Friday Roundup #28
A steamy Georgia-summer roundup: dirty spaghetti on the must-try list, Good Culture cottage cheese, the new Nora Roberts, cherry plums, and Kamado-grilled lunches.
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Maine: A Love Story – Part 1
Every fall, Zach and I take a week and go somewhere. Late September, early October, right before the holiday season turns into a demolition derby. We started it in 2019 and it has become the most protected week on our calendar. Tucson one year. Jekyll and Cumberland Island another. A big loop through Las Vegas…
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Why It’s First on the List
It’s Pride, and this Saturday I’m walking the Roswell Pride Walk. So before the month runs out on a calendar full of fruit salad and steak, here’s the thing I actually believe: LGBTQ+ equality is line one of what I stand for, and it isn’t an abstraction. It has names, and they eat at my table.
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Carol’s Potato Salad
Carol’s potato salad is mayo, mustard, yellow onion, celery, and dill relish dressed on hot potatoes. No secrets. Just muscle memory and good timing.
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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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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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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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Being Authentic
This is the forested area behind our house. It’s the part of our property that the creek runs through. It’s where I go when I need peace and calm and to escape from the world for a little bit. If you’ve been reading this blog since I restarted it this month, you’ve noticed something: this…
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The Optimist: The Best Seafood in Atlanta
In July 2019, I took Zach to The Optimist for his birthday. It was our first time there, and I’m just going to say it up front: it’s the best seafood we’ve had anywhere. Better than St. Simons. Better than the coast. Better than a lot of places we’ve eaten on our travels. The Optimist…
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Here We F****** Are Again
I had a whole other post planned for today. A fun one. One talking about our favorite seafood restaurant in Atlanta. It was written, scheduled, and ready to go. And yesterday morning cos-playing ICE thugs murdered another American citizen. This time a man. A nurse. 37 years old. A good man. His parents told him…
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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…
