Bittersweettoast

It's funny what we remember from our youth. Why some memories stick while others disappear does not always make sense. Take, for instance, a memory I have from second grade. Mrs. Netherby, who honestly was one of my favorite teachers, asked us to write what we thought about the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War! In second grade!! Perhaps because I was always very young for my grade, or perhaps because my friends and I did not discuss things like this while playing kick the can, I honestly had no thoughts at the ripe old age of seven as to what the Vietnam War even was. Fortunately, I sat across the aisle from Angela Johnson who was really smart. As I stared at my paper, wondering how I was going to start, let alone complete, this assignment, she was busy writing away.  A quick glance told me that she believed that war was bad. Now here's where my memory is particularly sharp all these years later. I thought to myself, "If I write the exact same thing down on my paper, I will be

I have something to share about myself that will probably surprise you. But before I divulge this information, I must tell you about a small success I had recently. I was in a liquor store in search of an ingredient for my latest drink. I know, I know...this flies in the face of the resolution I made in the Kitchen Gods post, but hopefully you will ultimately be on my side with this decision. Anyway, there I was searching among all the different bottles when I overheard the store employee helping a woman find some brandy for cooking. She pointed her towards a type that came in a bottle far larger than your airplane variety, and the woman said, "Yikes, that's big. Are there any drinks you can make with brandy?" Other than suggesting a Brandy Alexander, the employee was kind of stumped. And so I stepped up and offered up my sidecar recipe, history and all.  I kind of shocked myself, to be perfectly honest. I'm not the type to remember a joke, even ten minutes after it&

Many moons ago I set out on an adventure to bike around New Zealand. Looking back all these years later, I realize how Lewis and Clark it was of me to set off by myself to such unknown territory on a bike I had not ridden all that much with a tool kit I had barely touched. Such is the naivety of youth that allows us to head off on such an adventure without any second thoughts about the "what ifs". Two days into my expedition, having  consulted  my "Cycle Touring in the North Island of New Zealand" book, I left the small village of Kaitaia to ride up to Cape Reinga, the northern most point on the island. Surrounded by beach and water on all sides, I envisioned paradise. What I had not envisioned was the condition of the road out to Cape Reinga. As I poured over this book in the weeks leading up to my departure, I often came over the words "sealed" and "unsealed" as descriptions for roads. I figured that unsealed roads were probably just a lit

I'm on a new mission. No longer will bags of produce be pulled from my crisper dripping in brown ooze that only comes from buyer neglect. I'm determined to find a use for that little bit of feta cheese that lingers in the cheese drawer just waiting to get moldy. And I vow to use up every heel of every loaf of bread I ever buy again. I will  boldly go where I seldom go and force myself to regularly use up what's in my refrigerator before returning to the grocery story. I will think more creatively about what I can put together with the ingredients on hand as opposed to pulling out a new recipe and adding unwanted food to an already crowded refrigerator. Oh, these vows sound so good, but they are so difficult for me because I am a recipe kind of gal. Blame it on my mom who created terrific meals but was wedded to her cookbooks. I am not genetically predisposed to winging it in the kitchen. Which is why I marvel at Lynne Rossetto Kasper who hosts NPR's show The Splendid

Remember those ads for Evelyn Wood speed reading classes? The ones where people simply turned the pages in the books they were reading and voila! The books were fully read and comprehended. Those ads always appealed to my need for project completion. When I start working on something, I like to keep working until it is finished. No interruptions. I marvel at people who have five or six books on their nightstands that they are reading simultaneously. How can you possibly do this? To me that feels like cheating those characters out of their due respect while having a quick fling with someone else in a completely different story. Maybe that's a bit harsh, and maybe I just need to embrace the art of multitasking. But remember I'm 50 years old and old dogs...well, some just like to go one book at a time. Last December I set a goal: 50 drinks in my 50th year. Research, concoct, photograph, and blog. I sit at 21, and I am well past the halfway mark. This does not sit well with me.

When you've had a parent struggle at the end of life with Alzheimer's or dementia, you don't take your own memory glitches lightly. We all have them, but after my father died, I found myself looking more carefully at my own brushes with memory loss. So imagine my dismay last week when I accidentally left my sister at the airport to fend for herself and find her way to our house all because I had written on my calendar that she was coming in on Monday instead of Sunday. I was totally thrown out of whack by this major scheduling snafu. We laughed, I sighed deeply, and then moved on. Monday morning I dragged her to my semi-annual dentist appointment. I know what you're thinking: your sister came 3,000 miles to see you and you dragged her to the dentist???! Well, in all fairness, she only made these reservations on July 1st and rearranging those semi-annual visits is as easy as booking dinner with the queen. She assured me that she was happy just spending time with us, and

There's a lot that I love about being a parent, but there is one stage I would like to delete from the parenting handbook: driver's ed. I thought that round two would be easier. I'd be an experienced passenger ready to calmly teach my son the rules of the road. Actually, who am I kidding? At the ripe old age of nine, Nelson was kicked off a go-cart course. This should have been my first clue that driving with him might be a little different.  I blame that one on Mario Cart, the video game that allows young boys to practice driving with reckless abandon. As I watched him go around the go-cart course, the look in his eyes told me he was trying to put to good use all that Mario had taught him. Let's just say that Mario's techniques are a little different from what the Department of Licensing is looking for.  My son learned that the hard way after running off the go-cart track one too many times. When the owner came storming onto the track and pointed to the exit, he su

I love to bake. For the past five months I have stared at a card that my sister sent me for Valentine's Day to remind me of the benefits of being a good baker. Six words send a powerful message: I am hot & I can bake. Yes, indeed. But good bakers can get into ruts, baking the same old stand-bys, the tried and true they know will delight. And this is the unfortunate state I have been in for way too long. I'm a sucker for cookbooks, and the more stunning the pictures, the more likely it is to lure me in. Next to my sister's card is a cookbook she sent me for Christmas with recipes from the Miette Bakery in San Francisco. The cover is stunningly beautiful as you will see in a moment. Upon opening this gift, I instantly began imagining the spectacular cakes I would bake. Difficult recipes, unusual ingredients and supplies be damned. I knew that someday I would re-create that beautiful cover picture and write all about it in my blog, wowing my readers with my baking know-

The solstice nears. I know this mostly due to my sleepless state, which is caused by our 16-hour long days. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but it would be nice to sleep in past 5:15 each morning. Unfortunately, our local flock of birds makes that extremely difficult, and so I persist through my mind's foggy state. Nevertheless, I love summer. As a teacher, my battery is drained and in need of recharging. As a Northwesterner, my body seeks to replenish its store of vitamin D. And as a working parent whose life is just a little too busy, I relish the slower pace of life that summer brings. It's difficult for me to welcome summer and not think about Aloha Hive, the camp in Vermont where I spent two summers as a young girl. This was a camp that my mom went to for eight summers and my sister for two. I knew I was destined to follow in their footsteps, but the timing came a little sooner than expected. When I was just 7 years old, my mom needed to have a triple b

Sometimes when I finish a post I start wondering if I'll ever come up with another idea again. Fortunately, inspiration keeps coming, sometimes in the strangest ways. We were up in Victoria, B.C. this past weekend, a last-minute getaway to join up with Eric after he finished sailing in the Swiftsure race. If you've never been, Victoria is one of those places that beckons you to become English. We had perfect, drizzly, tea-drinking weather, and my son quickly proclaimed the weekend to be his favorite "eating" holiday ever. He divides our vacations into two categories: "active" trips in which we burn off more calories that we take in and "eating" trips, which speak for themselves. Imagine that -- a 16-year-old boy who actually enjoyed touring the Butchart Gardens, perhaps because the afternoon tea there involved some really delicious eating. The gardens were indeed beautiful and captured well by my sous-photographer, Johanna. So my mind was o

Sixteen years ago today I had one of the most fearful moments of my life. Well, that may be a little dramatic, but I was very pregnant with our second child. We had  moved two weeks earlier to the Eastside, one bridge away from Seattle where I was set to deliver. For those of you who do not live in this area, there's a really big lake that separates Seattle and the Eastside communities and  two bridges that connect them. Every morning and every afternoon many cars travel very slowly over those bridges as Seattleites and Eastsiders drive to work and back home. So my fear of going into labor during rush-hour, complete with visions of a bridge delivery dancing through my brain, was not a crazy one. Lucky me, my first contraction on May 14th arrived at 5:30am, just as all those little worker bees were leaving their garages and heading to the office. I was doomed to deliver in the backseat of our car; not exactly what I was hoping for. By 6:30 we were on the road. It was a beautiful bl

Cinco de Mayo. Even if you never studied Spanish, you know this means that day in May when we eat Mexican food and drink Margaritas. What you may not know is why. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican army's  victory over France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. You see, the year before this victory, Mexico was in financial ruin and needed to default on some loans from Europe. Britain and Spain were able to negotiate with Mexico, but those pesky French saw this as the perfect opportunity to finally grab a chunk of land on the other side of the Atlantic. Late in 1861 a large French fleet arrived and stormed the Mexican shores at Veracruz, forcing President Juarez to retreat. But in a great David and Goliath turn of events, Juarez put together a rag tag army of 2000 who, on May 5, 1862, fought a French army three times its size and won. Although the war went on for six more years before Napoleon III gave up and returned home to his cafes and croissants, this impressive battle lives o

I went skiing this past weekend, and although I should have been exalting over the ten inches of new April snow that unexpectedly fell, I couldn't help but think of all the recent Facebook posts I had seen over the past week from friends vacationing in Hawaii. My heart was not in the snow, as nice as it was. Instead it was seeking a warm, sunny beach, blue skies, and the scent of beautiful plumeria blossoms. Perhaps this is why, as I pondered the subject of an overdue blog post, my mind veered towards the Mai Tai. Call it a lame attempt to summon tropical breezes in 50-degree weather, but I've been thinking about Mai Tais for a couple of months now. I had one last summer, umbrella and all, on the island of Maui, but to be totally honest I was not enamored by the drink. Despite my love for fresh pineapple, I don't actually like the fruit in any other form, so my pineapple-laden drink just wasn't hitting the spot. Rum is also not my favorite spirit. So why on ea

My dad and I used to have this tradition of trying to beat one another at finding the 6 differences as quickly as possible in Hocus Focus, that two-paneled picture you see in the Comics & Puzzles section of the newspaper. As simple as the drawings were, it was amazing how challenged we each could be, especially when the other quickly got to 5. I still play Hocus Focus when free time allows. On days when the differences just don't appear, I imagine my dad quickly claiming victory; when my own vision works wonders, I gloat at my prowess and make my victory "V". Here's a little version of Hocus Focus for you: Okay, I admit, I stretched the rules of the game because there are more than 6 changes between these two pictures. The one on the left shows my liquor collection pre-blog days when I had the ingredients to make a gin and tonic, kir, and margarita, along with an assortment of little airplane bottles that were used for cooking and baking. Now, ju