What My Mother Taught Me About Cooking (And About Being Fearless)
She was fearless in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until I was older …
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Southern Style Cornbread
This is my grandmother’s cornbread recipe, halved for smaller households. She made twice this amount in a 12-inch skillet, feeding a family of six plus whoever showed up at dinnertime (which in rural Texas was often neighbors, cousins, or people from church). This version makes enough for 4 people, or 2 people with leftovers for…
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The New Dietary Guidelines: I Hate Admitting They’re Not Completely Wrong
I’m going to say something that physically pains me to type: the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030, released by the Trump administration under RFK Jr.’s leadership at HHS, are not completely wrong about everything. There. I said it. I hate it. And now I need to explain why this makes me so uncomfortable. This…
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Collard Greens
In the South, collards are a staple side dish, but they’re also a New Year’s Day tradition: My Meemaw (my East Texas grandmother) always made collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread for New Year’s Day. Every single year, without fail: greens for money, peas for luck in the coming year.
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Welcome to 2026: A Fresh Start
Subtitled: State of The Blog & Where I Stand Those of you who have been around for a while know I’ve tried to restart this blog multiple times since it first went quiet around 2014. I’d get excited, plan content, write posts, even publish a handful of them. And then… silence. Rinse and repeat for…
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Hello 2026!
Here we are again on the first day of a new year. I don’t know about you, but for years I dove headfirst into the whole “make a bunch of resolutions” thing. I’d set up my perfect self doing all the things: get up and go running every morning, serious meal prepping on Sundays, journaling…
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Farewell to 2025
It’s December 30th, and I’m sitting on the sofa writing this post that I’ll share tomorrow for New Year’s Eve. The tree is still lit, though looking a little bare without presents underneath. There’s a fire going because Georgia has finally given us some actual winter weather. Remy-dog is snoring at my side, Callie-cat is…
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Merry Christmas 2025
Merry Christmas! This post was scheduled in advance; I’m not actually writing blog posts on Christmas Day. Having been a blogging slacker for <mumble> years, I had one solid moment of blogging motivation earlier in the week and decided to roll with it, scheduling a couple of posts for the coming days. It’s 75°F in…
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Thanksgiving 2025
A little after the fact, but here’s our menu from this year’s Thanksgiving and a few food photos. I wound up sending a text to everyone attending around noon, telling them that I was running about an hour behind. Giving myself that extra hour made the day so much less stressful and we had a…
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What I Read #1 (Jan 2022)
Adding more “lifestyle” to this here blog! How about a roundup of my reading each month? Maybe y’all will be interested, maybe not – but we’ll see how it goes, shall we? Here’s what I read in January of 2022: My favorite book this month was Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci. Yes,…
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Welcome 2022
I’ve always enjoyed and looked forward to the symbolic “restart” of the New Year. The winding down of Christmas and the indulgent holidays, the packing away of the decorations, the traditional New Year’s Day meal of black-eyed peas and greens and cornbread instead of the rich, heavy holiday fare all allow me to mentally and…
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Closing out 2021
I’m honestly not sure what to say about 2021 other than for us it epitomized Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. The Worst: We’re still firmly locked in a Covid loop, despite being vaccinated and boosted around here. The new variant of Covid…
