Love is the perfect pillow when you need it most.

If given a last meal request, most people would request steak, fried food and creamy desserts. But not this crazy Italian. She'd request Bitter Italian Vegetables sauté. It's a flavorful dish, easy to make and versatile. You can use it as a main meal adding sausage, as I did above, or toss it with penne pasta. […]

The Phaestos Disc is a round clay disc of roughly 16 cm (6 inches) in diameter. It was discovered at Phaestos (in Crete) in 1903. It's inscribed on both sides with pictorial symbols that spiral from the circumference into the center. Spiral themes are a huge design element in Minoan art and writing, featured on everything such as sarcophagus', […]

If you told me 10 years ago, I would adopt a lunatic dog from Taiwan with a serious case of crackery-nosis, maybe I would believe you. But if you told me I would be journaling his ridiculous behavior on the Web and writing in his ridiculous tough-guy Raymond Chandler voice, I'd laugh and ask you who […]

Do you people know how hard it is to get a shot of the infamous Mont Blanc? Seriously Internet. When we walk by it every day and try to shoot it with a "point and shoot" camera (the only one I take on dog walks), the results are less than fabulous. The snow washes out against the sky […]

This cooking thing is new to me. In my pre-Swiss life, I had a career and a two or three big hobbies that kept me too busy to try to do more than a few pastas, sautés, rice dishes, easy soups and salads. I've been trying for about a year to get my beef braising right. […]

On this day, 10 years ago, Mr. Wild Dingo and I were performing a rumba for 160 people. Ten years ago, when we said "I do," neither one of us dreamed we'd be living abroad. Our wedding seems like a lifetime ago. The last 3,652 days have been filled with humor, happiness, stress, change, growth and […]

Aging. It's what happens when you least expect it. One day you're full of joie de vivre, the next, you're pureéing fruits and vegetables and making green smoothies because your digestive system went on strike. It's so not fair. I don't even have dentures.

Switzerland is a dream vacation or home for most cyclists. Unfortunately, I haven't been cycling as much as I'd like because cycling gives me the crazies. Seriously. When I exercise very hard, my heart rate goes up, naturally, just like everyone else's. But unlike everyone else's, it doesn't come down after I stop riding-- for days. […]

The Food. I didn't expect to like, let alone love, the food in Turkey. I tend to love mediterranean cooking and though there's no pasta or risotto, I couldn't help see the similarities to Italian cuisine. The olive oil, the grilled veggies and the baklava found all over Istanbul held a striking resemblance to my family holiday […]