Bittersweettoast

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 ...

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 spen...

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...