Tallula is clearly wondering where all the camels went. / Photo above and on the front by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

WHY ARE THERE no camels in North America, outside of zoos, of course?* Why are there no monkeys? There are monkeys in South America, Central America; surely we have the climate somewhere—Florida, of course, comes to mind. 

The older I get the more things I stumble upon for which I have no answers. Worse. I never thought of them as questions. 

This happens when my reading becomes more far-flung, location-wise, most recently a mystery set in South Africa. Now there’s an unpleasant-sounding place, no offense to South Africans. Some say it’s quite lovely there. I’m not going to share the title because the book was terribly long and irritating. However, there are all sorts of creatures roaming about Africa that we don’t see here on a day-to-day basis, which got me to wondering.

Generally I stick to Scotland, largely because of Alexander McCall Smith, who makes me very happy. Or I wander about in England, same there. Have you read Angela Thirkell? She was the Seinfeld of her day, you might say, writing excruciatingly witty novels about nothing much happening in the English countryside between 1929 and the early 1950s.

I don’t notice much beyond dogs in my (rather limited) reading about Scotland. That there might not be much other animal life is understandable, given the climate. I remember my one and only visit to Edinburgh, in 1969, in which I spent several damp and frozen spring days in a Salvation Army hostel tucked under a thin blanket and feeding coins into a space heater while my friend and traveling companion Maureen traipsed off to see the whatnot. 

To return to my theme. I read somewhere that there were no squirrels in Washington at some point, or maybe it was just black squirrels, I forget. Now they’re everywhere. My friend Kristen has one in her attic. She’d like to get rid of it.

So, squirrels can live here quite happily, eating apricots when one has an apricot tree, which one did and thankfully no longer does. If you don’t have an orchard and serfs to do the plucking, beware of fruit trees, that’s what I always say (or have been saying, at least, since 1989). 

We have plenty of feral mosquitoes around, also cats. More cats than I need, that’s for sure, and certainly for My Prince, since he’s allergic and breaks out in sneezes when near one.  I don’t think I’d want one even if I were old, really old, not the old I am now, but decrepitly old with bazooms hanging to my knees . . . no offense to cat lovers.

My sister Jean tells the story of being in a cabana dressing room in Long Beach, New York, with Aunt Ruthie when she was changing out of her bathing suit. She front-snapped her bra around her waist,  rotated it about and then folded her breasts, as if she were making puff pastry (I haven’t made any puff pastry yet, but might, and have read that this is what you do) and stuffed them into the cups. 

This is neither here nor there, but interesting, don’t you agree?

Anyway, there is no age that I can reach where cats would be particularly welcome.

Dogs are another story. I am a dog person. I am, particularly, a Lula person, my grand-dog who also is not fond of cats. She can carry three balls in her mouth and sometimes gets the vapors when it’s too hot. Someday she’ll make a nice area rug. 

That I am a bird person is a more recent discovery. Not the sort to tramp about with binoculars and a notebook (and a pith helmet—I think one needs to wear one) marking down new species and shouting “By Jove!” But the sort who has parakeets, who lead far more interesting lives than you might suspect. 

Someday I’d like to have a parrot or a cockatoo, perhaps. A gorgeously colored bird that I could wear on my shoulder, as I like feathered accessories, and train to talk. Perhaps I’ll start wearing kimonos and smoking cigars.

My father’s family had a parrot named Polly, which may have sounded more original in 1915. She was an intensely jealous bird, who thought herself the most beautiful of the females in the household, of which there were five, plus Grandma. When gentlemen callers arrived she would ruffle her feathers and mutter, “Polly prettier,” as one or another sister would descend the staircase to meet her date. 

She also hated cats, but that’s another story. 

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” sometimes writes about animals when there is little going on in her back forty.

* LittleBird Nancy points out that we did indeed have camel-like critters in these here United States—back in the last Ice Age. In fact, they originated in North America, but before even we Baby Boomers made it onto the scene. The remains of several Camelops hesternus have been found trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Including a young one named Clyde—they’re still searching for more pieces of him. 

One idea: Dice the asparagus, then dust them with Parmesan cheese. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

This story first appeared in March of last year. But it’s almost time for asparagus again.

A WHOLE WORLD of vegetables was waiting for me when I arrived at cooking school. I hadn’t grown up with a big variety of vegetables. My father was a meat-and-potatoes guy who liked corn, tomatoes and salad—pretty much in that order. My mother’s repertoire strayed beyond my father’s faves only as far as string beans (steamed with butter) and zucchini (cooked into a cold soup). At cooking school, I quickly became a convert to Brussels sprouts, winter squash, green peas, leeks and more. And for a long time, asparagus was the living end to me, culinarily. My very first article as a fledging food writer was inspired by my near-obsession with the classic asparagus vinaigrette.

Years and many vegetables have come and gone. I still like asparagus, but it’s part of a rotation of many items I love. I felt I had, at least asparagus-wise, seen it all. A few weeks ago I was shopping at Wegmans,  where food sampling is part of the experience. That day they were pushing a roast-at-home asparagus and Parmesan cheese kit with basting oil. To make it easier for tasting, they had cut the roasted asparagus into small pieces, about ½- to ¾-inch long. It was such a little thing, but totally transformational. By cutting the asparagus into bite-size pieces, each piece was well seasoned with sweet and nutty Parmesan.

I am huge fan of flavorful food that is easy to make, especially if you can take the idea and apply it widely. This was one of those ideas. I don’t think Wegmans meant for us to cut up the asparagus, but it is nonetheless a great idea.

• You can roast the small pieces of asparagus on a foil-lined sheet pan, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, in a 375-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes MAX and it is done. (The timing depends on the thickness of the pieces.) Take the pan out of the oven, toss with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano and you are in asparagus heaven.
• Mix with pasta and you have dinner.
• Add some chopped garlic before roasting and mix the roasted-garlic-scented asparagus with prepared couscous.
• Add some finely chopped onions and peppers, roast, and mix with chopped herbs and rice for a quick pilaf.

They’re great mixed into orso (I tossed some diced sweet onions in the oven with the asparagus), and just last night I served them with roasted pork tenderloin.

I could go on and on, but try it yourself. This is an easy-to-cook, easy-to-eat food that is full of simple big flavors. It is made with only a few ingredients and it takes 15 minutes to prepare—pretty near perfect in my world. I’m not abandoning grilled asparagus with lemon, or stir-fried asparagus with ginger, or my first love, asparagus vinaigrette, but I’ve got a new favorite.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is a trained chef, a longtime food writer for The Washington Post and a wicked home cook.

Roses captured last spring on a morning walk around Washington’s Capitol Hill. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

I READ A LOT of magazines, though not those devoted to gardening, which just frustrate me with instructions that I will never follow.

Ideas, concepts, these I enjoy. Of course, most shelter magazines are full of gardens and garden ideas around this time of year, but I’ve never seen an issue so devoted to a floral theme as the March-April issue of Veranda.

