Bittersweettoast

Many years ago when our children were little, my husband and I went through a rough patch in our marriage as we adapted to our relatively new parental roles and tried to understand how we each had changed and been changed through the process. We sought the help of a counselor who, after meeting for the first time, assigned us the task of writing a family mission statement. Covertly we both rolled our eyes, but, good students that we were, we completed the assignment. Now, a dozen years later, I am still surprisintly fond of that mission statement. The last paragraph, in particular, which seemed so futuristic when we wrote it, is becoming more and more in focus. "As we grow older we will seek flexibility in dealing with new situations as they arise. We hope to gracefully transition from the parent/child relationship to that of a peer with our children. We hope to always learn from and accept the values, cultures, and spiritual beliefs of others. And may our children and their lov

It snowed at our house ten days ago, somewhere between a half inch and an inch, and that light dusting still lingers. On days when blue skies prevail, the sun does its best to begin the melting process, but that's a difficult proposition when the thermometer stays below freezing. Then the fog settles in, encasing that light dusting in another layer of frost. Sun. Fog. Sun. Fog. Fog. Fog. Resolutions, as we all know, are hard to maintain. When the sun comes out I feel empowered to take them on. But when the fog rolls back in, all I want is a warm blanket and a comfy couch. Resolutions be gone. Is this how people my age start thinking longingly about places like Florida and Arizona? Am I just getting soft in my old age? This schizophrenia, I fear, has trickled down into my drink choices. I have struggled these last few weeks to find a direction for my mixological ways. When blue skies prevail, I think about light summertime drinks. But when the skies are grey and the air heav

With January comes the resolution. A fresh start, a way to make amends with all the exercise that didn't occur throughout the prior year, a new recognition that swimsuit season really isn't that far away, and renewed energy to adjust habits that have gone south. I'm not an annual resolver, but  an article in the New York Times last weekend  made me reconsider. The article was about a Seattle woman whose husband was killed four years ago while riding his bike. An unexpected tragedy to be sure and one that left this woman and her two children in a precarious position. Chanel Reynolds and her husband had drafted a will but had not yet officially signed the documents, so on top of all the grief she felt was this overwhelming fear of how she would truly carry on. How much money was in the checking account? What were all the accounts they had, and what were the passwords that her husband kept in his head? Why had she and her husband not finished some of the tasks that grown-ups a

If you know me, you may still be shaking your head a bit, wondering how and why I would start writing about cocktails. I, too, sometimes catch myself and wonder the same thing. It wasn't  a book of fiction in my hands last night before going to bed, it was a book all about bitters! And to be totally honest, I found it compelling reading. Mid-life crisis gone haywire? I really don't think so. To me, this new-found interest in beverages is just a natural extension of my love for cooking and baking.  There is also great lore around cocktails and the ingredients that go into them, which helps feed the history buff in me. In fact, just last night as I was immersed in Brad Thomas Parsons' book on bitters, I learned of the "Great Angostura Shortage of 2009-2010". I, apparently, am a few years off in discovering the allure of the little bottle with the over-sized label because demand for it in 2009 became so great that the company  became overwhelmed with orders, creatin

Beautiful, aren't they? There's something about farm fresh eggs that almost makes me want to quit my day job and become a lady farmer. Almost. For now I will settle for my son's occasional post as head keeper of a friend's menagerie, which happens to include ten chickens. Fortunately for me, these chickens are prolific producers, so when our friends go on vacation, we are the happy recipients of many  beautiful eggs. At first we revel in the most scrumptious omelets and scrambled concoctions. By day four or five, however, I admit to often having egg overload. Not this time. As soon as these eggs started appearing, I began thinking about Ramos Gin Fizzes because when made the old fashioned way, they contain an egg white. If you're like me, this news would normally bring a halt to my experimentation. But my new stock of farm fresh eggs gave me reason to carry on because they came from chickens that I have watched cluck and roost, and that makes all the differen