Accounts of eating Christmas sweet potatoes baked in ashes and jackrabbit stewed with white flour dumplings are testaments to pioneer resilience and pleasure – and they help inspire my own best scratch cooking. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘Little House’ series is a national treasure, beloved by generations. But what I love most is the peek it provides into the planting, harvesting, hunting, and preparing of the foods that America’s settler families ate in the late 1800s. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
I’ve always liked the idea of memoirs, going into someone else’s life, going through someone else’s day and getting out of your own head. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
Sprinkling drops of lavender and clary-sage oil into a bath is a totally simple yet complex pleasure. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
After I clean my face, I use combinations of sweet-almond, meadowfoam, grape-seed, coconut, black-currant, and argan oils to hydrate. Argan is probably my favorite for my face. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
I dropped off my kids from 10 to 2, went to the library, and just wrote. This is my second career – I’m 41 – and I’m a terrible speller. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
I’ve always been the person at the table who is like, ‘I have this weird rash. Anybody else have this?’ Isabel Gillies Read Quote
You see, I am friends with a lobsterman. Because we are friends, which feels lucky anyway, I get access to the most amazing fish. It’s like having a backstage pass – a culinary jackpot that feels almost undeserved. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
Skeptical of strangers, lobstermen are keepers of secrets, working in the howling wind and hot sun, the icy snows, and bewildering fog. When I was growing up, the lore was that they had the right to shoot anyone who messed with their traps. Isabel Gillies Read Quote
