One time when I was a little girl, I decided to run away.  I stormed out of the house and began marching across the football field behind our home, hell bent on never seeing my parents again, probably for no better reason than they’d told me to clean up my room. … Read full post »

I once lived in a rainforest in Madagascar where about the only things people owned were a few pots and pans, a couple of knives and a change of clothes for market day and funerals. When I showed up with more things in my backpack than the average rainforest household will… Read full post »

Shortly after my parents separated when I was a teenager, I asked my mom if she and my dad planned to get a divorce.  “Oh, no!” she assured me, “that’s not necessary.”  I felt a momentary sense of relief before she added, “We divorced years ago, right aft/… Read full post »

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been in the kitchen much lately (except to make the requisite three meals a day).  I’ve been up to my neck in ghostwriting and avoiding the calorie overload that comes of filling the house with chocolate (and… Read full post »

When my daughter asked me for a new pair of shoes I had to tell her the truth.  “We can’t afford shoes until I get a job or Bob Dylan dies, whichever comes first.”  She wailed about the injustice of it… Read full post »

Growing up in a working class family deep in the heart of the Michigan auto industry, I always thought of myself as immune to the arrogance of extreme wealth, as if somehow I were innately more humane in my treatment of others.  Any fantasies of prosperity were inevitably accompanied by images/… Read full post »

It wouldn’t be Christmas without chocolate, though, let’s be frank.  It wouldn’t be daylight without chocolate in some households, including my own. And it sure wouldn’t be evening without chocolate, because there’s no sense… Read full post »

Years ago, back in the early eighties after reading too much Henry Miller to do a woman any good, I found myself in Paris, squatting in an old and dusty room above the legendary booksellers, Shakespeare & Company.  Not the Shakespeare & Co of Sylvia Beach and her salons, but the/… Read full post »

(The following piece appeared on Huffington Post, November 26, 2011)

I began to dread the calls.  I knew what he wanted: money, help, love.  But he’d gotten himself into this mess, I reasoned, and there was nothing I could do.  Any money I sent would go to drink, and… Read full post »

“I wish you were the kind of mommy who baked cookies,†my little girl said to me one day, a few years back, while I was taking dinner out of the microwave.… Read full post »

The other day I was in a restaurant-styled home kitchen complete with stainless steel counters, sinks bigger than bathtubs and stockpots the size of water towers.  But it was so disorganized and cluttered that when I tried to find a spoon I… Read full post »

In a recent Huffington Post piece I wrote on downsizing, a reader suggested I had a fab book or movie deal lurking in my tales of starting over.  But what crisis, she asked, had precipitated this downfall?  Ought I not at least hint at what it was that caused me to/… Read full post »

My mother died when I was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant.  Her last words to me were, “I just want to be left alone.” Mom always was a drama queen, and Greta Garbo had nothing on her when it came to comedic timing.  If she’d had… Read full post »

Dear Readers: the following piece on the New Jersey Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights appeared  in the Huffington Post today, and I'd like to share it with Open Salon.  As always, comments welcome!

September 1 marked a new day for bullies in New Jersey, who have been perversely granted grea… Read full post »

Making chocolate in the summertime ranks right up there with driving a convertible in winter, eating sushi in Nebraska and wearing white after Labor Day.  It’s just not done.  For one thing, summertime gets hot, and tempering chocolate properly can prove… Read full post »

Dear Readers: The following post appeared in Huffington Post August 9, 2011.

When the Huffington Post invited me to write on the topic of parenting, I thought it must be some kind of cosmic joke, as if I'd been asked to teach a class on parallel parking or advise the foolhardy… Read full post »

Dear Readers: I’m up to my neck in writing right now, and will have a fresh new chocolate post out in a day or two.  In the meantime, here’s one of my favorites… Read full post »

Lauren Adler, owner of Chocolopolis and Christopher Elbow

The following post was published in Foodista, the online cooking encyclopedia July 17, 2011

As readers of my previous posts on chocolate may know, my favorite/… Read full post »

“Our Gazelle has left Utah,” I said to my daughter just as we sat down to watch an episode of sex and violence.  She gave me a blank look and said, deadpan, “Next time a telemarketer calls, say that.  They won’t call… Read full post »

Note to Readers: I wrote the following post for another website but it looks like it will be sitting in the que for awhile, so I thought I’d spring it on you instead.  It has nothing to do with chocolate, but if… Read full post »

Reader be warned: the following post has nothing to do with chocolate, but who cares? 

Never trust a dermatologist in bangs.  It’s like letting a hairdresser in a wig come at your head with a pair of scissors.  Just say no.  They’re clearly hiding something.  Let/… Read full post »

I’m back.  There’s a reason you haven’t heard from me lately, and it’s all because of chocolate.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I named this blog The Chocolate Covered Kitchen.  Starting a blog about making chocolate means ha… Read full post »

My mother Neela loved her chocolates.  Russell Stover, mostly, though she’d never turn down a Whitman’s Sampler, while anything better was just too good to be eaten and only meant to be admired and sniffed, like the cap from her Chanel No./… Read full post »

There’s nothing funny about not eating chocolate.  Despite my previous declaration that it’s quite alright to gain weight, at a certain point it goes from insight to insanity.  I’d finally reached that point last week when nothing I tried on fit me/… Read full post »

Never leave a thirteen year old alone in the house; you’re liable to come home to find you’ve been put out of business before you even went into business.  At least that’s what happened to me when I told… Read full post »