Among all children's authors I loved growing up, Beatrix Potter always seemed the most wholesome by far. My favorite books were the eyebrow raisers: the delicious nastiness of Roald Dahl, the nightmarish worlds of Maurice Sendak. Even The Velveteen Rabbit gets borderline traumatizing. When...

Around the middle of August, when vacations are past and sunset creeps up noticeably earlier every evening, end-of-summer anxiety sets in. How could I have let this happen? I didn't have nearly enough picnics! Or take enough strolls through the park! Or eat all...

Were you expecting a stiff cocktail? Fresh marlin? Braised wildebeest? Ernest Hemingway has become such a legendary character, it's hard to think of a recipe that could match his macho reputation. It's clear that the man loved food; A Moveable Feast is one of...

For a transcendentalist, Walt Whitman was a bit of a hoarder. Just take a look at his daybooks, and you'll see a list of the scraps he saved over the years: photos, receipts, weather reports, news articles, classified ads, and...

If something called a "slump" doesn't make you salivate, how about eating a "grunt"? No? Then Louisa May Alcott will have your helping. They're two different names for the same homey New England dessert: a dumpling crust over a baked (or steamed) fruit base,...

Although 2012 marks what would have been his 200th birthday, Charles Dickens is far from passé. His novels, with their inimitable energy and their comic, tragic and grotesque characters, are still some of the most widely read around the world, often reworked for film and television (The Muppet Christmas Carol,...