A Greener Biener

Some do like it hot. Like my friend Kelcey over at Mama Bird Diaries, who shivers her way through the snow by dreaming of sweltering Augusts and painting her toenails, hailstorms be damned. Not me.  Maybe it’s my Minnesota roots, but I like it when a blast of brisk air demands I throw on an [...]

This guy loves trash.  And he’s not just talking trash, he’s collecting it. Bizarre, right? Why would someone save their trash for an entire year?  Perhaps he’s looking to usurp Oscar the Grouch.  Or maybe he’s making a point.  His point?  We don’t have to be nation of garbage-addicts. In a fit of procrastination I [...]

It was bound to happen.  Word gets out that you plant a couple of vegetables and before you know it the postman arrives bearing mushroom logs and shitake spawn.   Think that sounds scary? It looks even worse– This organically zany gift arrived from my sister via this gourmet mushroom site.  The gourmet mushroom site [...]

This is Kira’s plea against eating turkey.  She can offer up a defense for not eating just about anything.  She says she wants to be a vegetarian.  What she means is that she wants to be a pasta-candy-dessert-atarian.  Not that I blame her.  I too am partial to a diet that leans heavily on the [...]

Here’s the thing, sometimes a choice can feel so good, so right, and not actually be that good.  Like s’mores.  Yummy hot roasted marshmallows (read: corn syrup globules) melted on chocolate smeared on graham crackers.  Nutritionally they are inexcusable.  But in terms of happy children you’d be hard pressed to get a better bang for [...]

Adapted from Ruth Reichle’s recipe, from her book Tender at the Bone. 2/3 cup butter 5 oz unsweetened chocolate 2 teaspoons vanilla 4 eggs ½ teaspoon salt 2 cups sugar 1 cup sifted flour (add 1 Tbls for high altitude) Preheat oven to 400°. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler.  Remove from [...]

You know how it goes, your spend your whole life without a particular nugget of knowledge, and then suddenly there it is; everyone is talking about it everywhere you go. Lately, that’s how it’s been with me and garlic.  I love having garlic on my team.  I use it indiscriminately–always starting out with a little [...]