Life’s little successes.
Life is all about celebrating them — the little yet huge milestones in life that most often pass unnoticed without a single “woot!”
We often think that successes are all massive ones, like when we:
But it’s the little successes that add up to a whole tanker-full and that often matter the most.
Let me elaborate. Continue reading
I love pauses.
I didn’t always.
Okay, maybe I should explain.
I used to be afraid of the pauses between sentences, in conversations between two people.
Specifically, between boys I was just getting to know and kind of liked, and people I really wanted to like me.
I used to fill those natural spaces in conversation like one would grout a tub — filling every crack, making sure not a single inch of space remained. Continue reading
There are days when nothing seems to work out right.
It all started with biscuits that turned into scones, but not before they looked like cow pies.
Tasty ones, I’ll give ’em that, but they did not look right. And they photographed even worse.
Being a blogger of all things food can have it’s challenges.
There are days when:
With Fall just around the corner, Summer becomes much more important.
We in the Pacific Northwest wait for it like some wait for Christmas.
We hold our breath, afraid that if we blink a few too many times — due to the what-the-what-is-that?! blinding orb in the sky — we might miss it.
It arrives crazy-fashionably late, like a flaxen-haired princess on the back of a chariot. All too soon, her ride turns the corner and we find ourselves holding a half-eaten corn dog and nothing but a faint, Vitamin-D memory of her. Continue reading
I must admit, Tuesdays are not my favorite thing.
It’s the day of the week when the Lawn People come to tend to my apartment complex’s green stuff.
They descend upon it like a swarm of weed-whacking locusts and hang out from 8:00am – 3:00pm to drive me nuts, and make me want to go jiu jitsu on the next nearest living thing.
They add to the already omnipresent noise of yowling little toddler residents, and the frenzied “Go potty, come on, go potty, go potty…don’t eat that!” of dog-crazy people waiting for their dogs to poop just below my kitchen window.
I know that the Lawn People are here to at least make things pretty for me, but it all just makes me want to go ballistic. Continue reading
There’s this amazing place called Paseo.
If any of you have ever been to Seattle, you may have heard it talked about in not-so-subtle-ways when asking locals if they knew of any good, cheap-eats sandwich places ’round here.
Now, those in-the-know will mention Paseo. And inevitably, the reactions to the mention of Paseo will most certainly go something like this:
“Oh, my god, their Cuban Roast sandwich is amazing!”
or
“Holy, f___ s___, isn’t their roasted pork sandwich f___ amazing?!”
And, yes, I know I am repeating myself, but people tend to do that when talking about Paseo’s Cuban Roast sandwich. I have seen otherwise mellower-than-snail-persons practically lose their bleepin’ minds talking about this sandwich. It’s that freakin’ good. Continue reading
Parsley is a sleeper.
It may grow like gang busters, but not something I’d ever viewed as a main ingredient to, well, anything.
I was wrong.
A few days ago, last Friday to be exact, I made my way — read: a few stockinged-feet — to my apartment balcony to the place where my garden grows.
It is a veritable jungle out there, thirty-five square feet of sunflower, chive, rosemary, thyme, sage, mint, lavender, Frontenac grape-growing mania. Continue reading
Fellow food blogger, Amelia Crook of Simple Provisions got me to thinking recently. Her M.O. is:
Food does not need to be fancy to be celebrated.
To that I say, “Speak the word, sister, speak the word!”
Fussy does not mean good, and yummy does not necessary have to be complicated. Sometimes the most satisfying eats don’t even involve cranking up the stove or whipping yourself into a cooking frenzy.
Sometimes they involve a simple, perfectly ripe peach. Continue reading
Today is my parent’s 43rd wedding anniversary.
They are the most wonderful peas-in-a-pod, and yes, I know, I’m biased.
Forty-three years ago today they were getting married. Mom, walking down the aisle to meet my dad, in a gown she made all by herself. My dad calling her his “Julietta”. And just like it is in Rhode Island this time of year, it was hot. It was sweaty. It was perfect.
They’ve had forty-three years of memories made together, my mom and dad. Forty-three years filled with making wonderful memories for my brother, Niko, and I. Forty-three years of good times and bad, and yet just as much — if not more — silliness, laughter, and love. Continue reading
Summer always arrives super fashionably late here in the Pacific Northwest. She takes the scenic, scenic route and doesn’t show her sunny face until the eleventh hour on the Fourth of July. But when she gets here, all tops break loose and we PN’ers just lose it.
Paletas are my way of welcoming Sister Summer to this here neck of the woods, and encouraging her to kick off her flippie floppies and staying a while.
These paletas just very well might. Continue reading
I know I’m not alone when I say, “I love bacon”. I heart it. I really, really heart it.
“Breakfast for dinner” is also a near, dear-to-my heart personal motto of mine. Why have dinner when you can have breakfast? Why have lunch when you can have breakfast for lunch? It even turns out, that it just so ended up, that I even married a Bacon (the best, very sweetest kind). The Universe got it.
I think you get the idea.
What I have never hearted though are the third-degree burns I always get when making bacon in a pan. Sweet Mother Mercy, dodging bacon grease is not something I need on my list of “To Do” in the kitchen. Not-to-mention (okay, I just did), the constant flipping and tending to — then, the messy clean-up. Continue reading
I have never been much of a dessert fan. I am by default a salt kind of girl, and would much rather prefer most anything salt to anything sweet any day. But I do have a soft spot in my stomach for blueberries — specifically, frozen blueberries of the wild kind.
How much of a soft spot? Well, for starters, I eat them every morning with my cereal after defrosting them under warm running water in my kitchen sink. Every morning. Every time my brother sees me, he yells, “Blueberries!” (basically, a verbatim imitation of yours truly from when we used to live together).
No joke, these bitty berries make me that happy. Continue reading
Small Kitchen Chronicles 