In the Dark

Last week, I found out that my foundation color was discontinued. If you're a girl, you feel my pain. If you're a boy...think about if your favorite sneakers were discontinued. Or your favorite...basketball? I don't know what gets discontinued for boys. So I found myself in Sephora, shoulders slumped, facing the task of finding a …

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My Life as Doxology

You know those little things that pop up in social media that herald what you were doing a year ago? I love those things. I love reflecting on where I was or who I was with exactly one year ago today. I love seeing how far I've come, celebrating where I've been. But then, this …

Recipe: Kitchen Sink Chili

I was going to call this “OMG I Just Got Home From the Gym and I’m Starving and I Don’t Even Have the Energy to Chop a Dang Onion” Chili. But that was just a little too long. But the reality was, I got home from the gym, and the last thing I wanted to …

Tastes Like Spring

When it snows, I like to bake. When it snows in April, I like to bake things that taste like spring. As the snow piles up outside, I preheat the oven and pull out the muffin tin. As the streets fill with gray slush, I rummage through the produce drawer for bright yellow lemons. As …

My Semi-Semi-Annual Christmas Letter…You can now celebrate

Dear Mom (and three other people who read my blog) -- I just realized today that it seems to have been three years since I last wrote a Christmas letter! I honestly don't know how the world has kept turning without my wit and sarcasm. But don't worry. I've been saving it all up for this …

But does it taste good (and a recipe)?

I love to bake. You can ask anyone I work with. I used to be the queen of bringing in baked goods. Pumpkin muffins stuffed with cream cheese. White chocolate cookies studded with tart cranberries. Bundt cakes dripping with puddles of glaze. Not only did it all taste good. Baking was a stress reliever for me, …

Snow Day (and a recipe)

I remember my first snow day. I was 3 years old. Or maybe 4. We lived in a little trailer in Evergreen, Virginia, surrounded on three sides by soybean fields. The snow came overnight, and when I woke up the next morning the wind had left a swirled and rippled landscape. The snow came to …

My New Favorite Breakfast

In my last post, I alluded to a breakfast I recently made for myself on the morning after my aunt died. It was a self-care breakfast. One that took time. Skill. There were layers and tastes and it’s not the kind of breakfast I would typically make just for me. But why? Why wouldn’t I …

Yeast Rolls and Heartache

Every memory I have of my Aunt Rita is set on the backdrop of food. Every Thanksgiving the aunts, uncles and cousins would all crowd into Aunt Rita and Uncle Earl’s tiny home, the men in the living room watching sports and the women in the kitchen preparing dinner. Aunt Rita was small and soft and …

My Story Part 3

Part 1 Part 2 When I look in the mirror every morning, that voice of my youth still whispers about my flaws. I wrote those words in an essay, and in the margin, my writing mentor scribbled the words “Really? Every morning?” Yes. Every morning. That writing mentor was one of several whom I worked …