Chick Wit

• Classic Column: Which Spices Would You Take To a Kitchen Island? April 19, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  There’s nothing like home improvement to improve your life.

  At least, not in theory.

  I say this because I’m adding a garden room to my house, even though I don’t even know if that’s a thing, because I have a garden and I want a room in front of it so I can see it through the window.

  Like TV, only without Andy Cohen.

  The garden room is attached to the kitchen and since it needed a door, the oven and cabinets had to be moved, and in any event, you see where this is going.  Adding a garden room meant that the kitchen got remodeled.  Because the thighbone is connected to the leg bone and the leg bone is connected to the wallet.

  Anybody who’s ever started home improvement knows that as soon as you improve one thing, you have to improve other things, so that everything is New and Improved, like detergent, only much more costly.

  But I’m not complaining.

  I feel lucky to be able to make these changes, and since I work at home, I’m spending 24/7 on the premises, I want to premises to suit me.  And while we’re turning that frown upside down, let me add that since I’m still terribly single, it’s great to have everything exactly the way I want.

  Finally.

  And then I’ll die.

  My epitaph will read:

  HERE LIES LISA SCOTTOLINE 

  DID SHE IMPROVE ENOUGH?

  To stay on point, remodeling the kitchen means that I’m starting to look hard at my priorities, namely, spices.  Please tell me that I’m not on the only woman who owns approximately 75,932 spices, accumulated over decades, and that the spices are dusted off every decade, which is the only time they’re even touched.

  I’m looking at you, cardamom.

  How this came about is that when I moved the oven, I lost the shelf above it, which is where I kept the aforementioned spices, and that meant that I had to find the spices a new home or concede the obvious and throw them out.

  So I began to cast a skeptical eye at my spice rack.

  And it took me on a tour of my own life.

  Let’s begin with Marriage Rookie Enthusiasm.  

  In that time period of my life, I had just married Thing Two, my daughter Francesca was young and I had two stepdaughters living at home.  I wanted to be not only the best mother of all time, but also the best stepmother, so I instantly bought American Mom spices, which you use when you bake apple pie.  You know the autumnal array of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

  To make a long story short, I made exactly one apple pie. 

  Divorce ensued, but I got custody of the spices.

  Then it was just Francesca and me, and being Italian-American, I decided that I was going to make homemade tomato sauce, or gravy.  Mother Mary made the best gravy ever, but she refused to give me the recipe because I was a lawyer.

  Don’t ask.

  I watched her do it and she always used onion salt, garlic salt, salt salt, and extra salt.

  No fresh spices were involved.

  Yet it was delicious. 

  Still I could never make gravy as good as she did, and in time I gave up, though I still have the garlic salt.  I feel certain that Mother Mary approves, smiling down from heaven and hoping that the garlic salt has solidified into a sodium bullet.

  The next stage of my spice life was Francesca going to college, and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to act mopey because I was an empty nester, and believe me, I got over that fast.

  LOL.

  But in spice terms, that was the time of my Indian Awakening, an idea I got from a Williams Sonoma catalog.  I bought every Indian spice known to man, extending well beyond starter curry into garam masala, turmeric, and vadouvan.  They came in round pots full of orange and yellow powders, like nightmare blusher.

  These were the coolest spices ever, but I never looked at them again because as an empty nester, I stopped cooking altogether.

  Which was coolest of all.

  This brings us to the present day, when the only spices I use are salt and pepper.

  They require neither shelf, rack, nor cabinet.

  They’re sitting alone together on the kitchen island, like survivors of a suburban shipwreck.

  Where they’ll stay until the next Williams Sonoma catalog comes in the mail.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Puppy Envy April 12, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I’ve been dog-sitting Daughter Francesca’s dog Bobby.

  And it’s created a problem.

  Because I like Bobby better than my dog Eve.

  Just kidding.

  Kinda.

  Let me explain.

  Bobby and Eve are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, a tri-color and a Blenheim respectively, and they’re both about a year and a half years old. Francesca and I are besties, so the dogs are besties, and they love playing together.

  But this last visit, I could see that Bobby is the model child.

  Guess who’s the problem child.

  Eve/Evil.

  Bobby is personality plus. He’s always in a great mood, he’s friendly to other people and dogs, and he loves to cuddle.

  I mean, really cuddle.

  Anytime I sit down, he sits right beside me.

  If I stretch out on the floor to read or watch TV, he comes over and rests his head on my shoulder.

  When I go to sleep at night, he cuddles on my pillow or sleeps with his neck on mine.

  I know that sounds crazy, but I love it.

  In winter, my neck was nice and toasty.

  And I could feel his little heartbeat.

  I slept better than ever, like he was furry Ambien.

  In contrast, Eve always sleeps at the foot of the bed.

  I pull her up to get her to sleep near me, but she won’t have any.

  She likes lying on my feet, which means I can’t move.

  And she barks to wake me up at 6:00 in the morning.

  Meanwhile I don’t have to get up until 7:30.

  I am my own boss.

  My office is downstairs.

