Articles written by Nancy Yos

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About me - Nancy Yos

Google me and you'll find there are actually two Nancy Yos-es (Yos-i?). Kind of odd. I'm not the one who writes feminist things for the Oprah website, bless her heart. If you keep Googling, you'll find me in a few back issues of Commentary, First Things,

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Entertainment > TV Genres & Trends Star Wars vs. Star Trek: 1 of 18

The Tholian Web." "The Gamesters of Triskelion." "Amok Time." Star Trek first aired when I was a toddler, so I missed it then, but I know I grew up with the famed reruns saturating the very air around me, because those episode titles remain eerily familiar.Nowadays my husband, never a science fiction person and never one to ... More..
Food & Drink > Recipes (Other) Recipes: Quick dinner recipes and ideas: 5 of 30
Probably the prize recipe in my repertoire is the one my family just calls "spaghetti." It's an amalgamation of two recipes, one from Marion Cunningham's Boston Cooking School Cookbook, and the other from a women's magazine that I glanced through in a waiting room about ten years ago. Marion Cunningham's "Fresh tomato sauce"... More..
Food & Drink > Fruits & Vegetables How to boost vegetable consumption for those who hate veggies: 5 of 28
For my family of vegetable-phobes, the way to inflict the good, health giving properties of green crunchy things (or orange or yellow crunchy things) in secret is to hide them all in soup. The vegetables, not the family. I rely on Madeleine Kamman's New Making of a Cook (1997) for my basic vegetable soup recipe. She says tha... More..
Education > Educational Philosophy How to continue your child's education through the summer months: 16 of 73
Go. Take public transportation into and around your city, not just to jump off at all the right museums, but to explore. Have lunch at an ethnic restaurant or bakery. Homework: look it up. What's the heritage of the owners, how do you make their signature sweet? (The theme culture.) Visit an unusual shop, and notice what's f... More..
Food & Drink > Fruits & Vegetables Passion for strawberries: 1 of 4
It's a simple recipe, from Jean Anderson's "The Food of Portugal." Steep fresh sliced strawberries in sugar - a few teaspoons, or to taste - and one quarter cup of ruby port. Eat. Mrs. Beeton essentially agrees, in her book written more than a hundred years before, but her recipe calls for sherry or madeira, and she means yo... More..
Creative Writing > Reflections Reflections: Funerals: 3 of 11
Having been to many funerals and memorial services in the past two or three years, and having found them unsatisfying, it occurs to me that there should be some sort of ritual of mourning for people who are not religious. There should especially be some kind of funeral or memorial ritual for those cases in which the deceased... More..
Food & Drink > Wine The many lives of the Chardonnay grape variety: 1 of 2
It's fun to come across a wine book from thirty or forty years ago and find that it now contains just slightly outdated information. The grapes don't change - much, although vitis vinifera in general is said to be quite prone to sudden sports and mutations (Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible) - and winemaking is still a matter ... More..
Food & Drink > Wine The most famous French red wines of all time: 1 of 1
They will be Bordeaux, and to know them we must master the famous "1855 classification." Think how fun. All wine books summarize the classification nicely. In that year, Emperor Napoleon III asked the authorities in Bordeaux to draw up a short list of the district's finest wines in preparation for an Exposition in Paris. Dif... More..
Arts & Humanities > Classical Lit & Mythology Book reviews: The Life of Alexander, by Plutarch: 1 of 1
The Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is one of those gigantic classics that you fear to approach. Who is this author, and what is he about? His book was the foundation of upper-class education from at least the Renaissance forward, it seems; I have elusive memories of reading that this queen or that, this general or that... More..
Arts & Humanities > Horror, Mystery & Suspense Book reviews: A Crime of Passion, by Stanley Loomis: 1 of 1
Now this is history. Keep, for the moment, kings and battles and social movements. Give me a hideous murder among the very hautest of the haute monde of Paris, on the morning of August 18th, 1847, and give it to me in the word-painting of a professional type who seems to have vanished from today's bookshelves. Stanley Loomis... More..