Remember when I said this isn’t a cooking blog? And you said, well, dummy, I know that—obviously it’s a baking blog, right? No, please. I don’t write a baking blog. I write about life, and sometimes I bake stuff because…
If I were alone in the world and needed a friend, the first place I’d go is the produce department of my local grocery store. I mean, have you ever noticed how the people who work in the produce department…
Modern conveniences and I are fast friends. I could not have lived in 1832; I would have figured out a way to have myself preserved until the twenty-first century, perhaps in a pickle jar—like the ones touted in The American…
My husband has a favorite misspelling story from his business life that has to do with the word “public.” Leave out the “l,” and you’re left with what is perhaps the most feared of all misspellings. I fell victim to…
A couple of years ago, my new Blackberry Storm was one of the best smartphones on the market. (Obviously this was pre-iPhone.) Its cool features and Verizon’s buy-one-get-one-free deal hooked my husband and me into buying a pair. I’ve rued…
I miss my stacks. Nicely, neatly organized stacks of canned goods, chocolate chips, cake mixes, napkins and paper towels, cereal, gravy mixes, Crisco—if it kept well on a shelf, I had six or seven. For 26 years (most of my…
1. Go to a stranger’s house.2. Seat the child in a chair next to you and seat the strangers around you.3. Turn off the lights and turn on a movie with the same rating as the one you’re planning to…
I want to make a tall, snow-white coconut cake, with a light, fluffy frosting that’s covered in big, fat coconut flakes. I saw it on the cover of Family Circle, and it looked irresistible. I also want to bake a…
When four of us were all living in the same house, I made chicken pot pie from scratch. Everything about it was homemade, including the gravy and the pie crust. The only thing that would’ve been more authentic would be…
I’ve been pestering my husband to take me to Secretariat. Since it’s gone from the major theaters, I had little hope of seeing it on the big screen. Then I saw an ad for a second-run theater here in the…
