I resisted Facebook for years, but the ease with which I could share and view pictures of a high-school reunion compelled me. So like most
people my age, I found myself using the site to
reconnect with a past I had previously ignored or forgotten. Then, when
my husband passed
away suddenly a little more than a year ago, Facebook became a strange
lifeline during my first
year of grief. Frankly, being on Facebook makes me think about what it
must be like to be dead,
floating like a ghost into and out of people’s lives, into and out of
all the worlds we’ve inhabited. The compression and conflation of time
that Facebook provides makes way for the beguiling draw of nostalgia.
Nostalgia, like grief, is essentially homesickness, and we tend to get homesick when we want to restore the parts of ourselves we think we are losing or have lost. Soon enough, I found myself looking up my old summer camps, my old junior high school (that’s what we New Yorkers called middle school), and inevitably I discovered a Facebook page dedicated to Riverdale, the small northwest Bronx neighborhood where I spent my formative years.
This is a super easy, super delicious chocolate ice cream. It uses just a few basic ingredients and does not require any special equipment. Sweetened condensed milk eliminates the need for eggs and sugar and carefully supervised custards.
When I heard that my friend, Brigid was making “50″s junk food” I immediately went to a recipe I have been coveting for some time now; Homemade Tater Tots. I have read and re-read 
Wow, what an awesome idea this is for breakfast, or breakfast for dinner...or a snack. It's like the whole kit and kaboodle in one bite. Do you know how hard it is to have the bacon, eggs and toast done at the same time? Well of course you do, you've tried. It's a challenge.
I'm spending a few days in what I'm told is the Mid-West of America (albeit the Northern Mid-West), a place I've never been to before. It's a land of lakes and fir trees and glittering silver birches, and flying in I was startled (and a little homesick) by the landscape's resemblance to Norway. Of course everyone who lives here is either Norwegian or Swedish.