had, a week before Christmas, delivered to me a hand-cr...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 19, 2009, 10:51 am
Musical taste is a vast and complicated topic; I have always believed that there was a part of the brain (perhaps the Medulla Obligato) that controls the part of an individual’s idiosyncratic pr...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 18, 2009, 10:46 am
“To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.” -Fran Lebowitz During the seven years in which I lived in...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 17, 2009, 9:19 am
Until I was sixteen, Thanksgiving was spent at my maternal grandparents’ house in Ashtabula, Ohio. Often prefaced by a blizzard, and by my father worrying about making the five hour drive with 5...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 16, 2009, 8:47 am
“There’s rats in the street, and rats in the jail In the feds, rats wear wires in they cell S**t Steven Seagal, I used to love his karate But even he snitched, he told on Peter Gotti...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 15, 2009, 11:50 am
In the suburban neighborhood of my youth, a hush fell with the darkness. Aside from summer nights when we were all allowed to stay out playing Statues or Kick the Can, children were safely home by the...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 14, 2009, 9:19 am
From their earliest incarnations, I was sucked in by the “reality” series genre in which two families trade mothers for a couple of weeks. In order to heighten the drama, the selected fami...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 13, 2009, 8:38 am
I may possibly be the only living college-track student ever to graduate from my high school without taking either chemistry or physics classes. I did complete the required Freshman year of something ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 12, 2009, 11:03 am
. The most utterly miserable times of my life were in high school.  I was always a fat girl, and later, a fat girl with acne. I never had a date, was never kissed, was picked last for every team in ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 11, 2009, 8:53 am
I always hated sports. As a child, I played outside, swam all summer, rode my bike, and sledded and skated in winter, but I was not interested in playing or watching organized sporting events. I grew ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 10, 2009, 10:22 am
I have always been a judge-y kind of person. Although I was raised by people who were fundamentally kind and charitable, I picked up early on, the difference between “us” and “them.&...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 9, 2009, 7:45 am
I grew up in a family in which manners extended well beyond “please” and “thank you,” and the placement of one’s napkin on one’s lap. I answered the phone “Gr...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 8, 2009, 10:08 am
“Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk Cigarettes and chocolate milk these are just a couple of my cravings everything it seems I like’s a little bit stronger a little bit thicker a little bi...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 7, 2009, 9:51 am
I recently encountered an article about something called “Gender Disappointment,” a label for women who are so traumatized by failing to produce a child of the desired gender that they bec...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 6, 2009, 9:25 am
I am now receiving “Town & Country” in the mail because, on a tip from a clever friend, I went to fatwallet.com, and told a few casual lies.  (I could be practicing entertainment law and ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 5, 2009, 7:45 am
So I’m learning, by sampling the offerings of other NaBloPoMo participants, that many of them do not write about Major Issues on a daily basis. They write about the little things in life, like w...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 4, 2009, 9:23 am
This morning, as I contemplate the very poor decision made by voters in the state of Maine, I am wondering how differently people might have voted if they actually had friends or family who were openl...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 3, 2009, 8:56 am
My 12-year-old son has just walked out the door to the bus stop with a Nos Energy Drink in one hand and a pocket full of Halloween candy for  breakfast. He also falls asleep with the TV on, a TV whic...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 2, 2009, 11:56 am
My father used to say that our chores should be “done graciously or not done at all.” I did not have the choice, as a child, to decline his invitation to empty the dishwasher simply becaus...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Nov 1, 2009, 1:12 pm
... Unfinished Novels until I was out of college. In college, I chose to be an English Major rather than a Creative Writing major mainly because I was totally ... imagery in Shakespeare, and kept...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Oct 29, 2009, 11:16 am
I am a person who remembers absolutely everything. I remember being sick when I was two years old and believed (one, hopes, due to fever and not psychopathology) that tiny men were marching out of my ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Oct 28, 2009, 1:20 pm
. I’ve been watching a lot of  things on TV that have made me think about my clothes, past and present. (Before I tell you what I was watching I must say, in my defense, that since I have actu...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Oct 27, 2009, 3:19 pm
I have been writing this blog since June of 2006, which, by my calculations, is more than three years.  For a very long time, it was about food. Lately, not so much. When it was good, I think it was ...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Oct 26, 2009, 9:41 am
I am not good at reading non-fiction, and a perfectly juicy book will sit on my pile for months, rejected in favor of far callower fiction, because it has the misfortune to have the word “memoir...
Comment - Like

Ann Nichols posted an article on Forest Street Kitchen - Oct 23, 2009, 6:13 pm
It was a dark and stormy night, and I was trying to figure out a restaurant that was a suitable place  for my family, my nephews, and my parents to eat dinner. It was a school night, so reasonable qu...
Comment - Like