  When Eve barks that early, Bobby will lazily open one eye. He’s in no hurry to leave our pillow paradise, either.

  Then he’ll lick my face, endlessly.

  Yes, we make out.

  He’s my Employee of the Month.

  He deserves a bonus — or a bone.

  Honestly, this is my kind of dog.

  Only he’s not my dog.

  By the way, Eve chews rugs, furniture, and wooden baseboards.

  Bobby chews nothing but food.

  His only bad habit is that he will find a sneaker, carry it around, and hide it somewhere. It takes a while for me to find both sneakers.

  Do I mind?

  No, it’s fun!

  Eve and Bobby are the Goofus and Gallant of dogs.

  The dogs are from the same breeder, who told us, “female dogs love you, but male dogs fall in love with you.”

  Before, I thought that sounded gendered.

  And I worried that Eve was getting the bitch edit, literally.

  But it’s true, of these two.

  In the end, one is sugar and one is spice.

  But if I could, would I trade Eve for Bobby?

  Not really.

  Eve is my sassy, spicy, bossy little girl.

  She might even be me in dog form.

  Adorable!

  Just in her own way.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline

• Queen of the One-Liners April 5, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  My mother passed away on Palm Sunday about ten years ago, and I always think about her around now, not in a sad way, but in a way that makes me smile.

  Maybe the following will make you smile, too.

  Because Mother Mary’s last days were everything I would’ve wanted for her, complete with her salty brand of humor. She had congestive heart failure, which is surprising for someone with so much heart, and she entered hospice at my house, with my Brother Frank and Daughter Francesca with her.

  I’m sure many of you have been through hospice with people you love, so you know what a uniquely terrifying and heartbreaking time it can be. But at the same time, what happened for my mother was glorious, and in many ways, a reflection of the way she lived her life.

  None of us knew how long she would live, but she was in pretty great spirits and no pain. So we set up a bed in the living room, but she didn’t need to lie in it and generally walked around the house or plopped on the couch in front of the TV, which was her favorite position.

  Mine, too.

  We invited friends of hers to come over, and since she hadn’t lived in the Philadelphia area for many years, they showed up in force. Everyone brought food, flowers, and good cheer, and we felt as if we were hosting a very unique sort of party every day, one that was especially meaningful to her.

  Then guess what.

  She got a second wind.

  And a second month.

  Mother Mary always loved a good time, and she reconnected with everybody she loved, among them a son from a previous marriage for whom she had been estranged almost all of her life. He was kind enough to come over and spend time with her, too, and the reunion did all of our hearts good.

  Hers, especially.

  As time went on, her throat became more strained and she couldn’t talk, so she wrote on a greaseboard. The first question any friend asked her was, “How are you?”

  To which she would always write: “Outside of all this crap, I’m doing fine.”

  I took a picture of her sentence above, and I love seeing it, especially now.

  My mother wasn’t the type to give a lot of advice in sit-down lectures. But she had a lot to say and fired off lines like that all the time.

  Jokes that made me laugh, then think.

  And those quips told everything about her.

  Think of the courage it takes to write that sentence.

  And at that point, she was dying.

  She went from no pain to no picnic in no time.

  We were swabbing her throat with sponge lollipops.

  But the way she lived her life was to set aside all that crap, and do fine.

  By an act of sheer will.

  Wow!

  I remember that line when I’m having a hard time, or when I’m seeing my country go through hard times.

  Dying can teach us so much about living.

  Outside of all this crap, we’re doing fine.

  So I honor her this week, which is so much about rebirth in Spring, and on Easter, which signifies resurrection for the Christian world.

  Mother Mary’s spirit lives on, undefeated.

  Brave.

  Proud.

  Happy.

  So does ours.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline

• We Want To Pump You Up March 29, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Well, it happened.

  I joined a gym.

  It was a New Year’s resolution and it’s almost April.

  I finally got started because I was on a plane and I couldn’t lift my bag into the overhead.

  I tried to, but it fell back down.

  Then another woman tried to help, and neither of us could get it up there.

  I was doing yoga at the time, via zoom, and I loved it, but my cardiologist told me that I needed to do weight-bearing exercises.

  Agree, because I can’t bear my own weight.

  My other impetus was Daughter Francesca, who joined a gym in New York City and goes three days a week. She’s gotten superfit, and she’s lifting all sorts of weights, plus doing squat thrusts and Bulgarian whatevers.

  And she told me, “Mom, you can do it, too!”

  Please tell me I’m not the only mother trying to impress her daughter.

  Who raised this kid?

  In any event, to return to point, I just got back from meeting my trainer.

  He’s 28 and he looks 14.

  He’s handsome, but that doesn’t matter to me anymore because I didn’t even wash my hair.

  I hope he doesn’t read this.

  First, we met in his office at the gym, and he asked me what my goals were.

  I did not say, to meet and marry Bradley Cooper.

  I was trying to be professional.

  So I get said to get stronger and that I would love to use those weight machines like Nautilus, back in the old days.

  And he said, “Well, those machines isolate only one muscle group.”

