Posts under ‘Holidays’

When I was in high school, I started spending one day every holiday season baking cookies. A cacophony of cookies. I baked at least five or six different kinds, then bagged them all up in sandwich bags with holiday-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses and mini candy bars, then tied the baggies with green and red ribbon, filled [...]

Iowa City is about as far from an ocean as I’ve ever lived, so it was with great glee that I learned from my friend Sarah last year about “The Shrimp Guy.” The crew from Fabian’s Seafood drops into town about every four weeks from April to November, delivering shrimp, crabmeat, crawfish, and other seafood [...]

Last week I was out for a run at dusk when it happened for the first time. Something darted across the sidewalk, darting from the hell strip between the sidewalk and street toward a bush lining a house set back from the road. Rabbit. First one of the season. I saw the second outside Danforth [...]

The past two weeks have been hectic, to say the least. On February 1, I gave notice at my job, and when I shut down my computer tomorrow at the end of the day, I’ll walk out the door of my current employment for the last time—at least, the last time as an ID-carrying member [...]

After the turkey was sliced and eaten, after my family had fought over who got to eat the last bit of stuffing and gravy stashed in plastic containers in the refrigerator, after the Christmas tree had gone up and any remnants of harvest decor gave way to the Advent wreath and manger scenes, the detritus [...]

Just after Thanksgiving, I went in to get my hair cut. After my stylist finished working her magic, I headed to the cash register to make my next appointment. For January 9. “I can’t believe that’s just six weeks away,” I said. The receptionist shook her head. “It’s crazy.” It is crazy. So much has [...]

I had a fabulous plan for Thanksgiving food, and for what we’d eat the days leading up to and leading out of the holiday. The flaw in my plan? I didn’t expect our family members to demand a break from eating during the day. For whatever reason, they didn’t want to eat most minutes of [...]

Earlier this year, I declared my abiding love for sage, and Lydia added a comment about how much she loves to harvest sage on Thanksgiving morning. Lydia, thanks for the tip, because when I cleaned up the rest of the garden, I thought of your advice, and kept the sage plant in its pot, hanging [...]

In August, when I was slow-roasting tomatoes using Kalyn’s fabulous instructions, I already knew we’d be hosting Thanksgiving here in Iowa City. My parents and Steve’s mother and her husband were all planning to join us for a few days of frolic and festivity. We don’t own a dishwasher, so it was also going to [...]

Last year, as the cold weather moved into Iowa City, we noticed a collection of small, polka-dotted beetles congregating on our kitchen ceiling. They looked like orange ladybugs, so we considered them harmless guests and let them be. But then they started to multiply. And multiply. And multiply some more. They collected in the kitchen [...]