The pages are packed with flowery thoughts for home, garden and even your body—think a $240 gardenia rejuvenating cream from http://www.sapeloskincare.com and a necklace of what look like stained-glass pansies by Siddharth Kasliwal, “price upon request,” which is never an encouraging line.

Among much else, there’s a section on trellis, or lattice, those crisscross strips of wood that instantly evoke gardens, whether or not you’ve trained roses or clematis to clamber and twine. Veranda shows treillage (to be haughty) attached to walls, freestanding in gardens, and decorating wallpaper, china, lamps and chairs—both frames and fabrics.

Ideas for its use that would transform the dreariest of spaces into a grotto or garden—without adding a single live plant. What would Versailles be without it? Think about that.

Another section of the magazine highlights florists and floral designs, with an emphasis on blousy, naturalistic British designs that include glorious weeds such as Queen Anne’s lace mingled with white lilacs and roses. Heady stuff.

It seems you start with a vase or vessel and “a framework of twigs,” poking stems here and there, building and playing, creating a garden in a pot. Ah, so simple they make it seem.

The homes and rooms, from kitchen to living room, to bedrooms and baths, are plastered with floral papers, draped with flowered fabrics—a periwinkle paper here, a rose chintz there—accessorized by more florals and gardenesque accents, like the pale green cachepot with pink dragonflies on the lid.

Designer Mario Buatta, dearly departed Prince of Chintz, plays a cameo role. A bedroom he designed wears sprightly green-and-white floral wallpaper and a soft pink ceiling—I would love a soft pink ceiling.

And then there are the gardens—but hold those secateurs. Yes, the weather is balmy, the sun shines, the daffodils are coming up fast and the forsythia is bursting with buds BUT April 21 is the last frost date for Washington, DC. If you’re anywhere north of me you’ll have to hold back even longer.

Of course you can risk tossing seeds about, and then watch their tender stems gasp and drop dead when the temperature again dips to freezing, probably tomorrow or the day after. Been there, done that. Sure, try it.

We’ve been fooled before. Two years ago another faux spring ruined a season’s worth of hydrangeas. Tragic.

And anyway, we still have months of tulips and the lollypop heads of alliums and the cherry trees yet to enjoy.

Don’t push it. Go sniff a hyacinth.

That said, it is time to start dreaming of hedges and ivy and topiaries mixed with lavender and orange and roses, roses and roses, of which Veranda highlights an enviable selection. As usual, I have fabulous plans.

As for roses. I confess I’ve given up attempting to grow anything but Knockout roses, a plant nearly impossible to kill that rather boringly spits out blossom after blossom from late spring until, in this last year’s case, late December. In a tiny garden like mine, with limited sun, more exotic varieties are an exercise in frustration.

Oh, but I miss the heady, voluptuous perfume of roses. Knockouts, while colorful and reliably disease resistant, are absolutely without fragrance, as are so many of the hybrid teas and climbers we see in gardens. It’s as if you’re peering at a lush garden with a clothespin on your nose.

“Big, voluptuous, wildly fragrant roses” are the subject of a whole section of the magazine. Fields of them in England and California. Old world roses with a variety of top and bottom notes such as clove and citrus and nutmeg. Ephemeral roses that grow droopy and soggy brown in heavy rains, leaves that fall off and squish underfoot. Just what you don’t want in a tiny garden.

On the other hand, why are we growing scentless roses when scent is pretty much the point of a rose? There are far more beautiful flowers that we can plant; they’re even fragrant.

One can always visit the US National Arboretum in Washington for an exquisite sensory experience among their treasured collection of old roses. If you’re lucky, the lilacs and peonies will be in bloom as well.

My mother grew some ramblers, red roses against the gray split-rail fence that surrounded the property. The scent was intoxicating. She’d send me to the last classes of the year with a posy wrapped in damp paper towel and tin foil for my 4th-grade, 5th-grade, 6th-grade teachers. These were, I think, little prayers that I’d at least get Cs in everything but reading, which was never a problem.

Speaking of reading, it’s time to dig up Henry Mitchell—the absolutely essential Earthman—and start considering spring,

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” tries to keep us from making the gardening mistakes she has made. 

MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.

MyLittleBird photoillustration.

AND SO SHE WENT. I reported last week that I had consigned my 1998-vintage Hermès Kelly bag to the “luxury consignment” site The RealReal. Here’s the update, sooner than I would have predicted.

After being collected by the Luxury Manager in Washington DC, my Kelly must have spent about a week being authenticated and assessed. Then she appeared on my private “My Sales” list, joining a Bottega Veneta tote, a sturdy Kate Spade shoulder bag in a classic shape and a couple of Hermès scarves.

But still, Kelly didn’t pop up on the public site. There were three or four other Kelly “Sellier” bags in smooth black box calf already for sale; I assumed the savvy merchants behind The RealReal were waiting for the rest to sell before adding to the Kelly inventory. Still I checked each day to see if mine would be made public. A day or two  went by.

Then one day I didn’t check. The next day—two? three?—days after my Kelly went public, the image on the “My Sales” list had a bold SOLD sign stamped across it.

Why was my black Kelly snapped up before the others already listed? Well, I assume the price tag was one factor: $5,200 instead of $5,600 for the others. My inner Kelly girl wanted to protest the inequity, but then mine sold—reaping me an 80 percent commission—and theirs haven’t yet.

I’m happy someone else now gets to inhale the heady scent of Kelly’s Hermès leather and hope she has found a home on someone’s arm, not her closet. And I can use the $4,000-plus. And yet . . . I noticed maybe a dozen mini Amazon Evelyne crossbody bags in delicious colors, perfect for walking a pup in the spring—$2,300 to $2,600. Yes, it’s a fortune, but if the renovations to my new apartment turn out to be way out of sight, maybe I’ll console myself with Evelyne.

—Nancy McKeon

Inside the Array pop-up on Washington DC’s Wharf, on the Potomac River. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

IT WAS THE fluffy pink poufs covered in what looked like yak fur that lured me in, and then I noticed the flowers: the ostrich plumes, and vases and pots stuffed with masses of tulips, snapdragons, forsythia, hellebores and roses.

Take a stem or two for a bud vase or put together a wildly original arrangement—by yourself or with an assist from the owners.

This is Array, a pop-up floral studio at Washington DC’s snazzily redesigned riverside Wharf, where some of the city’s priciest restaurants (and absurd parking) mingle with wiltingly expensive shops selling $45-per-pound cheeses, $4 donuts and other items of similar extravagance requiring copious cocktails to grease the credit cards.

Array, which will occupy this space only for the next three weeks, is all spot-lit bare-bones wall and industrial pipe, delightfully Jean Harlowed with a plush sofa and chairs, rugs, etageres and tables borrowed from home.

While splendidly sexy, those poufs are “cheap stools from Ikea,” says Jennifer Dolan, the company’s creative director. There’s a pad under the pink fluff, which she picked up at JoAnn Fabric store, “that makes them more comfortable for seating.”

This will be useful, as she has planned a series of floral design workshops for the space. The idea is to teach students to put together their own fabulous bouquets and how to maintain them. Classes are $115 and include flowers, supplies and plenty of wine to lubricate the process.

