As Baltimore writer Sheri Venema reacquainted herself with her mother’s quaint church cookbook, she pondered “a time when a woman became a suffix to her husband” — once her baking was done, she realized much more.

The recipe for Steamed Cranberry Pudding did not speak to me at first. The directions seemed too cryptic: Waxed paper? Tin cans? Also, the tattered cookbook in which I found the recipe originated in the long-ago kitchens of women in my childhood church, and it seemed laden with dishes predictable and dull.

Tuna Noodle Casserole.

Miracle Cheese Cake (lemon Jell-O with cream cheese and sugar).

Oven Barbecue (Spam, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce).

Typed on a manual typewriter and then Xeroxed and bound with cheap plastic coil, the cookbooks were sold to raise money for a church society. My copy long ago lost its red cover. I sometimes took it out of its protective Ziploc bag to find a cookie recipe, but mostly I felt superior to this little book with its stains and misspellings. Clearly it came from a time when cream of mushroom soup and oleo ruled every kitchen in my neighborhood, and I had walked away from the Midwestern housewifery prescribed in its pages. I owned a wok and a Silver Palate cookbook. I made my own hummus.  Read More →

$749,900
504 Overhill Road, Roland Park
8 bedroom(s), 5 bathroom(s)
5,026 square feet

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UB grad student Danielle Ariano isn’t sure how to help a neighbor in need, or if she possibly can.

After our neighbor’s wife died, he began giving us things. Random things like two cans of Reddi-wip whipped cream, a box of Oscar Mayer pre-cooked bacon, a green pepper. One day as I sat on my patio reading, he came outside with two small paper bags in his hand.

“Can you do me a favor? Take these,” he said holding the bags out, “and if you don’t want them, throw them away.” Read More →

Baltimore writer Elizabeth Hazen confesses (and reconsiders) an ancient crime.

Some mornings my son, nearly six and a half years old, wakes up raging over the injustices of the world: Why does he have to eat green vegetables? Why does everything he wants cost “too much money”? Why doesn’t his dad live with us? Why, as he once phrased it from his booster in the backseat of our car, is life so hard? Devastated that I had failed already to guard him from this truth, I had little comfort to offer. Finding my own life a series of difficult navigations and compromises that leave all parties feeling deprived, I have struggled throughout my adult life to reconcile the lessons I learned as a child – all dreams are achievable, hard work always pays off, people get what they deserve – with the reality of my experience. The science of these teachings, quite simply, doesn’t play out. So what, then, do I tell my son? That intentions don’t matter? That the universe is random and our place in it negligible? That it is virtually impossible to predict what will happen, and even harder to know what will make us happy? Read More →

On a cold, early winter evening, I peeked in the coop to check on the chickens. As usual, five of them were snuggled up next to each other on the roost, a tree branch my boyfriend, Jared, had affixed to the wall of the coop. But one, the jet-black Ameraucana we named Thing (because of the silly fuzzy feathers on her face), had been left out. She was huddled alone in the corner on the coop floor, below the other chickens: the spot reserved for the last in the pecking order. Read More →

Starting a relationship with a younger man when you’re trying to have a child on your own as a 40-something single woman can lead to some odd moments: odd as in sit-com funny, as in strangely coincidental, as in painful.

Like the time you explain to him that you’re trying to get pregnant but then ask him to use a condom. Read More →

Baltimore writer Christine Grillo describes her inner Christmas Grinch whose tiny heart recently grew a couple of sizes.

I imagine that every family in America has its own version of “How did my children get so spoiled?” Growing up, it was at Christmastime that my siblings and I heard my father’s version of the refrain. His family had lived humbly, five people residing for 30 years in a two-bedroom apartment in Gravesend, Brooklyn. “At Christmas, we each got one gift, and we were happy to get it,” he told us, many times. Read More →

image courtesy of The Rumpus

Goucher prof Kathy Flann describes what it’s like — for her and her “family” of local writer friends — to be wrapped up in the dream of writing the Great American Novel in the age of Kindle, Twitter, and Twilight.

In the past year, my writerly self-loathing has reached new lows. Or should that be highs? If I weren’t such a total mouth-breathing idiot, I’d know.

My agent has been trying to sell my first novel. These efforts yield a steady stream of rejections to my inbox. Editors have explained their decisions in a variety of ways. The plot/setting/character (circle one) is fascinating, but the plot/setting/character (circle one) isn’t quite believable. Read More →

University of Baltimore Asst. Prof. and Bohemian Rhapsody Columnist Marion Winik returns from a tragic funeral with a heavy heart and hectic mind.

There was nothing that could be done, said the policeman at her door to my friend Nancy last Sunday. By this he meant, your 20-year-old daughter died in a traffic accident on her way to work at the mall this morning. Are you here alone? he asked.  Is there someone I can call to come over? That was all she needed to hear. She ran across the street and collapsed on the neighbor’s kitchen floor. Read More →

Writer Holly Morse-Ellington recounts a night of spooky signals, her first and last experience Ouija-boarding as a kid. Happy Halloween, everybody, from Baltimore Fishbowl!

Thanksgivings in Chicago could be a serious snooze compared to most of our family holidays. For one, sharing the backseat of a midsize car with my brother during the seven-hour drive from Kentucky to our dad’s family in Chicago made us tired and cranky. For another, by the time we’d reacquainted ourselves with our cousins, it was time to go back home. Chicago is an exciting big city compared to the rinky-dink town we lived in, but more often than not we passed the weekend restricted to my aunt and uncle’s conservative suburban home. The entertainment highlight: Uncle Sid’s colorful reactions to his VHS recordings of Bears games. Thanksgiving was more like detention among members of The Breakfast Club than holiday from school. Of the five of us cousins forced together, I was the pipsqueak of the bunch and struggled the most to fit in. But one particular Thanksgiving, when I was 11 and the other cousins were high schoolers, I was up for doing anything to prove that I was cool and mature too. That anything turned out to be a maturing experience for all of us kids. Read More →