Lavender Blackberry Cake – Or Why I’m a Cook, Not a Baker
Adapting Sally’s lavender blackberry cake to gluten-free taught me what cream cheese does structurally. A redeemed disaster, plus the recipe I should have made.
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Friday Roundup #25 (Halfway to Tulsa Edition)
Posted from the Napoleon Hotel in Memphis, with my feet up and something cold from the cooler. Well, y’all. I made it halfway. This week’s roundup comes to you from Memphis, where I’m crashing for the night before the second half of the drive to Tulsa tomorrow morning. My friend Anna is meeting me for…
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A Logo, a Pepper, and a Year of Trying to Look Like Myself
So I’ve been redesigning the blog. I’ll spare y’all the full backstage tour, but if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ve watched me cycle through enough visual identities to fill a small museum. Or possibly a cautionary tale. There was the cursive script phase, when the header looked like a wedding…
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Friday Roundup #24
Y’all, what a week. Zach and I have both been down with whatever crud is going around. Mine started last Friday with a sore throat that sent me home early from work, and the next five days disappeared into a haze of DayQuil, NyQuil, hot toddies, chicken soup, and sleep. A full week later I’m…
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Texas-Style Margarita Mix (For When You’re Actually Throwing a Party)
Here’s the thing about me and margaritas: I love a well-made one. Same with a good paloma. Fresh lime juice, real grapefruit juice, decent tequila, none of that bottled neon-green stuff sweetened with corn syrup. Our local Mexican restaurant in Alpharetta makes them properly: fresh-squeezed citrus, balanced sweetness, no shortcuts. When I’m out and the…
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Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas
If you read Sunday’s post, you already know what these are doing here today. If you didn’t, the short version is: I’m a Texan, it’s Cinco de Mayo week, and I’m cooking what I actually cook on Cinco de Mayo, which is Tex-Mex, made by a Texan, with full honesty about what it is and…
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What Cinco de Mayo Actually Is (and Why I Still Make Enchiladas)
I did not grow up observing Cinco de Mayo. Nobody in my Texas family did. It wasn’t a holiday in the way Christmas or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July was a holiday; it was a date on the calendar that occasionally meant something at school and otherwise didn’t. In college it became an…
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Friday Roundup #23 (From Florida, Because Mermaids)
This roundup is coming to y’all from Weeki Wachee, where I’m spending the long weekend with a friend. If you’re not familiar, Weeki Wachee is a Florida state park where women have been performing as live mermaids in an underwater theater since 1947. Yes, really. And yes, we’re going to see them. We’ve rented a…
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How I Became the Person Who Named My Food Recycler
Let me tell you about Millicent. Millicent lives in my garage, next to the door to the house and the glass recycling bin. She is white and rounded and about the size of a regular trash can – think one of those fancy simplehuman cans that a lot of people have in their kitchens –…
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Life with a Pibble: Meet Remy
I’m writing this with a 71-pound pit bull pressed against my side on the sofa. Full velcro-dog mode. He’s dreaming, twitching, and making those adorable snorting sounds that pit bulls do. His name is Remy, and he is categorically the least threatening creature on the planet. How We Got Remy We adopted Remy on February…
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Friday Roundup #22
The weather has been beautiful the last couple of days. I’m hoping it holds through the weekend because I have plans. What are you reading/watching/cooking/dealing with this week? Let me know in the comments. P.S. The tomato-garlic sauce is embarrassingly simple. You’re going to wonder why you ever bought jarred sauce. P.P.S. Alysa Liu. That’s…
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Friday Roundup #21 (On Sunday, Because February)
The blog has been quiet this past week. Work has not been.Next week should be better, and tomorrow is Presidents’ Day, which in our house means a long weekend and a chance to get some end-of-winter things taken care of. Today it’s rainy and cold and I have big batch cooking plans for this afternoon…
