If there’s any food in my life that really embodies that old cliché, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” it’s boiled peanuts. These things are everywhere in the Deep South. You can buy them at gas stations, roadside produce markets, the concession stand at the ballpark, or…
It’s tomato season in Minneapolis- at long last. Even after living above the Mason-Dixon line for the last 12 years, I still can’t get used to the fact that you can’t get a good tomato up here until August. I start craving tomato sandwiches in June, and every June, I…
While there are many, many reasons we love our newest apartment- generous size, great location, beautiful kitchen, etc. etc.- there’s one feature we’ve come to value above all, and that is ~central air conditioning~. In the 12 years since we moved away from the Deep South, this is the first…
A couple jobs ago, in a time when going to lunch with coworkers was a routine thing, I developed a bit of a reputation among my “ladies who lunch” group for always ordering the weirdest item on the menu. Granted, we mostly went to standard American cafés and gastropubs, so…
For the last several weeks, I’ve been on a Great British Bake-Off kick. To be fair, this is never exactly *not* the case; it’s one of my favorite shows, and I watch it pretty frequently. Bake-Off is everything I used to love about Top Chef, but with a fraction of…
Hello from here, over a year into this weird pandemic life. I should specify that “here” means—once again!—a different apartment than the last time we checked in! In addition to all the public health weirdness of 2020, some serious voodoo went down in our old building, and our residence there…
Hello from Minneapolis, where I am wrapping up my fourth month of this whole thing. I’m still happy to be working from my kitchen table instead of my office (and let’s be honest, it’s good to be working at all), but… I don’t even know, y’all. Some days it just…
Quick note– I’ve been writing this post for a couple weeks, and already the first paragraph has not aged particularly well– “content” is not exactly how I’m feeling in a city that was literally on fire a few days ago, and is still reeling now. I’m not prepared to unpack all…
As I mentioned last week, Alex and I moved to Minneapolis in late July, after TEN YEARS in Boston. When I arrived in Boston in the summer of 2009—having never been responsible for paying rent and bills before, never lived without a car before, never tried to balance work and…
Well, if there’s any better moment than this to resurrect (for the hundredth time) a dead and dying food blog, I don’t know what it is. Like most everyone else in the world, I’m self-isolating in response to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, which has left me with more…
In early August, I took a trip to France to spend a week at an ecumenical monastery in rural Taizé, Burgundy. With a group of 12 high schoolers. As a chaperone. Whew. In truth, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as it sounds. For one thing, I traveled with three other…
One of the weirdest things about leaving the food industry, for me, was getting used to working at a desk again. I remember being shown to my desk at my first job after quitting the cheese biz and feeling like it was too good to be true—all that desk space,…
Listen, I know talking about the weather is boring. And I know I do it all the time anyway. But here I go, about to do it again, because temperature management has been a big old saga for us for the last couple of months. You Southerners might be inclined…
In general, I like to think of myself as a laid back, go-with-the-flow kind of person. I tend not to let things get under my skin, and I try not to hang on to annoyances and grievances. Alex is the same way, which adds up to a harmonious home life for…
Oh, hi there! Long time no see. How’s things? I know Easter was a couple months ago at this point, and you’re probably over it. You’ve probably been over it for weeks. But I am still dreaming about my Easter dinner, and I just needed to pop in and talk…