Friends have asked why I haven’t written about my four-year-old daughter. Some know me as a doting dad and conjectured that I was too deeply in love to make fun of her. Incorrect. I only make fun of people I love. And golfers and pickle-ballers. Okay, I make fun of a lot of people. But that very much includes the ones I love. It’s how I show love. I admit it’s immature and there are better ways to show love. And yet… here we are. Thus, I will take down my four-year-old. I will take her down because I love her. Once someone asked if I was raising a princess. I recoiled; I laughed. Have you seen how this world treats girls? In America they don’t have autonomy over their own bodies and earn 84 cents on the dollar relative to their male counterparts. In other countries they can’t vote or drive or choose what to wear. No, I am not raising a princess. I’m doing my best to raise someone tough enough for this world with tough love. Now for the tough love part.

Each year, the newspaper publishes a cook book just in time for the holidays, and this year will be no exception. Of course, leading up to this, we discussed the publication and how we would collect the recipes. In the past, lots of recipes were sent in, and that’s what created the foundation of the cookbook. This year, we haven’t received that many.