  And I said, “I know, I would like to isolate as few muscle groups as possible.”

  Actually I used to love those Nautilus machines because you did the exercises sitting down.

  I’m great with exercises you do sitting down. 

  I’m even better with exercises you do eating popcorn.

  Not to brag, but I’m great at multitasking.

  Sitting and eating is my superpower.

  I can also walk and eat. 

  In fact, I have a treadmill desk and I used to eat popcorn on it while I worked. The dogs learned to sit at the end of the treadmill and get the popcorn I dropped delivered to their mouth like a conveyor belt.

  Good times.

  But that was then and this is now.

  So my trainer devised a series of exercises for me, and I did them so he could watch me and see how bad things were.

  The answer is real bad.

  I don’t know what any of the exercises are called, but I did one exercise which was lunging on one side of my body, with my knee touching the floor.

  But I had a hard time getting up again.

  In front of everybody else at the gym.

  At least I was wearing a bra.

  I put it on special for the occasion.

  I almost took it off in the car.

  But I waited until I got home.

  The other exercise was squatting, so I suppose it was called a squat.

  Impressed?

  Anyway I squatted the way he told me to, sticking my butt out and stretching my arms forward, but I couldn’t get up and down without grunting very loudly.

  People looked over.

  And then I had to do something called Farmer’s Carry, which was taking weights in each hand and walking around, like you live on a farm.

  Okay, you think this sounds easy?

  It’s not.

  My hat is off to farmers everywhere.

  I did it, but by the end I was huffing and puffing.

  What’s funny is, I actually do live on a farm.

  So the way I look at it, anything I carry is a Farmer’s Carry.

  Even a Snickers bar.

  Copyright  © 2026 Lisa Scottoline 

• In Praise of Praise March 22, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I graduated!

  Or rather, Eve did!

  Last night, Eve graduated from obedience school.

  I cried.

  I cried at Francesca’s graduation, too.

  Allow me to tell you that my daughter was valedictorian at her high school.

  In contrast, Eve was not.

  Eve is basically the juvenile delinquent in her class.

  Or the juvenile dog-linquent.

  Sorry, I thought I was above puns but I’m not.

  Eve started in Puppy Kindergarten at six months, then took Elementary School, Middle School, and Manners Level One. She just now graduated from Manners Level Two.

  This dog is more educated than I am.

  I’m applying for student loan forgiveness.

  I’ve taken her to all of these classes, and she barked her way through every one.

  I’m crazy about this dog, but she never shuts up.

  She gets it from me.

  In the parlance, this is called a “reactive” dog.

  To me, she’s Italian.

  We have a lot to say!

  And I don’t want to sell Eve short. After a year of training, she has learned to sit, stay, heel, and come when called.

  At least, when she’s in class.

  Once I get her home, she goes from Eve to Evil.

  Also, her skills aren’t due to my great training, or even that of the wonderful instructors.

  It’s all because of cheese.

  Eve will do anything for cheese.

  I’m pretty sure she would sell the country out for cheddar.

  I got through our obedience classes by holding a tube of string cheese in front of her nose to get her to follow my commands.

  I call this a cheater move.

  Remarkably, the teachers did not.

  I love these teachers.

  And to be serious a moment, this past year has been the absolute most fun thing I’ve ever done, because Eve/Evil is such a spicy little dog that she keeps things interesting and the classes are so great at my training center, which is called “What a Good Dog.”

  What a good school!

  And so every Tuesday evening, I’ve been taking Eve to class and stuffing her with cheese that makes her fart all night.

  But she stays!

  And at her graduation, we got a certificate that says to “Lisa Scottoline and her Companion Eve.”

  It should probably say to “Eve and her Companion Lisa Scottoline,” but I never mind top billing.

  Our only problem is that Eve barks so much. This usually starts in the beginning when the dogs are coming in, and there are six dogs in class, so every time a new dog enters, she barks for about 5 to 10 minutes.

  I think she’s trying to make friends, but she’s socially awkward.

  She gives everybody a headache.

  I realized this tonight when the teacher was telling us about a rally class that I signed up for next and nobody else did. I said, “Come on, everybody sign up, I’m doing it!”

  And the faces remained blank.

  That’s when I realized that maybe nobody wants to do it with Eve.

  Or maybe me?

  Awkies.

  In any event, it was a great graduation night because for the first time we did a little obstacle course of all of the commands, and Eve stopped barking long enough to go through it and eat cheese.

  And then one of the other people said that I was really good at praising her, which I totally acknowledge.

  I kiss her ass constantly.

  I will do anything to get her to shut up.

  I was worried that she would flunk, but the teacher said nobody flunks.

  Yay!

  Let’s hear it for grade inflation!

  I think everybody should get a participation trophy, even if they bark a lot.

  Life is short.

  Don’t skimp on treats or praise.

  We all have obstacle courses we have to go through, every day, and there’s nothing wrong with a little help.

  That’s what I learned at doggy obedience class.

  And honestly, it’s the best lesson ever.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline