When I was a junior in college, I decided I wanted to major in biology.  Yep– junior year.  Better late than never, right?  Fortunately, I’d already taken all of my required courses, and I had half of about three different majors, thanks to my first two years of dabbling in everything.  That meant that I could take on my new major halfway through college without having to push back my graduation date at all, provided that I was willing to eat, sleep, and breathe biology for my final two years of school.  And sure enough, my first semester as a…

Here’s the thing about avoiding oven use during the summer: I just can’t do it.  Oh, oven, I can’t stay mad at you!  I can, however, stay mad at upper-90 degree temperatures.  I’m convinced that summer is only fun for people with central air, pool or beach access, and sufficient free time to enjoy them.  Since I have none of the above, I say bring on the fall. If there’s one thing summer is good for, though, it’s fresh produce.  Assuming you can get past the sweltering temperatures and oppressive humidity, there’s nothing better than strolling through the farmers market…

Ever have a time when nothing in life seems to go right?  When things just refuse to change, despite your best efforts?  Me too.  Here’s what I suggest in times like these. One. Try to find about five minutes at home alone.  Create a ruse to get everyone out of the house if you need to (but don’t ask me how, I didn’t need to). Two. Play this song as loud as you can stand.  Sing along as loud as you can stand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs Three. This will relieve the physical tension that hard times put in your body.  It’ll do that just as…

We’re going to change the pace with today’s installment and talk about a recent evening in the kitchen that ended nicely, but first went very, very poorly.  As is the case with most food blogs, all the photo editing and lovely stories make it look like life is all birthday cakes and beautiful muffins, all the time.  But I want to make it known that some truly terrible stuff comes out of my kitchen sometimes.  Let’s get down to it. I’m going to start off by immediately shifting the blame for this failure to Trader Joe’s.  You heard me, TJ’s!!…

I’m sure this is true for everyone, but I’ve lately noticed that there’s really no rhyme or reason in how I determine which things I like and which things I don’t.  Take music, for instance.  I was listening to one of my favorite summer playlists on my iPod today when “These Words” by Natasha Bedingfield came on.  As I was silently grooving along, I realized that, by all accounts, this isn’t a song I would normally like.  The chorus is borderline moronic (“I love you I love you I love you I love you– just get a load of the…

You probably wouldn’t guess it, given my obvious enthusiasm about life in a city about 1,000 miles away from all my family, but I was an incurable homebody when I was younger. The occasional sleepover at a friend’s house was fine.  A week at Grandmother’s?  Ok, but only because that’s basically like being at home, anyway.  But a week long spend-the-night summer camp?  Nooooooo.  Not on your life.  I tried to do the whole camp thing exactly three times.  The first time, I made it about six hours before I got weepy, and about three days before I literally made…

As I mentioned in last week’s throw-together post, I have a lot of veggies coming my way this summer, thanks to a membership in the Red Fire Farm CSA.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, which makes the phase “CSA membership” a little problematic (maybe “farm share” would be better?).  But whatever you call it, the reality of heaping bags of produce coming into my kitchen every week is a pure joy.  It feels a little like Christmas, heaping all my weekly goodies onto the kitchen table, figuring out when to cook what, and trying to cram them all into…

                              How can I put this without sounding like a broken record?  Ahhh… maybe I should just come out with it:  it’s hot out there.  It hasn’t been terrible so far.  I have a number of breezy summer dresses to help me beat the heat, and it definitely counts for something that I’m not spending this summer working an outdoor job.  But it’s still pretty toasty in our apartment, and the oven and I are still steering clear of one another, for the most part. In…