Author: Ann Bauer

It is a firmly established fact about human beings that we want what we cannot have. Once stores run out of Furbees or fetal Cabbage Patch babies or giggling Elmos, suddenly every mother’s child must have one. When exorbitantly-priced iPhones hit the market already in limited supply, people line up at 2 a.m. I’ve heard…

Truth to tell, I’m not a big fan of these end-of-year Top Ten lists. They tend, I think, to be both subjective and showy: meaning listmakers record either what’s obscurely relevant to them or what will demonstrate their great intellect and breadth of knowledge, or both. Two years ago, for instance, every book reviewer in…

I’ve spent only one Christmas alone — and by "alone," I mean myself and three young kids. I was recently divorced. My parents were visiting my sister’s family in Philadelphia. And my ex-husband, a "recovering" Catholic and practicing alcoholic at the time, had slid into his annual holiday slump. This is how I found myself…

I had dinner with Robert Bly last week. Now you may think the biggest perks of my job involve food and wine and freebies but it’s not true. The best thing is meeting people like Bly and being able to ask anything I want. And here’s what I wanted to know: What’s up with men?…

It is a fact that I have never made a decent pancake. My children could tell you this. For years, when they’d have friends sleep over and I’d offer—in the morning—to whip up my special whole wheat-and-yogurt pancakes, I’d get an urgent “No! That’s alright. We’re not hungry.” Then they’d sneak off to devour a…

Maybe it’s an Edina thing. You step inside the city limits and suddenly you rather like a restaurant server who eyes you suspiciously for several minutes, then approaches sniffily to ask what you want. You don’t mind paying 20 percent more for a loaf of bread with goat cheese and olive tapenade than you would,…