Category: Trying New Things

  • Food on a Stick – Day One

    Actually, if you count the egg-sandwich-on-a-stick Tom fixed for Brian before he left for Minnesota Wednesday morning, this posting would be about Day Two, but I’ll not confuse the issue. Brian and Kyle arrived at the fairgrounds early yesterday morning, the first official day of the fair, to a “whirlwind of delicious fried smells.” I’m guessing…

  • Food on a Stick

    As I type, Brian is heading north to the Twin Cities for the Minnesota State Fair. While his primary responsibility is to execute the assignment Department Zero and Toyota sent him up there to do, his–and his traveling companion, Kyle’s–primary off-duty objective is to sample every one of the 59–yes, that’s right, 59–fair food offerings on a stick, supposedly…

  • The Giant Chocolate Boob

    This past weekend, we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday with a luau-themed open house. It was a terrific party. Friends and family came from all over the country to help her celebrate and to raise their glasses in toast to her. Weeks before the party, one of my sisters-in-law  suggested the luau theme as a nod to my mother-in-law…

  • Chopping and Dicing and Slicing…Oh My!

    “Hi, I’m calling to enroll in the Basic Cooking Skills classes—all four of them. I’d like to enroll my husband, too.” “Great! Have either of you taken classes here before?” “Well, my husband hasn’t, but I took a cookie baking class about a year ago.” “So neither of you has taken the Basic Knife Skills…

  • New Rules

    We are in the sixth or seventh day of heat advisories here in the Land of Oz. Not an entirely novel state of affairs; although, we usually don’t get these extreme temperatures this early in the summer. No matter. It is what it is. Every time I hear myself moaning about the miserable heat and humidity,…

  • Gluten Intolerance: Food for Thought

    Two weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a nasty headache. Getting up in the middle of the night has become something of a routine in the last year or so–not because of headaches, but because of my middle-age hormones–all exacerbated in recent weeks by the jet lag from an overseas trip. The…