Afternoons when I am hungry and wish that I had a personal chef, I make a Marjorie Morningstar lunch, named in honor of the protagonist in the Herman Wouk novel of the same name.

It all began when I was thirteen and an avid reader. I was home alone and hungry and didn’t want to stop reading to make lunch. I wanted it to appear with minimum effort and attention so I turned on the oven, scrubbed the biggest potato I could find, poked holes in it with a fork and put it in the oven. I enjoyed an uninterrupted hour of the melodrama of Marjorie’s quest for love and adventure and the details of her life on Central Park West in New York City while my potato baked in a kitchen, on a hilly street, in a suburb of Pittsburgh.

A weekly trip to the library and a baked potato lunch became my Saturday ritual. The first lunches were simply a baked potato topped with a lump of butter, a pinch of salt and lots of black pepper. It wasn’t long before I added an onion to the menu. I poked the root end of an unpeeled onion with a paring knife, nestled it into a cup made of aluminum foil to catch the juice, and roasted it along with the potato. Roasting made the onion soft and sweet and the onion made my lunch more interesting. The next improvement was influenced by the flavor combination of potato latkes and sour cream that I had enjoyed at a kosher deli. I imagined that Marjorie Morgenstern, aka Marjorie Morningstar, ate something similar in a New York deli.

Caviar came after sour cream. My mother worked in a large grocery store and when I had to wait for her, I wandered the aisles of the market looking for exotic new foods. I was amazed when I found a tiny jar of black lumpfish caviar that cost less than two dollars. It wasn’t sturgeon caviar from Russia but it was caviar that I could afford. Even Noel Airman, Marjorie’s grand passion, would be impressed by a baked potato topped with sour cream and a spoonful of caviar.

I haven’t thought about Marjorie Morningstar for years and discovered today that I can’t get a copy for my Kindle but I’ve have continued to create tasty and quick meals that begin by baking a potato. Here is my list of rule for making the perfect baked potato: … read more

Later in the week my friend Annie and I would share a mushroom soufflé for lunch, a holiday tradition we looked forward to. It may seem daunting, but a soufflé is just a white sauce enriched with egg yolks, flavored with sauteed mushrooms, lightened with egg whites, topped with cheese and baked.

It’s easier than putting tinsel on the Christmas tree! Here’s how I made it:

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For a number of years, the arrival of a large, oval basket filled to the brim with fresh mushrooms at our front door in the middle of December, marked the beginning of gift giving in our Washington, D. C. neighborhood.

Our neighbor Robin and his family spent most weekends at their country house in eastern Pennsylvania and he brought mushrooms from Kennett Square, the mushroom capital of the world, for everyone on the block.

Three pounds of mushrooms, especially the week before Christmas, when the fridge was filled with holiday fare, presented a cooking challenge, so many mushrooms and so little time. Mushroom soup was the first recipe I thought of when the mushrooms arrived. Served with crusty bread and a green salad, it made an easy dinner during a busy week. Here’s how I did it: … read more

A gathering for a holiday or a family celebration that centers on a meal provides the perfect opportunity for a food fight.

I don’t mean the kind that involves a cream pie in the face, champagne sprayed around the table or peas slingshot across the room. I mean friendly, family disagreements about the best cranberry sauce. Should dessert be apple or pumpkin pie? Are creamed onions or a green bean casserole mandatory? Will there be chestnuts in the stuffing? Most picture perfect holiday meals exist only in magazines and movies, with a group of strangers presented as family, dressed by stylists, sitting at a perfectly decorated holiday table. Real holiday meals are an opportunity to share a favorite recipe and no one will complain that the second version of cranberry sauce has spoiled the symmetry of the table.

My favorite cranberry relish was inspired by a recipe from my friend Lynda. I added a chili pepper when I made it last year. Here’s how I did it: … read more

I found a container of tomato sauce in the freezer and I had enough leeks left to make Charles favorite vegetarian pasta for dinner.

I made a second sauce with three small leeks, cream and rosemary. It transformed the leftover tomato sauce and linguini into an elegant dinner. Here’s how I did it:

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