Home-cooked food strengthens our bonds when we are together, keeps us connected when we are apart, and sustains the memory of us when we have passed away.
SoHo, a neighborhood now completely different than it was when I moved to Manhattan in 1982. At that time, SoHo was nothing but “lofts” once used for manufacturing, in gorgeous mid-nineteenth-century cast-iron buildings. In the early 1970s, artists began to populate them because of their massive square footage, twenty-foot-high ceilings, and dirt-cheap prices. By the early 1980s, even though the number of tenants had increased, and galleries had already begun to occupy the storefronts, I remember the neighborhood having very little in the way of shops and restaurants, and come nine p.m., the streets were relatively empty. But within a few years after my arrival, there were countless galleries, eateries, clothing stores, and so on. (This had nothing to do with my arrival.) This gentrification inevitably forced many of the artists to move as rents increased or buildings were turned into co-ops or condominiums that they could ill afford.