Dolan, who also designs for weddings and special events, has a sample bouquet on a work table—one of 10 designs she’s created for the annual Leukemia Ball, which will be held this year on March 16 at the Marriott Marquis—a breathtaking mingling of creamy white hydrangeas, pink roses, white ranunculus and tiny blush-colored spray roses.

Yes, please.

Meanwhile, Dolan and business partner Diane Lee are looking for permanent space at The Wharf. If this pop-up is a sampler of their talents, I can’t wait to see it.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” has a plant-based visual diet and is based in Washington DC.

Above and on the front, MLB photoillustration.

SO LONG, KELLY, it’s been swell.

Actually, it was probably not all that swell for the Kelly bag languishing on the top shelf, shrouded in her dust bag. No chance to flaunt her smooth box-calf exterior, her cumbersome but oh-so-statusy straps and lock and key fob—no lunch dates, no shopping trips, just sitting there . . . probably for more than a decade.

Until reality took hold. A few weeks ago, as I packed to make the final move from Washington DC to New York, I gazed for the umpteenth time at an ad for The RealReal, the  “luxury consignment” site for designer clothing and handbags, even shoes and decorative accessories for the home. Why was I packing and moving something I no longer used? Could I unleash the cash in the Kelly? Would I dare to consign her to the vagaries of online commerce? Would someone have the confidence to buy a Kelly from anywhere but an Hermès shop?

Once I studied The RealReal’s authentication process—how they authenticate the engraved Hermès code, akin to the VIN on your car (to make sure it’s not counterfeit), and saw how they list the bags (not just Kelly, but Kelly “Sellier” or “Retourne,” 25cm or 32cm, with the actual year of manufacture), I decided to take the plunge. After all, I figured, I’ve proven that I don’t need a Kelly bag, but my new apartment does need new crown molding, right?

My first tentative email query was met with an enthusiastic reply from a Business Development Representative, then a phone chat, then a hand-off to a local Luxury Manager who would assess the “covetable items” (the Business Development Representative’s words, not mine) I had to offer. In my living room.

Clearly this is a serious operation. The site explains it all: the list of designers they will accept, the commission formula (up to 80 percent for “high value” items, around 50 percent for inexpensive things, ratcheting up as you sell more, or more expensive, items), the warning that if your item is discovered to be counterfeit, The RealReal will confiscate it and return it to the designer.

At that point I wanted to be acceptable to The RealReal! And the site isn’t interested only in the likes of Louis Vuitton and Patek Philippe; it has also created an after-market for what they call “contemporary” names, such as Diane von Furstenberg and Tory Burch, even for some of those fancy, overpriced men’s sneakers (80 percent commission on sneakers with a resale list price of $500 and up. $500! For sneakers! Clearly I haven’t been paying attention).

With that in mind, I decided I had other goods to unload. Why was that old but rarely used Kate Spade shoulder bag just sitting there? What about the Bottega Veneta tote? Bye-bye, Hermès scarves, bought during dull plane trips and never even unfolded from their wrappings. So long, Barry Kieselstein-Cord alligator ear clips.

The Luxury Manager was friendly and clearly knowledgeable. And business-like. A couple of disastrous Chanel totes were summarily dismissed (I mean, how many times can you roll the wheels of your office chair over the chain strap and expect it to survive?). A beige Longchamp nylon bag with a tiny smudge that wouldn’t be erased:  no go. The beautiful mint-condition alligator Kelly-style bag, in a small going-out-to-dinner size, from Casa Lopez in Buenos Aires was rejected: “No one will recognize the name,” the Luxury Manager said with a small sigh.

The chosen ones were photographed, then scooped up. The Luxury Manager presented an iPad listing of what she was taking and had me sign off.

In the ensuing 10 days, I’ve watched as the items have been added to the private “My Sales” list—first “accepted,” then valued. A mere $65 price tag was placed on the Kate Spade (20 percent off if you use the REAL code at checkout). Not a lot, but as LittleBird Kathy pointed out, it’s more than my closet was paying me. The scarves, $325 each. The Bottega Veneta bag surprised me: $495 (also with a 20 percent sweetener for the buyer). I had the right to withdraw an item if I didn’t like the price they put on it.

Jewelry followed a different track. The Kieselstein-Cord ear clips will be asking about $300, but they’re not posted yet.

Neither is Kelly. It took about a week for her to hit my list, presumably the time taken for authentication and then assessment of condition (“Very good”). $5,200 was the verdict. Less than some of her ilk (the description lists minor scratches on some of the gold-plated hardware), but solid.

I’ll report back if/when things sell (fingers crossed). If this works, there’s a Gucci ostrich tote with bamboo handles, a Kelly wallet, more scarves. There’s also an Heure H watch, with its stainless-steel H-shape body and a band in jaunty Hermès orange . . . but I’m thinking I’ll start wearing it again. That’ll make it more real than RealReal.

—Nancy McKeon

A clivia miniata, LittleBird Stephanie’s latest “apology plant.” / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

I’M EXPECTING a plant for Valentine’s Day. My Prince does not bring me cut flowers; he finds their inevitable droop depressing.  

And so, he will get something from the fancy local garden shop (as opposed to the hardware store’s flower section). I hope it’s not another Stephanotis, a plant I love but have received for the past two, maybe three, years.

My Prince doesn’t do cards, but he’ll cut a very gently used envelope into a heart shape and write “I ♥ U” on it, leaving the message next to the coffee pot in the kitchen, where I’m certain to find it in the morning. The plant will come later, after he remembers to shop for it.

In return, I will cook dinner. Since I do this every night* but Saturday, when we have our weekly date, it will be something splendid and complex, like cioppino—or at least something only he likes, like mussels. In the latter case, I will make myself a grilled cheese sandwich, which is one of my three favorite food groups, the other two being fried chicken and roast beef. I will eat with a brave expression combined with a martyred air. A win-win impact is what I call that.  

I do receive flowering plants throughout the year, but these are apology plants, as in:  Whenever he does something really bad I get a plant. I am not the judge of what’s really bad, he is. It has to do, I think, with something having happened that there is no way in which I could have been responsible.

Like, if the kitchen ceiling fixture falls on my head. This hasn’t happened, yet, but if it does it would warrant a plant, as the only thing I have to do with lighting and electricity is flipping switches. I’m not even sure about changing bulbs.  

Over the years My Prince has given me many plants to say “I’m sorry.” Unusual ones that he picks out because he likes the color or the plant person told him it would be difficult for me to kill. This does not often translate into anything I would want.

There was once a red-and-white Christmas cactus, botanically known as Schlumbergera or Zygocactus (should you wish to look like you know what you’re talking about). These are not my cuppa, particularly when their flowers fade into a mucusy flab.

And what was once a little bush is now an immense red-and-white Rose of Sharon billowing in a corner of the garden next to the back porch This has a jolly yacht-in-the-south-of-France air about it, so I overlook the fact that it reminds me of someone I’d really prefer to forget.

Then there was the mandevilla vine, also red-and-white-striped, that he picked out for me while we were on a testy Sunday walk.  At $30, it was far more than I would usually spend, particularly for a plant that has repeatedly failed me (though it grows like a weed in every third garden in the neighborhood). So I let him do penance with it.  As predicted, the plant is long since gone . . . 

Interestingly, I might point out as an irrelevant aside, you might notice the distinctly red-and-white-striped motif to these apologies? Would it be fair to call this a passive-aggressive reminder of how, 38 years ago I lost my red-and-white bikini, an act that he (still!) insists was deliberate?

My latest apology plant, to return to the subject at hand, is a clivia miniata, which has strapping green leaves and a single flaming orange flower of many frills erupting from the center. It flowers in the winter. Which is handy.

I don’t know what he did wrong for me to deserve this one—it’s been a month. Many things have happened in that time that I consider worth a grovel. Let’s consider this a general “I’m sorry, darling.”

One unfortunate aspect of these plants is that they frequently turn into something that I am expected to apologize for.

I am reminded of this because The Prince just interrupted my computer game (it hones my brain), wandering into my office waggling a sheaf of Very Important Looking papers, stopping at my shoulder and glancing out into the solarium.

“The Plant is dying,” he said with a hopeless air.

“Which one?” I asked, “There’s a jungle out there.”

“The orange one I bought you. Look at the flower, it’s falling off.”

“Flowers die. It’s normal,” I said, reassuringly.

“You didn’t water it,” he said and huffed away.

If I don’t get a plant for Valentine’s Day I’ll let you know. Then we’ll see what I get as an apology.

*Do you know how many dinners that is? In my case, after 36 years of really cooking, not doing takeout, about 127,000, give or take a dinner party or vacation. If we add in breakfasts . . .

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” knows a good garden apology when she gets one.

Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

This dinner idea first appeared last February.

I’M ALWAYS SO busy extolling the virtues of the quick-cooking boneless chicken breast, I neglect my true favorite—the whole roasted chicken. Talk about easy. First I try to find 4-to-5-pound chickens; they cook evenly in about 60 minutes. I take the whole chicken and rub it with oil, salt and pepper. The seasoned bird goes right into a disposable aluminum-foil pan. No beer-can shenanigans, no spatchcocking, just a chicken in a pan on a grill.

The trick is to cook it over indirect heat. (If you place that chicken, even in a pan, over direct heat, you will have a grease fire in no time.) On a charcoal grill, this means placing the coals on either side of the grill, with the chicken, in its pan, in the middle part of the grill. On a gas grill, you place the chicken, in its pan, on the preheated grill with the heat on on either side for a three-burner grill, or just on one side for a two-burner grill. Cover the grill and let the chicken, assuming it’s 4 to 5 pounds, cook for 50 to 75 minutes—the exact timing will depend on the size of the chicken and the variables of outdoor cooking—with the grill heat hovering between 375 and 400 degrees.

I love this method for many reasons. First, it makes a very juicy chicken, which I cannot replicate in the oven. Second, barely any clean-up. And third, it’s so easy. You walk in the door, preheat the grill, season the chicken and onto the grill it goes. After 30 minutes, it’s good to turn the pan around, especially on a two- burner grill, but that’s about it. When the temperature reaches 165/170 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, you and the chicken are golden.

You don’t need to make a plain chicken: You can season with an herb paste, glaze with barbecue sauce toward the end of cooking or make a spicy marinade and let the chicken marinate until you’re ready to cook it. I’m partial to lemon zest and juice, oregano and garlic, mashed into a paste with olive oil, salt and pepper. The garlic chars a little in the grill, but it flavors the chicken beautifully.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” thinks about chicken a lot.

Keep trying, baby! / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

THE DAYS are getting longer, you may have noticed. The sun doesn’t set until well after 5. Hallelujah to that. 

Maybe I can delay yawning for another hour. I seem to have the sleep cycle of a farmer. 

Little bits of stuff are beginning to emerge. The bark of a slender Japanese maple a few blocks away glows a rosy blush in the late-afternoon sunshine. The branches of the forsythia are swelling. A daffodil or two is poking up from the ivy in the front yard, the sunniest spot we offer.

All of the hydrangeas are showing buds, even Margot, who was so cruelly pruned before last seasons flowering, an event someone blamed on the squirrels, sniff.   

The heavy snow of just a few days ago flattened the pansies and ornamental cabbages, but the new warmth will perk them up shortly. A clutch of these surrounds the red camellia beside the front door, which will be in bloom in a week or so. 

The plants in the solarium off my second-floor office know their time is coming around. I can smell the soil in the morning, when I flop myself down at my desk for the day. The air is laced with the sweetness of the African gardenia and the paperwhite narcissus. Soon the Meyer lemon and the Key lime will chime in—the buds are so fat. This is distracting.

Meanwhile, My Prince is getting itchy to do something in the garden, a usual problem this time of year when for a day or two one needs only a sweater—some are already in shorts—before the temperature again takes a dive. A February Fool’s joke. 

“Shouldn’t we be moving plants out?” he’ll say at the first hint of warmth.

“The last frost date for us is April 21,” I tell him. 

“But it’s warm,” he’ll insist, and go off to arrange the porch furniture. He is so trying.

Though I don’t dare say it, what he should be doing is preparing to extend that solarium across the back of the house, a project now in its 30th year of thought—and second year of actual motion. There are architect’s plans to be approved by the city. A crew to help him must be found. He’s totally nuts if he thinks he can do this alone, and doubly nuts if he thinks I’ll stand there holding his nails and whatnots.

We already have wonderful high windows, almost the height of doors, with arched tops. Heavy old wooden ones found at Community Forklift, where old house parts wait for fanatics like us. These will line the wall overlooking the garden and open almost fully when the air is sweet. They’re being stored in a neighbor’s garage right now as ours is filled with all manner of other unfinished projects. 

I want black-and-white tiled floors and a ceiling fan or two. And big white wicker chairs with soft flowery cushions and an ottoman for my feet. In the winter it will be a fine place to watch the snow fall. In a summer storm it will be a fine place to watch the rain. 

I don’t know how or where I’ll work once he starts; the noise and cursing will be too disruptive. I fantasize about using the coal room in the basement, a small space at the front of the house with brick walls painted white and rubbed with age, and windows that peak out at the front garden. But then, I’ve fantasized about using this space for 36 years. 

Like the garage, it is filled with all manner of unfinished projects. Sigh.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is itching to get back out into the garden.

Mmm, that pulled-pork sandwich! / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

This is an “encore presentation,” as they say, of a recipe story that appeared in 2017.

AND THE NAME is no joke. . . . One of my favorite pieces of meat is the pork butt, also known as a Boston butt or a pork shoulder. Whatever you call them, the roasts come packaged conveniently sealed in plastic so they can sit in the fridge for a week or two. They are also very affordably priced, making them perfect for feeding a crowd.

