January 14, 2023 I went hunting for ways to use up bananas that didn’t involve bread, and naturally found my way down a rabbit hole of puddings. I’m not southern, but I’ve lived around enough of them in DC to understand the value of a good banana pudding, and to know I wasn’t willing to work that hard. No buying Nilla wafers, no baking my own. I wanted something less than...
January 23, 2024 When someone is hurting, or celebrating, or the source of help or hope in your life, don’t you feel the urge to do something about it? Words like “I’m sorry,” “hooray,” or “thanks a ton” float up naturally like bubbles, but as quickly can burst with hollowness, as you push up against their limits. Don’t you ever just feel the...
January 17, 2024 Photo by Curtis Yee, @supercurtisman A friend offered to bring cake to our weekly small group meeting, but held off when she heard I was planning to bake a cake. “My dessert can wait til next week. I can’t say no to a Jeannie Rose cake!” I replied, “It’s mostly an excuse to use up some clementines that had gotten too hard to peel. Cake is like the...
January 16, 2024 You probably know, if you like bread enough to read these, that a boule is a round loaf, and a batard is an oval loaf. You probably also know, but in case you don’t, one step in the bread-making process is called proofing, where the dough rests, ferments and rises, typically in baskets that give the dough shape. These baskets can be boule shaped (round), batard shaped...
January 13, 2024 Ana-Maria entered the house laden with bananas. At least three bunches, but once you’re at a certain volume of bananas, precision becomes difficult. We stashed them on the toaster oven, which surface they were more than sufficient to cover. Her friend had thought she was ordering six bananas. You can guess what she got instead. So she shared with Ana-Maria, who in turn...
How many times have you searched for a recipe online, found some promising concept on a food blog, then been forced to scroll past paragraphs of inane commentary about the writer’s feelings about the weather and her (it’s always a her) kids’ crazy fall schedule and her trip to Florida? I’m putting fellow women in a box right now, which I realize isn’t cool, but...
February 16, 2023 For the last few weeks, instead of writing I’ve been attempting to discern sheet quality by enlarging photos online, scrubbing toilets (just one toilet, actually), wiping away dust with endless squirts of Lysol, scouring shades of sky blue paint for the one that looks right in our now-bright basement light. (That quest deserves an entire post of its own—hopefully...
December 16, 2022 Part One There’s dirt all over the floor. I suppose there must be a tidy way to pot amaryllis bulbs, but it isn’t the method I’m using. A stack of fresh pots, Costco-grade box of foil for wrapping the pots, a bag of potting soil, a Chopstick for poking drainage holes–I’ve pulled out all the tools of the trade. Half the table is covered in shiny pots of dirt with the bulb tips...
December 2022 There’s always a lot of dust and contractor trash bags before there’s anything that looks nice on Instagram. As with renovations, as with life. For the longest time, one of the main hindrances to using our basement as a retreat space has been the dilemma of how people would get there. Not as in maps to our neighborhood but as in passing from the door of our house to the basement...
September 2022 We are starting the process of converting our basement apartment into a mini retreat space. We deeply value hospitality, and desire to use our home to create welcome and connection. For most of the time we’ve lived in our house, we’ve had people unrelated by blood or covenant living in the home with us, in community, as part of our chosen extended family. We’re...