The French Blonde: For Your Sophisticated Cocktail Sipping Era
Recently I read that when Taylor Swift goes to her favorite Kansas City restaurant, her cocktail of choice is a French Blonde. (You can also read this life changing news story here.) With some investigation I found that the French Blonde is a fresh fruity and herbal cocktail with grapefruit juice, Lillet Blanc, gin, elderflower…
Small Batch Cookie Butter Rice Krispie Treats
This Rice Krispie treat is perfect, but it was created from two mistakes. First, I went into Target for some household items while I was hungry, which led me to the baking aisle. Second, I made this because I was procrastinating rather than doing my issue proofs. (Sorry boss! Proofs are done now!) Two things…
My Top Ten Books of 2023
Between physical books and audiobooks, I have reached a personal new record of books read in one year: 103. Many were excellent. Some were bad. Others were forgettable. Some were full of literary merit but were unpleasant to read and those shall remain nameless. But, of the books I enjoyed the most and would recommend…
Butternut Squash Cheddar Ale Soup
Anyone else love getting cheddar ale soup at a brewpub? I rarely get it because it’s, more or less, like drinking melted cheese, but I love it. I had a craving recently, and I set out to make some. And then I started finding recipes. That there were large quantities of cheese and heavy cream…
Easy Tropical Salad with Coconut Shrimp
What makes this weeknight salad easy? It uses coconut shrimp from your supermarket’s freezer section. (Mine came from Trader Joe’s.) Sure you can make a healthy coconut shrimp in your air fryer, and it would be delicious, but I made this for the evenings where the choice between having a colorful salad or having a…
The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer: book review and book club menu
Clover has always been the one left behind. Her kindergarten teacher passed away in front of her in the middle of a dramatic reading of Peter Rabbit, her parents died during their travels when she was six, and her beloved grandfather passed away soon after Clover graduated from college. Clover is afraid of being left…
Summer Mimosa
A while back, I was excited to find a blueberry liqueur at Total Wine. (The brand is Green Door, which is based in Kalamazoo, MI.) I immediately began planning summer cocktails and decided that a berry Kentucky mule would be the first thing I tried. It was the first thing I tried, and I was…
Roasted Peaches with Whipped Vanilla Cinnamon Cottage Cheese
Are you old enough to remember diet and fitness trends of the eighties? When dieting meant living on grapefruit, cottage cheese, and salads with low-cal dressing and exercise was either jazzercise classes or Jane Fonda on VHS? This isn’t an eighties sort of cottage cheese. It’s whipped to perfection and made delicious for the modern…
If We’re Being Honest by Cat Shook: Book Review
When the family of Gerry Williams asks Gerry’s best friend, Fred, to provide the eulogy at his funeral, they do not expect the elderly teetotaling Baptist to show up drunk and tell the entire congregation that he and Gerry had been in love their entire lives. After the most memorable eulogy ever given in Eulalia,…
Lemon Cold Brew Tereré with Mint
What is tereré, you might ask? It’s South American iced tea made with yerba mate, and usually there is some lemonade added in. It’s delicious but unlikely to ever experience popularity in North America for one reason: You serve it in a gourd or a small glass with a specialty straw called a bombilla (Google…
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An Unexpected Chapter 