I haven’t gotten to the best part: This cut is so easy to cook. You can cut the meat into cubes and make a terrific stew, but that’s for another night. Tonight, it’s a roast. Unwrap and dry the butt, rub with oil, spice mixes, pastes made from herbs or ginger and garlic, place in a deep roasting pan in a 275-degree oven. Now walk away for 7 or 8 hours. While the pork slowly roasts, the house will fill with a wonderful aroma and the kitchen will stay nice and warm—perfect for a cold day.You’ll know the roast is done when the meat is coming away from the bone. When it’s ready, pull the browned beauty out and you have the makings of pulled pork or a tender pork pot roast with whatever flair you gave it.

You can fancy this up any way you want: marinades, rubs, spice mixes. You can make this Asian- style or Italian-style or Cuban. It’s all up to you. Even if you buy a small bone-in one, at around 8 pounds, you’ll have so much meat that unless you are feeding a Little League team, you’ll likely have at least enough for another meal, or maybe two meals. You can repurpose the leftovers as the filling for quesadillas, tacos or to enhance a

Pork falling right off the bone. / iStock photo.

spaghetti sauce. Better still, freeze whatever’s left over of the cooked pork, sauced or unsauced, for a rainy day, which may come soon.

In any case, everyone needs a start, so here are two specific ideas. For both of these, I am assuming you have an 8-pound, bone-in butt. Roast at 275 degrees for 7 to 8 hours until the meat is pulling away from the bone.

Barbecue-spiced pulled pork: Rub the butt with oil and then liberally coat it with your favorite spice blend or a mix of salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder and cumin. You can add the rub the night before and refrigerate the pork until ready to cook or you can stick it right into a deep roasting pan and into the preheated oven. When the roast is done, carefully lift it out from the accumulated fat in the pan and let rest for 30 minutes. You can then pull the meat apart by hand. Serve with your favorite barbecue sauce and rolls.

Orange-Rosemary Roast Pork: Make a paste of orange zest, chopped fresh rosemary, garlic, salt and olive oil. Rub this all over the roast; you can also make slits in the meat and push the paste into them to further flavor the roast. Lightly grease the bottom of a deep roasting pan, place a layer of onion, a layer of thinly sliced oranges and some rosemary springs. Place the seasoned roast on top of the sliced oranges and place in the preheated oven. When the roast is done, let it sit 30 minutes. Defat the drippings in the pan—there will be a lot of fat to remove—and use the remaining liquid as the basis for a jus. To make the jus, heat the cooking liquid with equal parts chicken broth and white wine. Cut chunks or slices of pork and serve moistened with the jus.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is former recipe editor of the Washington Post Food Section and a professional chef when she’s not cooking for friends and family.

Life sometimes looks better in reflection. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

THERE WAS a little flurry of parsley in the garden yesterday, which I snapped up in anticipation of today’s bitter cold. That’s the sum total of this week’s puttering with plants.

Yet again there’s little to say about gardening in this quasi-gardening column, even less than last week, which led me to a consideration of doors.

So, let’s discuss mirrors.

Of mirrors we have many. There are eight on the ground level: ovals, squares, rectangles. At least two per room, some facing each other so the reflections are endless.

Most are overscale, bouncing light about and creating the illusion of space where there is little, this being a typical Capitol Hill row house, skinny and dark toward the center. They also reflect and seemingly double the size of the palms and Scheffleras and other shade-loving plants that winter indoors.

A very large gold-framed mirror on one wall of the dining room sits above the sideboard, reflecting a voluminous arrangement of dried flowers and leaves, assorted liquor bottles  and a large and eccentric lamp—a woman clad in some Egyptian wrappings who might be a man, considering the size of her feet.

Just outside, on the back porch, is a four-paneled mirrored screen, vaguely Moorish in design, that opens the space quite wonderfully while framing glimpses of the garden and flickering sunlight.

Another large mirror, ornately framed, presides over the kitchen stove. My architect friend Judith, a woman who generally scoffs at the merely ornamental, calls this use of mirror “courageous.”

I call it a way to give the little galley kitchen some air but am pleased by Judith’s thought.  Courageous sounds so swaggering, like flipping a car to free someone pinned, or jumping out of an airplane, or wearing a safari jacket for a safari, not to schlep to Trader Joe’s.

Judith, a modernist who prefers clean, sleek spaces, concedes that my kitchen suits the unconventional style of the house.

Courage, she tells me, has to do with cleaning and grease, at which I scoff. The kitchen is so busy with wallpaper and nonessentials that a little grease goes unnoticed. We have no upper cabinets on the stove side and no exhaust fan. We do have a microwave, inconveniently located in the basement and used for emergency defrosting.

Most things about this house are inconvenient, says my son-in-law, Baby’s Personal Prince Pete. But that is neither here nor there. Practical, in my view, always takes a back seat to visual pleasure.

Mirrors are also wonderfully mysterious, adding a welcome note of fantasy. Sometimes I daydream that if I just concentrate hard enough I can slither sideways into their sparkling world, nearly identical to where I am but slightly askew, the same but different in some interesting way.

Almost none of our mirrors are meant for primping. I have no interest in looking at myself, unless I’m going out and need to check my respectability.

Generally I don’t look so hot during the day. Working alone at home I sometimes find myself in pajamas at 5pm, hair still sleep-rumpled. This is not an image on which I choose to dwell.

My friend Susan developed a technique for feeling fabulously self-confident—and this is also neither here nor there, though associated with mirrors, and one of my very occasional important tips.

Susan tested a stack of full-length mirrors at Walmart, looking for one with the perfect fun-house effect of stretching her to model height (and, I might add, weight). She’d put on her makeup, get dressed and then admire herself in the mirror, all long and lean, then head out for the day.

The trick is, she said: Never look at another mirror for the rest of the day. Carry one of those tiny pocket items for restoring lipstick. That’s it.

As I said, neither here nor there. But interesting, eh?

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” sometimes writes about gardens, sometimes not.

Chicken soup with chickpeas and spinach. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

This is a reprise of a recipe that ran last year. The weather is certainly right for it.

FOR YEARS my older son played baseball and we were loyal fans even when the weather challenged that loyalty. The “spring“ season starts when it’s still cold enough for parkas in the stands and hot chocolate is the bestseller at the snack bar. When the games ended, we would rush home to thaw and eat. My antidote to the conditions: chicken soup.

Yes, this is one trick I got from my grandma and all the grandmas before her. Nana made her own soup and I like to make my own as well. I could describe the process and tell you how easy it is, but I’ll skip it. If you make your own soup (soup, broth or stock—there’s really no difference), good for you. Make the soup, cool it, freeze in serving-size containers and defrost as needed.

If you don’t make your own, I have quick trick for improving store-bought broth. In a medium-size pot place a few bone-in chicken thighs, some chopped carrots and celery, freshly ground pepper and a pinch of salt. Cover these with a low- or no-sodium prepared chicken broth. Bring the broth to a slow simmer and let the chicken thighs cook for 25 to 30 minutes until cooked through. Remove the thighs, pull the meat off the bones and add the meat back to the pot. There you go, 30-minute (or so) soup.

