Lifestyle
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Day 9 of Giving Thanks: Comfort Foods (& My Favorite Snickerdoodle Recipe)
Living in another country is a wonderful experience, but every now and again the inevitable pangs of homesickness (or melancholy in general) set in. When this happens, I turn to my cookbooks and favorite recipes and work a little kitchen magic. Granted, it’s not much good for my waistline, but food has such a strong pull to memory for me that it will generally do the trick. One favorite childhood cookie, long forgotten to me but recently rediscovered, is the humble Snickerdoodle. Crispy on the outside, a titch chewy on the inside, redolent of cinnamon, it’s one of my many the perfect comfort food. This afternoon I baked a batch…
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Looking Back, in Thanks (Part 1)
So, November is upon us, and for my American friends, Thanksgiving Day will be one of the high points of the month: family gathered together, laughing, eating turkey and pumpkin pie, crashing on the sofa in a food coma and watching football. Not so much here. After cooking a big turkey dinner with all the trimmings on my first Thanksgiving here, only to have the (then) three-year old say “I don’t like turkey”, leaving the three of us to eat all the dishes prepared – that’s a lot of green bean casserole, folks. And since the Thursday that Thanksgiving falls on is a normal working day here, it tends to…
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Halloween, Here vs There
Halloween in the UK (at least where we live) is very different from how it is celebrated in the US. In the US, it’s very much a commercial holiday. You’ll find rows upon rows of costumes at your big box stores, and your smaller stores as well. You’ll find AISLES in those same big box stores packed, from top to bottom, with bags of candy to be handed out. You’ll find costumes of the Power Rangers, princesses, Spider Man, Superman – you name it, they have a costume for it. Towns in the US have designated times for trick or treating. And, of course, there are rules: if the porch…
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Halloween Hell
Let me say, for the record, that I hate Halloween. Hate. It. It is my least favorite holiday, with Valentine’s Day taking a close second. (But that’s another post, entirely.) Why, you ask? Perhaps if I explain in the form of a haiku… Halloween costume Striking terror in my heart My ideas suck Yeppers. I hate the pressure of coming up with a really cool Halloween costume. Perhaps it was because so many of my childhood costumes…well…sucked. (No offense, mom.) To be honest, I couldn’t tell you what I was for many a Halloween. The costumes were either that unremarkable, or I’ve completely blocked it out. (I’m leaning towards the…
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The Gallery: Faces
I spent part of this afternoon building a Lego set with my kidlings today. Together they sat, faces close together, working (companionably, no less!) to assemble the small pieces. Watching them, it struck me how much they both have grown – Pea’s not a baby any more! – and how much older they look – and yet, how little their faces have changed. Oh, sure, they have lengthened a bit and lost the baby squareness that they had (yes, they were blockheads), but Pea still has a glint of mischief and Boo is still, well, Boo. I’m a bit mad with my camera, my kids will back…
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Things I HAVE Done
On Thursday, I wrote a post about the things that I haven’t done. Perhaps some items were a bit tongue-in-cheek, some were things I’d like to do, some were things I have no need to do. But… That’s a bit negative, isn’t it. I’m forty-three years old. And I’ve: 1. Slept in a tent in the desert. By a river filled with crocodiles. And my tent zipper wouldn’t fully close. 2. Landed in a plane on a beach (and in the desert) in Namibia. 3. Rode in a helicopter and circled the St. Louis arch. 4. Eaten wiener schnitzel and apple strudel in Vienna. 5. Gone snorkelling in the Caribbean…
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Things I’ve Never Done
I’m forty-three years old. And I’ve never: 1. Slept in a narrowboat. 2. Gone white-water rafting. 3. Flown in a hot air balloon. 4. Seen “The Big Lebowski”. 5. Drank a dirty martini. 6. Rode a zipline in Costa Rica. 7. Been to Seattle. 8. Caught a fish in Pike Place Fish Market 9. Finished a knitting project I’ve started. 10. Dressed up as Santa’s helper. 11. Learned to drive a manual transmission. 12. Walked a runway. 13. Planked. 14. Understood “planking”. 15. Eaten snails*. 16. Skinny dipped. 17. Climbed a mountain. 18. Gotten a tattoo. 19. Taken my kids to Chuck-E-Cheese. 20. Cruised the Nile River. 21. Learned to…
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The Gallery: Inspirational People
This week’s Gallery theme is Inspirational People, which should be easy, except for the sticky bit that we must use a picture of our own. Which kind of knocks Mother Theresa, Julia Child, Ansel Adams and Martha Stewart (not that she is on the same rank in degrees of inspiration, but dang, the woman can create stuff out of…other stuff) straight off the list of possible topics. So today, I’m going to look a tad bit closer to home. My kids. Boo is, well, in many ways, too much like me. He is overly sensitive. Creative. A dreamer, but with a practical side that keeps him grounded. A worrier. So.…
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The Gallery: Pink
The weather over the past week has been absolutely stupendous. On Friday, it was warmer here than in Rome. When I spoke to my sister outside of St. Louis, they were shivering in 48 degree weather, while we were basking in temps near 75. It felt more like July than October. Odder yet? One of the rose bushes bloomed. And not just one lone bloom, but the whole darn rosebush, in a stunning, glorious pink. That photo, my friends, is completely untouched – no color adjustment, “not Lomo-fied”, none of my favorite Picnik tweaks, just nature in all her surprising glory. I like to think it’s God’s way of telling…
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You’ve Gotta Wonder What She’s Thinking
Look at her. Look at those gorgeous, soulful eyes. Sometimes I wonder what she’s thinking. * * * * * What she’s really thinking is “Please give me the other half of that ham sandwich. You know bread goes straight to your hips.”