When I think of Halloween, I think hot dogs. People tend to find this
association odd, some are even angered by it, but to me it feels
perfectly natural. When I was younger, my mother used to grill hot
dogs in our driveway for the trick or treaters and dole out beer in red
plastic cups to the adults, providing a bit of a respite for parents
whose kids were running around the neighborhood injected with copious
amounts of sugar.
I was never much of a walker and I never got off on
travelling in packs (why I live in New York I don't know), but
even more importantly, I loved and still adore a good hot dog.
Essentially, this ritual made my Halloween quite perfect.
The ritual ended, sadly, when I moved to New York to go to
college. There are very few driveways in Manhattan, and there is a bar
or a Gray's Papaya on every street corner, so if people need a beer or
a frank, they are basically set year round. Nobody shared my passion
for hot dogs at Halloween, unless they were terribly after drunk taking
too many orange jello shots at some themed downtown party, in which
case that little beef wonder became something of a valuable commodity,
a bonafide savior in fact.
Every Christmas I used to cook a pecan pie from a recipe I found in one of Ann Landers holiday columns sometime in the sixties. Since I was thinking of making it again this year, I was thrilled to learn that Dear Abby also had a pecan pie recipe. Hoping to combine recipes to create my own distinctive version of the dessert, I got a copy of each. 
I enjoy spending hours cooking in the kitchen. Doing the prep work soothes my frazzled nerves. Watching a dish slowly come together as the various ingredients combine their flavors calms me down.
I have been making dream bars since 1990. It is a recipe I discovered in my Rose Levy Beranbaum 
(still, one of my favorites).
Cecilia was a ‘10’ on a scale of one to two. She had unmitigated primal passion. Her sexual appetite was unparalleled and horizontal. It was vertical and diagonal. When I suggested to Cecilia that we spend the Fourth of July in Hawaii, she responded by giving me a fireworks show in the bedroom that went on till daybreak.