All Things Considered

First of a three-part series

It's lunchtime, and Sarah Bullard and her four kids gather around the island in the kitchen of their Bristol, R.I., home. Her husband, a Navy officer, is out of town.

This kitchen is what sold her on the house on a snowy December day.

"We walked through, and it was a cluttered mess," Bullard says. "And we sort of looked at each other and walked through into the kitchen, and my husband looked at me and was like, 'Uh-oh. This is it. It's a beautiful kitchen.' "

During summer vacation, part of me wants to spend my hard-earned sheckles traveling the world and eating amazing food. The other part of me just wants to lie on the couch with a good book. Now, thanks to five delicious new food memoirs, I can do both.

The books — written by a reluctant, bad-girl chef; an avant-garde restaurateur; a slacker with a love of roast chicken; a Mideast war correspondent; and an American in Paris — are about love affairs with food, and the journeys that led their authors into the kitchen.

Several state lawmakers hiked Mount Democrat and Mount Lincoln today, in an effort to highlight the need for repairs to the capitol dome.

Like all of Richard Wagner's music, performances of his piece Siegfried Idyll, is unofficially — but effectively — banned in Israel.

It's not just that Wagner was an anti-Semite. He wrote a notorious essay called "Jewishness in Music." And after his death, Wagner's family was close to Adolph Hitler. Hitler often the attended the annual Bayreuth Festival, which is devoted to Wagner's music.

When the military stepped in and eased the way out for Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, its leaders insisted they only wanted to be a caretaker government, finding the best pathway to civilian and democratic rule. A new electoral law has been promulgated, and it looks like parliamentary elections will be held in November. Some in the military want the army to continue to play the role of safeguard for the new system that is emerging. But others — primarily the young — argue the military cannot be trusted with that kind of power.