I've been watching episodes of NCIS to get me through packing. I'm on season six and still packing, but my eyes are wide open to the many ways someone could do me in. This knowledge will come in handy while driving across the country in a car with 186,000 miles on it.…
I’m coping with Covid and unemployment with exercise. Everyday I hike the local hills. I stop just before I get to the freeway overpass, then turn around and go back. I once walked under it just to prove I could do it, but I know the next time I do the mother of all earthquakes will strike and all they’ll find will be a little thigh fat. Ever…
I may be the only person able to combine those two items in one blog post. (Maybe this is why I’ve never won Food Blogger of the Year.) But, such is my life nowadays. Yesterday I found myself Googling doggie diapers. (Yes, life is riveting.) Topper is now 14 going on 15 and every so often I come down in the morning to find his bed not quite…
Since you’re probably starting to experience fall, I have the perfect recipe for the absolute best cream of mushroom soup. Eat this with a piece of crusty bread and you’ll be transported. Those of us here in the southwest wish we could be transported, having just watched summer dry out into what is now the season of hell. But I digress. At least I still have a place…
I was talking to a friend about the deliciousness of tomatoes this time of year. Our conversation reminded me of rainy days in late summer when my sister and I used to sit in the garage staring out at the rain. She’d eat a tomato sandwich and I’d eat a tomato with sprinkled with salt, loving that sweet, sun-ripened juice running down my chin. Every August and September…
Life is all backwards now. People who used to have to be dragged into the kitchen are baking and cooking up masterpieces, and people like me, who love to cook, can barely lift a spatula because I have no one to feed. Cooking for myself is nice, but it’s the sharing that’s the fun part. I can make my favorite pasta with shallots, fresh tomato, basil and whipping…
Every morning a small, gray bird plants himself outside my bedroom window and starts a high pitched chirp, like an avian Paul Revere warning the British are coming. His ear-splintering chirps sound like a chisel hitting a brick or a stone. I call him the Chisel Bird. I lay in bed thinking, There’s Dad. He’s come back as a bird with a chirp so loud he can wake…
It will be a miracle if I don’t gain at least 19 pounds while home alone. I’m walking, doing push ups, and crunches, plus I throw the occasional solo dance party but it’s never enough. All my efforts are defeated by my love of cooking. The thing that thrills me even more than trying on those skinny jeans and feeling them loose, is trying a recipe for the…
I think I might be becoming an actual Californian. It's only taken me 40 years.…
The silver lining is this: Anything that forces you to get healthier is a good thing, even if you have to be dragged into it by your hair.…