Even if you’ve made your own broth, you may want to cook the chicken thighs in your broth so you have some chicken meat to add. Once you have the soup base, with the chicken or not, you can start making it your own. Here are a few suggestions to take your soup to full meal status:

• Spiced Chickpea, Spinach and Rice Chicken Soup: Sauté diced onions with a generous pinch of curry powder, garam masala or cumin. Add already-cooked chickpeas and let everything cook for 3 or 4 minutes. Add the prepared chicken soup along with some cooked rice and a generous handful of baby spinach. Bring the broth to a simmer, taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
• Gingered Chinese Cabbage and Mushroom Chicken Soup With Noodles: When you add the chicken thighs to the broth to cook, also add some quarter-sized slices of peeled fresh ginger. While the chicken cooks, cook some fine egg noodles or ramen-style noodles. Rinse the cooked noodles with cold water and set aside. In a pan, sauté sliced scallions, sliced mushrooms and thinly sliced Chinese cabbage or bok choy until the vegetables are just tender. When the broth and chicken are ready, remove the ginger slices and discard, shred the chicken and return it to the soup. Add the cooked vegetables and noodles. Finish with soy sauce and sesame oil to taste.

And the classic…

• Matzo Ball Soup: Family fave here, and not just my family. I confess that I use the boxed mix for my matzo balls. It produces perfect matzo balls every time plus it is so easy. Make the mix early in the day and refrigerate until ready to cook. Right before boiling, use a cookie scoop to portion out the mix, rolling each portion to get a nice round shape. While the matzo balls are cooking, prepare fine egg noodles. Add a few matzo balls and some egg noodle to large soup bowls or pasta bowls. Pour the soup over them and serve. Chopped parsley, optional.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is a professional chef, but she’s a quick-and-dirty home cook too.

From the living room through to the front hallway chez Cavanaugh, a many-paned experience. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

SOMETIMES one has something to say about plants (theoretically what this column is about), other times not so much. Like now, when the air is icy and the wind howls.  

So I offer instead a rumination on the beauty of doors.

I was thinking of this the other night when My Prince took strong issue with something and I stomped off upstairs to take to my bed, burrowing under the quilt with another installment of 22 Oxford Street, Alexander McCall Smith’s epic series. Oh, that man makes me laugh.

Meanwhile, wafting up from the kitchen (he’s in charge of clean-up) was much cussing and slamming. I never realized we had so many doors, though I suspect he opened and slammed several an additional few times. I wasn’t counting.  

Doors are good for so many things. Handy for playing hide and seek, though we don’t do that much anymore. Handy for hiding things. Handy for feeling snug.

In this house we have more doors than mirrors, which is saying a lot. But we’re not talking about mirrors right now. Maybe next week.

In the downstairs hallway there are five, including the French doors that open to the living room. Most have many panes, or lites, as they’re formally known. Another set of French doors leads from the dining room to the back porch and the garden beyond.

This level of the house is scarcely much over 500 square feet, minute in an age of mansionettes, to describe such charitably. Considering the space, that’s a lot of doors.

Other than closets, the house has 19 doors in all, 21 if you count the garden, which has two. The garage door has a lovely arched window with five panes. Flanked by two windows, with the roof dripping with wisteria, it feels like the entry to a charming cottage. (Please don’t go inside: The enchantment abruptly ends when the door opens.)

I include here the Victorian screened door to the little solarium off my office, which serves no purpose other than to set a romantic mood. I suppose that is a purpose, though My Prince considers it an irritating obstacle.

It was the French doors leading to the living room that entranced me when we first looked at this century-old house. A fixed glass transom above spans the width. The 15 panes in each panel play with the space, like a picture wall. Through this one I see an edge of mantel, fire flickering. Through that, a portion of a vase is framed. The greens in the vase are in the next panel up. And so forth.

What are those broken-up portraits called? Triptychs. What is a picture divided into 30 segments called? I look it up. “Polyptych, is the term for all multi-panel works,” says Wikipedia. Okay.

So the living room is there, but not there. Like small individual portraits of a living room, bits of life framed. I know what’s beyond the doors, but viewing the scene through glass imbues it with mystery. I’m Alice, wandering through the looking-glass.

I don’t grow tired of this.

The French doors to the porch and the garden beyond perform similarly. Here’s the wicker back of a chair with a portion of a flowered cushion exposed. There a tray spilling with newspapers and a mug of coffee. In April a backdrop of cherry blossoms (lasting for a week or a day depending on the weather) broken into bits.   

I wish we had pocket doors between the living and dining rooms. There is instead an archway, which is what it’s called, though that seems weird since it’s squared off. It might also be called a post-and-beam entry or by the delightfully pretentious moniker, which I’ve just discovered, trabeation (that’s tray-bee-AY-shun).

“Nobody’s going to know what the hell that is,” says My Prince. I don’t care, since this is just the sort of word I like to fling about, waving a rhinestone cigarette holder, which I happen to have in some drawer.   

But that is neither here nor there.

If we had pocket doors, big solid wooden ones, I would close them before the six guests I can comfortably seat in the living room (if the dog gets off the sofa) arrive for dinner. Then, with great drama, they’d glide open when the meal is served, revealing the table with candles and small lamps lit, glittering crystal and slightly tarnished silver (how else would you know it was real?).  

Meanwhile, builders have been breaking down walls and eliminating barriers, also known as doors. One could bowl in such spaces. (That such homes are cheaper to build yet, being currently chic, command a higher price tag might also account for some of the attraction).

Thirty-six years ago, when we were looking for an old house in Washington’s historic Capitol Hill neighborhood, it was difficult to find one that hadn’t been renovated.  Open space was modern, cool.

Then old ways were rediscovered. Cast-iron radiators with their embossed scrolls and twiddles again had snob appeal—original, everything’s still original, we boasted.  

Then time again turned. Fine old things are being tossed along with the silver, the china, the books (what is a home without books?). Marie Kondo has folded our drawers.

One day tastes will change yet again and doors will go back up, probably rather soon.

Don’t we all need something to slam?

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” sometimes writes about gardening, sometimes not.

iStock

The weather demands these recipes ideas. This story first appeared January a year ago.

AT MY HOUSE, and I suspect at many others, the most common last-minute dinner is pasta with spaghetti sauce. It’s a pantry meal—you literally can cook a package’s worth of pasta, add a jarred sauce and you’ve got dinner. Sadly, like most things you can cook with very little effort, it’s filling but not very interesting.

My solution is to kick up the sauce. In the process, not only does this result in a more flavorful sauce, the whole dish becomes more substantial. The obvious add-in is browned ground beef or sausage, and this makes a very hearty sauce. But it’s not the only way. I can make the sauce seem really fresh with diced vegetables, or boost the protein (the current culinary buzzword) with chickpeas, or go a little Fra Diavolo with shrimp and red chili flakes. You get the idea—in fact, you probably have a go-to list of your own; but here are a few of my ideas.

