A Time for Everything

It’s a snow day here in Portland, Oregon. We got somewhere between six and nine inches of snow last night. Maybe even more, but given how bad I am at estimating sizes of things1, I won’t try harder to be sure.

It’s not the first snow day we’ve had, but somehow it feels more like a snow day than any other. Maybe it’s how damn much snow is out there, or maybe it’s how quiet it is inside. I’m not sure. Nor am I sure if I care to figure out the “why” rather than just experience things as they are. In this case, it’s a snow day kind of day. I have tea. I have an urge to write. My tea is in a new, fabulous mug from the fantastic Deb Cooperman, and it’s encouraging my tea-ing and writing.… Continue reading →

Seven Ways I Love Eating Avocado

I love avocado. Flat-out, absolutely love it. It’s one of the world’s best fruits, and I would like to be eating more of it. I suspect you would like to be doing so too? Right? Of course you would! So, here’s seven ways I LOVE to eat avocado, and I recommend that you immediately try anything you haven’t already.

Straight up
Duh. Often all you need to get avocado into you is a spoon. Unless it’s a small avocado. Then you don’t even need that. You can just PUT IT IN YOUR FACE. And who doesn’t want that?

A spoonful of avocado a day keeps the doctor away?

Sure. That’s what I’m going with. It’s working for me, even. I haven’t seen a doctor in months!… Continue reading →

Travel.

I just found a CF card from almost a year ago. A lot of the photos on it are from a Hop Farm tour I took in early August last year. It was so much fun, but I never did manage to write a post about it. Now I’m in southwest Washington State and vaguely contemplating the post again. Why? Because far away in Washington state there’s a hop museum. I live in Chicago, so even a drive of two or more hours feels practically next door. Of course, one just opened recently in Wisconsin, so you’d think I could just go there. But, really, I don’t see why I can’t do BOTH1. Then write you guys a post. In late July.

It’s 85F here today.… Continue reading →

“It’s Always Something.”

A common phrase around our house. Bill is regularly shaking his head and muttering that it’s always something.

He gets it from his dad. Who also often mutters about it always being something.

I’m telling you this because it really IS always something. Today? The something is that we leave the house at “unbearably early” (that’s the official time) tomorrow morning to go visit Bill’s father. And Bill and I are out of the house all day today, and well into the evening for a friend’s birthday.

So, of course, we started laundry last night. And, of course, the washer just stopped working while we slept, thus delaying our packing.

Always something. We’ll get packed up, but today’s planned post will go up Monday or Tuesday, because instead of shooting photos for it, I’m dealing with laundry and packing before I leave for the day.… Continue reading →

Something of an Inheritance

One of my most recent posts was simply a photo that showed what makes me really feel that I’m in my mother’s kitchen.

It’s not the recipes. It’s the tea. And the big ol’ slab of a cutting board with a scorch mark. The recipe box. But not the recipes. My mother doesn’t, and hasn’t ever, needed recipes. But she has them.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, nor how many times I will say, that I didn’t learn to cook from my mother. That I spurned that offering and have, as such, had to do a lot from scratch a thousand miles away.

I’ve gotten there. I’ve become deeply invested in food and cooking. Thus, my most recent visit home, I expected to cook.… Continue reading →