First I have to say that we don’t generally even like restaurants. Food cooked at home is usually better. The exception for us is South Indian Vegetarian. The three of us have debated about whether it’s worth driving 4 hours to Queens for our favorite South Indian at Dosa Hutt. We never fail to miss this if we’re in the vicinity of New York. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that a South Indian Vegatarian place, Dosa Temple, had opened up nearby on Somerville Avenue right across …

Just finished reading Charlotte’s web to Mohan, out loud, for the third time. You probably remember the story — a barnyard spider named Charlotte’s saves a pig named Wilbur’s life by weaving words into her web. I love this book every time I read it.
Charlotte’s Web is a story about selfless love, and it also describes, with a lot of elegance, the messiness of living, and loving.
Bloodsucker
There’s a famous Hindu saying that goes, “I am food. I am eater of food. I am food.” Wilbur meets Charlotte when he’s feeling …

I went to the see the house under construction at Huntington Homes in Vermont on June 6th. Adam walked me through. I reached there in about 3 1/2 hours from Boston, thanks in part to the loan of my sister’s safe and zippy Honda Fit, lack of traffic and decent road conditions (I have to take a detour in to reach the factory due to recent flooding).
Adam took me through the four modules which were on the line in the huge hangar that is the factory. Walls were …

After reading the entire “Little House” series to my son Mohan (eight books in all) I went in search of a similar series for boys. After much searching, I found a recommendation on a the website of a Christian home-schooler (it could have been this one) for the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody.
Ralph vs. Laura
Ralph was born about 40 years after Laura Ingalls Wilder, in 1898, in New Hampshire. His family moves to Colorado in search of a better climate for his ailing father who likely has contracted …

This is one of my favorite books at the moment. It’s essentially an autobiography of Helen (and Scott) Nearing, famous before-their-time back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, and intellectual, and authors of Living the Good Life.
Helen and Scott went “back to the land” during the Depression, moving from New York City to rural Vermont. Scott was a professor who was basically barred from teaching in universities in the U.S. because of his “radical” views on child labor (he was against) and his opposition to the first World War. Helen, an accomplished violinist about 20 …