Dark and Light at the Same Time

Or, Schrödinger's cat plots her revenge.

At the Heart of Common Ground

It's been a while since you heard from Bread and Stories...I think about this space daily, but free time has been hard to carve out from workaday life. As a freelancer with two separate areas of consulting, sometimes I have to keep many balls in the air

Food’s Best Friend: Greta's Magic Dog Mush

My wife Greta is viscerally wracked by the sight of a snake. Any snake, garden-beneficent or not. Her rectum spasms and her heart lunges into her throat as if to block the scream that could alert the snake to her bite-worthy presence. She screams anyway and flees. Unless

Momma's Thicknin' Gravy

It sizzled the moment it touched the iron, filling the little kitchen with the smell of salt-cured pork and hardwood smoke. I was probably no more than six or seven years old, but I already knew what came next. Thicknin' gravy.

When Everything Was Possible

Reminiscing about his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, my friend Larry said, "Back then, everything was possible." That wistful statement resonated far beyond its context. Back then—however far back you want to plant that bright flag of possibility in your or the nation's history—

Tea Biscuits and Sympathy

A chance to cheer on —and cheer up — a remarkable family.

The Machine Stops

“Beware of first-hand ideas!”

In Defense of Gruel

It's such an odd little word: short but drawn out, comical yet faintly sinister.

Hope on a Plate: the Power of Comfort Foods

I had craved the warming spices of the chai, but someone smiling at me with genuine warmth was the comfort I truly needed. In a world that often feels numbingly cold, comfort food and human community are both essential sources of warmth, and they are best served together.

Bittersweet Spring

Spring is time for feasts and festivals of renewal and rebirth—Easter, Passover, and Iran's Nowruz (literally "new day")—but this year it was hard to get into the spirit. I don't know if my friends in Iran are OK. Their internet is down,

Tea Is Our Wine: Tea and Manners among the Tuareg of the Ténéré

Tea is our wine. We drink it morning and night.

Squirrels in the Walls

Pondering the Enlightenment while defending the castle.

Valentine's Day

Tennis Matched: An Iranian Love Story

I told a version of these friends' love story for Valentine's Day two years ago. They are always the first people I think of when trouble boils over within Iran and between Iran and the U.S. It seems like a good time to retell their story...and to share Solmaz's world-famous walnut cookie recipe.

Jewish grandma

Waste Not, Want Not: Grandma Jessie's Secret Ingredient

Food and stories: in the case of my old Jewish relatives, it's impossible to separate the two.

Bread and Stories

Seeding the Story Vault

I think we tell and hear too few kinds of stories about ourselves...

chicken soup

Hidden Grace and Hot Soup

In our digitally intertwined, always-on lives, one of the more startling windows into another person's day is the accidental connection: the butt-dialed call, the mis-addressed email or text. Yesterday I answered the phone and heard a friend cussing at some "moron" in traffic.

refugee

Far from Home: Amna's Story

Amna's warmth, humor, and hospitality have touched many people in the small southern town where she lives. She and her husband work, raise their kids, and look out for their neighbors like any American family—but their journey to "ordinary" was anything but. Until a few

immigrant experience

Three Thanksgivings—and Cultural (Mis)appropriations

I share "Three Thanksgivings" in gratitude for my family. They truly deserve a Homs-at-Home sitcom, written just for them, starring them as themselves, except for me. I’d like Joan Chen to play a glamorous (finally!) version of me.

stories

Bread from Ashes

I was born in Misrata, a city on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, but I took my first steps in Tripoli where I grew up and spent most of my life. From an early age I was bilingual, speaking Arabic and Tamasheq, the Tuareg language. The two languages embody vastly different ways of being...