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 …

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 …

My Story Part 2

(Read Part 1 Here) I’m kind of surprised at what a non-issue my weight seemed to be in young adult. Seemed to be is the most important part of that sentence. Nobody made a big deal about how I looked. Nobody challenged me in what I ate or my lack of exercise. And I wouldn’t …

My Story Part 1

I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t feel self-conscious about how my body looked. When I was around 10 they did a scoliosis test at school. We all filed into a little classroom off of the gym, one-by-one. Then we faced the wall, pulled our shirts off, and bent over so the nurse …

Hands Off My Red Handle

I was 12, maybe 13 years old. It was winter, and my cousins and I had spent the morning sledding. We sat in the living room, cheeks burning, clad only in our long johns and T-shirts, our jeans thumping gently in the dryer. “Here are your clothes,” Grandma said. One cousin grabbed my pants from …