Posts under ‘Friends’

“There’s a restaurant downtown I think you’d like,” said my friend Amy when I visited her in Madison, Wis. last week.
Oh my friends, how they know me. Amy was, of course, totally right, and that is how we ended up at Harvest, a small, warm space on the square that features the state capitol, for [...]

One of the most gratifying things about putting out the word that a patio garden is in the offing has been the offer of seeds from friends near and a little bit far. Seed shopping? Nope. Don’t need to.
One of the offers came from a coworker, who told me she had a variety of heirloom [...]

Just before Christmas, I was having a conversation with a guy who flitted in—then out—of my life like a strange and beautiful moth. “I am done with roommates,” I said. “Never again.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “The only roommate I’ll ever have again will be the one that’s sharing my bed.”
It was in the same vein of [...]

I have so very many favorite places in this world, places that I hold in my heart along with the stories that go with them, but added a new one to the list in 2009: the patio at Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon in Jack London Square, preferably during the Sunday farmers’ market, preferably [...]

I bought sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, but in the crush of food that me and my fantastic guests made and brought, they became superfluous, which means I’m now managing a sweet potato surplus. Earlier this week, I started dispatching them using a great recipe for Soy-Glazed Sweet Potatoes with Sesame Seeds I found on my [...]

If you’re reading this, I survived the run-up to Thanksgiving.
Oh, I know. First-world problems, really. I MUST CLEAN. I MUST BUY CRAZY AMOUNTS OF LOCALLY-SOURCED FOOD. I MUST TEAR MY HAIR OUT AND RANT AND ROAR AND WHINE. So, enough already. Here’s the sunny side of the street.
For the second year in a row, my [...]

To distract you from any sight of the frenzied house cleaning and Thanksgiving preparations going on at my place, I’d like to send you in the direction of a new blog for which I’ve started writing: Confessions of a Locavore.
Ever wondered what deep, dark secrets sworn locavores keep when we’re not eating within 100 miles [...]

On Saturday night, I went to Contigo with a friend and learned, sadly, that they were sold out of that night’s padrón pepper menu item. On Sunday, I thought I’d remedied this when I located some red, luscious padróns at Happy Boy Farms’ stand at the Jack London Square Market. I brought them home, posted [...]

About six months before I moved to Iowa, long before I had any idea I’d be gardening, Steve and I were on the phone talking about our future living situation. We’d determined his first-year graduate school apartment wasn’t big enough for the two of us, and he’d been looking for another place for us to [...]

I realize it’s high time to get back to garden blogging, but I’m going to go ahead and admit…my head and heart are still a little bit stuck in Black Rock City, where no plant of the garden variety can live, but where metal flowers bloom from the desert.
I have a story to tell about [...]