Food + Wine

Holiday Favs

If this is the third email you’ve gotten from me in the past few days… and also in the past few months, all I can say is – as much as I like to think I can control most things around me…

I cannot control technology.

I’m even married to Mr. Technology and that doesn’t even get me a free pass.
It does, however, give me an indescribable amount of Yeti mugs.

Anyway, all this to say – I appreciate your patience in all of this sloppy messiness. My site has been under construction and we’re all practicing patience.

Although… I do sometimes wish we could go back to the days of analog. The days when light switches turned on lights instead of the tiny lady trapped inside that box on my end table. The days when liking someone meant… you told them so to their face. Or maybe in a handwritten note. Those were fun.

But then I also love a lot about technology. I love that, because of it, I can tell my tiny computer we call a phone to turn on my coffee the second I open my eyes every morning.
I love that I can talk to my cousin and see her face at the same time, even if she doesn’t live in my town.
And I love that it allows me a platform to reach people; even if it is a sloppy mess at times.

I think it all boils down to me wishing I could just take the things I love about anything… and leave the things I don’t love behind for someone else. Wouldn’t that just be peachy. Whether in technology, in life, in people…
Not necessarily change anything, or anyone… to each his own and no judgement and all that, for sure. But to just have the ability, and the control, to kindly say –
no thank you, that’s not for me.
And then move along without anyone getting hurt, or at the very least, confused.

But, that’s not our world. Our world, this new one right here, is full of a ton of things we don’t love and don’t need and don’t want to see. You can’t open your tiny pocket computer, or walk outside, without seeing something you don’t want to.
Life is full of triggers.
And the second you embrace that fact and stop fighting it, the healthier and the happier your days will be.

At least that’s what I think.

Anyway, I digress…

How’s about some holiday recipe ideas from the VIP backlogs?

Excellent.

My little family and I do something different every year for the holidays. We either travel somewhere new and different, cook something new and different, or spend it with new and different people… or all of the above! But I have tons of old culinary favorites I know I can look back on and revisit whenever I want to, and I decided to put them all into one post just for you.

Here we go.

Continue Reading

November 16, 2023 by
Fun

Gifts! Gifts! Gifts!

Welp, I suppose I should apologize for that post that I published… over a month ago… just now leaping into your inbox. I’m pretty sure I talk about how much I love October in it, so…

this is me ensuring you that I have not gone nutso and I am also aware that it is
NOVEMBER. 

Anywho, I’ve been traveling so much lately and haven’t had any time to get things out over here!! And right now I literally have 17 minutes before a meeting to get something out.

SO. Since it’s the holiday season (or about to be, depending on how you roll with traditions in your house) so I have a few gift ideas to share with y’all! 

I work with several companies who have shared their sales with me, so I’m just gonna do a whole link dump so y’all can do a little (or a lot) shopping.

I’ll make it as quick and cheerful as I can…

Here we go!

Continue Reading

November 14, 2023 by
Food + Wine

DIY Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Promoting anything other than kindness and humanity right now feels strange. But as a kind human, I just want to remind everyone that we are all capable of compassion and empathy and grace towards those we come in contact with during any type of hardship or great devastation. That can be harder to find when the world feels like it’s upside down and falling apart… But it’s still inside all of us. So let’s not forget that when you see people whose job requires them to publicly do, or share something else during times like these. Let us not leap to judgment. Sharing something unrelated, or even something positive, does not take away from the tragedy. And it doesn’t mean they’re ignoring it.
It just means that it takes a lot to be a human, and we are all trying our best to move through the world.  

Everyone processes grief of all kinds in many different ways, and not everyone has the capacity to verbally express their feelings in the same manner as others. Some people go inward when they’re scared. Some scream out. Some deflect.
It’s all ok; we are all differently the same.

So let’s all try harder to allow space for each individual to do what they need to do in order to pass through.
And continue to put out what we wish to breathe in.

x x x

October brings a lot of joy into my heart. Lately that joy has been harder to access because of the news we are waking up to every morning, but generally speaking – October is lovely in my book. And it’s just plain hard not to correlate the month with chocolate. So I thought the timing seemed relatively fitting to share this decadent DIY peanut butter cup recipe.

Continue Reading

October 12, 2023 by
Food + Wine

Easy Slow Cooker ( Korean Inspired ) Glazed Pork Ribs

I thought about taking one to three of those words out of the title… but then I didn’t feel like it.
I also found it highly important that you enter knowing, without a doubt shadow, that this recipe is :

  1. Easy (always a plus)
  2. Made in a Slow Cooker (robot, take the wheel!)
  3. Korean Inspired (I am 100% not Korean and 100% a white lady)
  4. Glazed (that good kind of sticky)
  5. Pork Ribs (just in case you thought it was something un-ribby, but also see below how they are also not technically ribs.)

Clarification over whew.

(Also, it would be very remiss of me not to declare that this post was birthed last year and just never grew legs until now. It’s not the recipe’s fault; she’s a beaut. The fault lies in the lap of my life.
But aren’t you super excited to read it now because of its origin story??)

Continue Reading

September 28, 2023 by
Fun

Birthday Suitcase

Doesn’t everyone pack naked?

I’m packing for my birthday trip that I keep forgetting is my birthday trip bc I’m deliciously old.
And I guess birthdays used to be about getting stuff that I thought I needed or wanted, or stuff I thought I was supposed to need or want.
Or stuff that I was conditioned to need and want because maybe it was never about me,
and this is why I never knew who I was all those years.

If you keep adding stuff on top of nothing, the nothing is still there.
It’s just hiding underneath the fancy coat.

Doesn’t everyone wax philosophical naked?

Turns out finding yourself is the hardest and scariest thing you will ever do,
until you’ve found her.

And then the best gift of all is that you get to feel so much peace and truth and wholeness. You get to look behind you at the long and winding road it took to get to where you are
and
thank the pain – and the people who caused it – for forcing you out of your costume.

You give more grace. You love harder and better,
even if it means you’re loving less people now.

I know so many of you are going through a change right now.
Going somewhere you never thought you’d have to go.
It’s scary. It’s unknown. It’s new.
But you’re walking that path anyway
and that’s what we call Brave.

I promise you it’s worth it.
And I’m here with a flashlight to walk with you if you need me.

I love you.
💋🥂

Continue Reading

September 20, 2023 by
Uncategorized

True Crime

There is so much chatter around the Danny Masterson case. About who or what may or may not have supported him during and after his choices. About the church of scientology and their role in it.
We’re questioning celebrities we thought we trusted. We’re reading and analyzing transcripts. We’re debating what is just and what is not.
But that’s far from what needs the most attention and nurturing.

I typed this into my phone on my Peloton this morning.

…

Continue Reading

September 13, 2023 by