Years ago my husband and I went on a ski trip, visiting some of the less glamorous but fabulous ski areas that populate interior British Columbia. We booked accommodations by studying the brochures that were sent to us in the mail (remember those prehistoric days before the digital era?) and settled on rooms with kitchenettes. These towns were not exactly swarming with apres-ski options, so it seemed to make sense to bring our own soups and stews to reheat at the end of the day. Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the first motel to find no kitchen in sight, not even a miniature coffee maker. Nothing but a bed, a bathroom, and a Gideon's bible. At this point most people would have gone into town to find the local greasy spoon diner, but my husband is not most people. Using his creative brain, he whipped up a makeshift hot plate by combining the clothes iron he packed to wax our skis, the trusty Gideon's bible, and a little duct tape. By wedging the iron upside down in the
You know the story. A mom teaches her daughter how to roast a ham and cuts off one end before placing the meat in a pan. The daughter asks why it's necessary to cut off the end, and mom explains that this is how grandma always did it. An inquiry into grandma's method reveals that grandma always snipped the end 'cause her pan wasn't big enough! Not exactly a tradition worth passing along after all. Sometimes patterns need re-assessing. Just a few blog posts ago, I described the zen-like state I acquire when creaming butter and sugar to create certain sweet masterpieces like chocolate chip cookies. I've been baking since high school and basically drool at the prospect of tasting the warm gooey mess of a freshly baked cookie. Enter a very strange illness a few weeks back that had my doctor and two of her colleagues stumped. Two different rashes and nausea had me thinking for a moment that I might get to be the subject of the New York Time's Sunday magazine sect