Fresh herbs growing right outside my back door. ‘Tis the season! Photo on the left was taken immediately after planting three weeks ago. Photo on the right was taken yesterday. Pot of mint added last week. ♦ ♦ ♦ Having an electrician friend willing to come to my house and correct that one, tiny electrical wiring mistake…
Category: Life
Stuffed Jalapenos
Bo in March 2014 “No cat likes to take medicine,” the veterinary technician said, “but this stuff tastes particularly bad.” Then she demonstrated how to draw up .04 ml of Gabapentin out of the top of the bottle into a syringe without a needle and placed the bottle in my hand. “Good luck,” she said,…
Siberian Huskies and Moscow Mules
This is Kai last week, the day after a veterinarian administered the husky’s first heartworm treatment. The medicine is a brutal, arsenical compound injected deep into a muscle in the lower back. It kills the parasite worms, which is great, but it also causes lesions within a dog’s pulmonary arteries, which is terrible. Heartworm treatment…
Pizza Sauce
Writing a Cookbook Wall post begins with either a random thought or a delicious flavor. Usually, the process is driven by a recipe which I decide is too good to keep to myself and must be recorded. It’s blog-worthy, and my daughters might want to make it someday. Sometimes I have a thought that isn’t…
Baked Beans (the Musical Fruit)
My violin teacher had one thumb and an open mind; a rich, baritone voice, and a job driving a truck between music lessons. A veteran of public school classrooms, he was willing to take a chance on me, a 42-year-old music novice with a fan-girl’s reverence for the instrument known as the closest thing to…
Breakfast Casserole
My breakfast casserole is delicious but not photogenic. So the photos here are of the roses that decorated my brunch table on Sunday, not the entrée. But, if you’ll permit a little indulgent metaphor, the real flowers in the bouquet were the faces around the table. This was a gathering of old friends, too-long absent…
Apple Butter
I didn’t go to the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market this morning with the intention of buying apples to make apple butter. I was actually on a futile hunt for the elusive kouign amann pastry made by Mylo Coffee Company. (They sold out long before I got there.) But a trip to a farmers’ market, even in…
Raves and Faves 18
Hot oatmeal in a red bowl, butter and brown sugar on top. ♦ ♦ ♦ Chanel Glossimer lip gloss in Giggle (#46). ♦ ♦ ♦ Clinton School of Public Service speaker series, through which the world comes to Little Rock, Arkansas. Two speakers in November 2013 held me rapt. The first was Dr. Eben Alexander, author of Proof of…
Christmas and the Non-Chocolate Offering
I can’t have been the only person in America balancing a ham on my hip on Christmas Day, reliving a memory. With a little imagination, ignoring the refrigerator chill, an 11-pound smoked ham feels a lot like a bundled baby. I took a few steps between the stove and sink and stove again, fully immersed…
Sausage Rolls
Regiments of Sausage Rolls, ready for the oven ♦ ♦ ♦ I don’t like surprises. I do like apple pies. My husband is an avowed, unrepentant, sour-face-making apple-hater, so, to avoid the calorie intake involved in eating an entire apple pie by myself, I satisfy my apple pie craving with a weekly purchase of the single-serving version…
Cookbook Wall 