Okay, I admit I’m not really into jarred sauces, but I need “quick” too, so when I have time I make a big batch of my own base sauce. I use Pomi-brand strained tomatoes, which comes in an aseptic box you can find at many stores, including Whole Foods and Wegmans. I like Pomi because it is pure tomato—no salt, no seeds, no peel—but canned crushed tomatoes work as well. I sauté some diced onion and garlic, add the strained or crushed tomatoes, dried oregano or a mix of Italian herbs, freshly ground pepper, sugar, salt and red wine. Let it all cook together for 25 or 30 minutes, tasting along the way and adding more sugar, wine or salt to balance the flavor. After the sauce has cooled, I pack it away in the freezer in 2 -cup containers, all ready for the next dinner emergency.

Spaghetti Sauce With Diced Carrots and Zucchini:  For every 2 cups of sauce, dice 1 small onion, 2 to 3 medium carrots and 2 medium or 3 small zucchini. Sauté the onion with a little salt in olive oil until it starts to soften. Add the carrots and zucchini and sauté over medium heat until the vegetables are tender, adding salt and pepper as needed. Add the spaghetti sauce, heat until warmed through, and serve.

Spaghetti Sauce With Chickpeas and Sweet Onion: For every 2 cups of sauce, use 1½ cups cooked chickpeas and 1 small onion, diced. Sauté the onion with a little salt in olive oil until it starts to soften. Add the cooked chickpeas, the zest of 1 small lemon, and salt and pepper as needed. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, add the spaghetti sauce, heat until warmed through, and serve.

Spaghetti Sauce With Spicy Shrimp: For every 2 cups of sauce, use 1 pound raw shrimp and 2 to 3 tablespoons minced garlic. Peel and devein the shrimp. If the shrimp are large, cut them in half. I like to cut them down the back, almost like butterflying but cutting all the way through, but you can cut them any way you want. Sauté the garlic over medium-low heat with a little salt in olive oil until it softens. Turn the heat up to medium-high, add the shrimp and a pinch of red hot chili flakes. Cook until the shrimp turn pink, add the spaghetti sauce, heat until warmed through and serve.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

You can see other dinner ideas from LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” by searching: My Dinner With.

Stephanie Cavanaugh’s mama, photographed by Stephanie’s dad. / Photo by Jerry Siegel.

MAMA INHALED deeply, eyes slowly closing.

“What do you think, Lynn?” asked her 30-something buddy Bud, looking at her anxiously across the dinner table, as if she were assessing his first attempt at making a brisket.

“It’s good,” she said thoughtfully, “but not as good as the Colombian we had last week.”

And so it was I learned my mother was smoking marijuana.

Shocking to think my mother was a few years younger than I am now. At the time I thought her so . . . mature. I learned to make latkes from her, as well as the aforementioned brisket, and chopped liver, not to mention matzoh balls as light as air, and how to dry napkins so they scarcely needed ironing. (Fold and stretch while they’re still damp,, lay flat to dry.)

She was, in short, a mother. Always serving two vegetables along with the meat. Throwing out my old jeans laced up with rawhide where the zipper had busted. Yelling at me to clean my room. Sewing silk palazzo pants for my senior prom when I couldn’t find what was in my mind’s eye.

Unless they lived on a commune or were having a Georgia O’Keeffe moment, 60-something-year-old mothers did not smoke grass in 1977, which is about when all this took place.

So to say I was shocked as the joint passed its way from Bud to his girlfriend Astrid to Mama and then me would be an understatement.

“What the hell is going on?” I squawked, too stunned to smoke.

My dad had died a couple of years before and Mom had moved to a smaller apartment right next door to the one I grew up in on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She had two terraces that scalloped along the 18th-floor roofline, with not another tall building within 10 blocks. There was an unobstructed view of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.

This was fortuitous, since it turned out that she wasn’t just smoking marijuana, she was growing it, along with her shrubs and bulbs. She was a fine plantswoman.

“I have a southern exposure,” she told me by way of explanation, which wasn’t much of an explanation. And I had visions of helicopter blades thwap-thwapping over the terraces, cops with bullhorns: “What’s that you’re growing, lady?”

I was separated from my first husband, living cool in an old apartment building in Washington DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood and selling esoteric remaindered books for a local company. As usual, for me, it was a job that paid virtually nothing and had no future but had a great fringe benefit: shuttling to New York for a week every month or so.

Above and on the front, iStock photo.

Mom was curious about marijuana. She knew I smoked some, but I hadn’t flitted off to San Francisco. At 29, I was on my third or maybe fourth career, but I was managing to support myself. So my brain had not imploded.

It was Michael who initially turned her on. He and his wife Astrid (yes, the same Astrid we met above with Bud) bought our old apartment and became Mom’s surrogate kids. He was a stockbroker who’d made his millions and more or less retired, keeping a few clients that he handled from home. She was a free spirit, designing edgy clothing for Norma Kamali.

Mama fed them, picked up their packages and mail, and watched their hermit crabs when they were vacationing in Aspen or Rome.

Then Astrid ran off with Bud.

Michael and my mom grew closer. They’d ride to restaurants and the theater on his motorcycle; she’d take him chicken soup and fluff his pillows when he was ailing.

The building gossiped about them; it was very Harold and Maude.

Her smoking grass came about this way, he later explained: One sunny April afternoon they were hanging out at his place when Michael lit a joint and passed it to her, as he’d done several times in the past. She as usual declined, he as usual urged her to try it. “The worst that will happen is you’ll fall asleep,” he told her.  So she did.

Then the phone rang—a client, he told me—and he was on the phone for a while, watching as Mom went to the fridge and took out a container of Cool Whip and, sitting on the floor, ate it with her finger (a scratch cook, I doubt she knew what it was).

Then she passed out smiling on the sofa. A totally satisfactory first experience, I’d say.

Meanwhile, Astrid and Bud, who remained close with Mama, were living in a dismal flat around the corner with a view of an airshaft.

It was somewhere between my visits that Bud persuaded her to plant his scavenged seeds—and such fine bushy plants she grew! Pinching them back and drying leaves on paper towels she kept in the bookcase, a different towel for each variety, each neatly marked, they tasted and judged. Bud continued to buy weed for their experiments.

And everyone got happily stoned.

Leaving her after this trip, she pressed a bag into my hands. “Here’s a little pot for your new kitchen,” said the tag.

I laughed.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is part of the hippie fringe of MyLittleBird. In her city garden she grows things other than marijuana.

iStock photo.

This piece is from MyLittleBird’s tasty dinner-idea archive and seemed right for right now. It originally ran in November 2017.

IN THE NAME GAME, meatloaf is a loser. When you name recipes, you want to arouse interest and make people hungry. There’s nothing enticing about the descriptor “loaf,” unless you’re referring to bread. And it doesn’t help that there’s a lot of bad versions of meatloaf out there. On the flip side, a good meatloaf is among the best of American comfort food. The perfect meatloaf is a blend of flavors, slightly sweet and slightly spicy, with a crisp exterior and soft inside. Even better, for the time-pressed cook, meatloaf is the perfect convenience food. The meatloaf can be mixed and formed into the loaf in the morning, covered and refrigerated, and at dinner time popped right into the oven to bake. That’s great because my family are big fans of meatloaf.

