Nana’s oven-baked fried chicken cut off the bone (with plenty of ketchup) was a huge hit. So were Thanksgiving turkey bathed in gravy and Nana’s Passover brisket

No matter our age, everyone in our household knows that cooking and eating together is where the fun is

Cooking is not a science but an art, mistakes are okay, messes are fine—the pleasure is in the creating and the sharing of the result.

I still have my little red hardcover notebook—spine now held in place by packing tape, pages dotted with cooking stains—filled with her loving instructions for mandelbrot, nut cake, and strudel.

I would follow my mother around the kitchen watching and trying to find any way to help. One of the first dishes my mother taught me to make was hollandaise sauce. Though she always served...