You'll be hearing from the staff at Food52 every week in Too Many Cooks, our group column in which we pool our answers to questions about food, cooking, life, and more.

So tomorrow is December. (Tomorrow!) This shouldn't surprise the lot of you that have somewhat regular access to calendars, but if you're like us, that sentence still makes your jaw drop a little. 

The holiday madness is quickly approaching (read: it's at a dead sprint, heading our way), but we're holding off for one more week. Soon this lovely site that we call home will be awash with edible gifts, holiday roasts, and too many cookies for us to all reasonably consume -- But not yet, people. Not yet. 

We'll be running essays about food memories on Feed52. Today, cookbook author Lukas Volger remembers his mother.

Growing up, I loved to cook with my Mom. We were a team when she hosted dinner parties or planned holiday meals, and every Sunday when she’d sit down at the table to map out the following week of dinners, drawing inspiration from a stack of clipped coupons she stored in an envelope that was always near to bursting, I sat with her and helped brainstorm menu ideas. She wasn’t necessarily an adventurous cook, mostly because she wasn’t comfortable improvising in the kitchen—she liked to follow recipes—but she loved when she found a recipe that worked. Many of her favorites were passed onto her by friends, or clipped from the newspaper, magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and McCall’s, or any of her Junior League of Boise cookbooks.

This week's peek into Walker's and Addie's lunchboxes is as easy as 1, 2, 3: liverwurst over ricotta on one slice of bread, another slice sprinkled with garlic oil to top them, and container of clementine sections for dessert.

Raise your hand if you're having a liverwurst sandwich for lunch, too. Nobody?

I happened to have a conversation with Addie after she and Walker took this to school for lunch, and I can report that she really enjoyed it! Virginia ham, cucumbers, and MissGinsu's recipe for Sweet and Spicy Pickled Ramps make a wonderful sandwich on brioche bound together with a swipe of mayo, plus a Cara Cara orange for dessert.

The pickles were leftovers from Amanda's Friday night dinner party, but it was more than just efficiency that prompted her to put them in the sandwiches. She says, "My kids love pickles and cucumbers so I try to find ways to tuck them into their lunches."

What's in your lunchbox?

We're so very close to asparagus season here in the Northeast -- the weather has turned, spring is in the air, and soon we'll be seein a lot more green at the market. But while winter is still in our minds, we dedicate our fruit of the week to the mighty citrus. Here's a paean to our favorite winter pick-me-up, as photographed by our very own citrus-addicted Kristy Mucci.

Click through for plenty of photos of glorious lemons, oranges, kumquats, and more.