The basic formula: I still use the basic formula I came up with as a youngish bride trying to impress my husband: 2 parts ground beef (with 20% fat), 1 part ground pork, 1 egg per 1 ½ pounds meat, a few tablespoons breadcrumbs, ketchup/seasoned tomato sauce and grated Parmesan cheese. I like to season with Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and sautéed onions.

As with most meals, I sometimes have to change things up based on what I have around. I prefer panko breadcrumbs (you know, the very crisp Japanese version), but I use what I have. A chopped-up piece of bread will do in a pinch. I keep dehydrated toasted onions around; they make a quick fix if I don’t have time to chop, sauté and cool onions. The loaf can be spiced up with seasonings and sautéed vegetables at will. Once the meatloaf mix is ready, test for seasoning by cooking a small patty of the mixture.

Here’s the bacon part: The last steps are the most important. I line a rimmed sheet pan with heavy-duty foil—a shallow roasting pan would work as well. I form the meatloaf mixture into an oval loaf on the foil, no more than about about four inches high. Now comes the most essential step. I wrap about 4 slices of bacon evenly spaced down the loaf, tucking the ends under the loaf—the bacon will look like stripes across the length of the loaf. It doesn’t matter exactly how you arrange the slices, just make it even. The loaf goes into a 350-degree oven to cook low and slow for about 60 to 75 minutes (it may take a little longer if it’s really cold when it goes into the oven) until it registers 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer when tested in the thickest part of the loaf.

When it’s done, let it rest 15 minutes so the juices don’t all run out when you slice it. Use two large spatulas to transfer to a cutting board or serving platter and enjoy. It’s a dish that’s best served warm.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is a mom and has been a professional chef and recipe developer.

An assortment of “smoking gear” at the Higher Limits store in Washington DC. / Photo above and on the front by Monica Weddle.

FOR YEARS I stashed a joint in Uncle Jimmy’s humidor, a heavy mahogany cigar casket, with a  glass liner, that sits on the radiator beside the front door. Of course, this was used for medicinal purposes only, as from time to time I need a psychological boost to clean the house. The Pointer Sisters go very well with this activity, I have found.

Oh, the dusting I did!

Alas, my little stash is long gone, and the house has gone to pot, as it were. If I only had some seed . . .

Meeting a handsome, excessively tall young Jamaican at a Washington holiday party I asked what he does, as one does, and he said he’s in the marijuana-growing business, a startup, based in New Jersey. He’s hoping to begin importing some fine island weed.

I whispered (all very entre nous, you know), “Maybe you know where can I get my hands on some?”

“On H Street Northeast,” he said, taking a bite out of an empanada. “Just past the Giant.”

What?

“It’s legal,” he said. “For personal use up to two ounces.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I thought you couldn’t buy it yet.”

“You can’t,” he said. “You buy something from the shelves, a T-shirt with Bob Marley or Barack Obama smoking a spliff and you’re given a ‘gift’ of a bag of weed.”

(One must become au courant with the current lingo, I think. I do like spliff, it’s so . . . roll the Marlboros in my shirtsleeve. Do I need a tat next? No, I think not. That’s an aside.)

Of course, with Baby in town for the holidays, this turned into your typical mother-daughter trip. Please pardon my puns; they appear to be unavoidable.

Bong, bong, bong at the Higher Limits store in Washington DC. / Photo by Monica Weddle.

We didn’t go to the shop near Giant; it seemed to be closed for the day, or for an hour, or perhaps forever. We went instead to Higher Limits, located a few blocks east, hidden behind a locked door just inside the entry to Pizza Walay.

It feels a little illicit, shady, like a speakeasy. You press a barely audible buzzer for entry, then climb a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor where several stony-faced and brawny bouncers check IDs before letting you pass. You have to be over 18, see.

(At some point ID checks are no longer flattering, have you noticed? That’s another aside.)

The shop is maybe 20 feet square, with goods invitingly displayed on shelving suspended along the walls. While I was kind of looking forward to that Obama T-shirt, this place offers only smoking apparatus, which is more useful, I suppose.

One wall was devoted to bongs, many of them leaning toward boy-joke stuff, like the naked woman with a smoke-hole in her belly. Another wall was split between a selection of quite beautiful hand-blown glass bongs and pipes, all swirly colors, the little ones suitable for hanging from a necklace if you want to look totally chill mama.

Interesting that this weed-buying appears to be a guy thing—like wine-buying has been, in my experience. And thus it remains. Apart from the two young woman who were running the place, there was only one other female customer—and she was with her boyfriend.

To get the dope on dope, we waited for a lull in the slipstream of quite respectable-looking guys blowing in, picking something from a shelf, and headed for the register.

We were told you get the “gift” only with a purchase of smoking gear, which ranges from about $15 to $60.  The purchase determines the size of the gift.
Picking out a cool Chinese red glass pipe, I was offered a choice of Purple Punch Indica or something else which I forget. Both are “downers,” which sounds bad but is good—leaves you mellow, the clerk said. I took the Purple Punch. I like purple.

Higher Limits also has an array of hemp/CBD (cannabidiol) products, which are derived from the cannibis plant but do not get you high, nor do they qualify for “gifts.” They do promise relief from aches and pains when applied topically as a salve, or taken internally as drops, or infused in various blinds like gummy bears or honey.

Hemp and cannabis counteract each other, by the way. So one or the other at a time, please. Such an authority I’ve become!

If you’re interested in hemp/CBD products, I would suggest you try the California-based and strangely wonderful “nuns” at Sisters of the Valley. The prices are better, and the new-age sisters are just so damn amusing.

One last note. Thanks to several intense acupuncture sessions for my little cigarette habit, I can no longer inhale smoke, so an alternative delivery method becomes necessary.

While the traditional brownie batch was tempting, hiding them from The Prince would be impossible. He detests drugs of any sort but has a nose for chocolate. Baby fears he’d find the batch and down them, Irish blue eyes slowly rolling back into his head. Not a good thing.

So I consulted the website of Laurie Wold, whom The New Yorker once called “The Martha Stewart of Marijuana Edibles,” and found her recipe for cannabis-infused simple syrup, which can be added to tea or margaritas or sauces. I put the jar in the fridge with a label saying, “Mommy’s. DO NOT TOUCH.” I think this will work.

(Glad he was out of the house when I cooked this up—my god it smells awful).

Canna Simple Syrup

Ingredients

• 3 cups water
• 4 grams cannabis chopped fine
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 3 tbsp vegetable glycerin

Instructions

Bring the water to a low boil.

Slowly add the cannabis, stirring frequently.

Next, add the sugar, stirring to dissolve.

Cook for 20 minutes, covered, not allowing the mixture to boil too vigorously.

Remove cover and add glycerin.

Continue cooking, gentle bubbles, for 7 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly. The mixture will thicken.

Allow the syrup to cool and transfer to a measuring cup with a spout. (Less spills!)

Strain the syrup through a small strainer and cheesecloth. Best kept in the fridge.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” sometimes grows stuff but sometimes buys—at retail.