There are a lot of really, really good muffin recipes on the internet. I’ve tried many of them. My favorite is Smitten Kitchen’s “Perfect Blueberry Muffins.” She presents a pretty basic recipe and I can guarantee that if you follow it pretty closely, you will get a muffin as dome-shaped and glittering as hers. It’s…
Had you told me a year ago that the phrase, “Is it dog friendly?” would be part of my daily lexicon, I’d have laughed out loud. Alas, this is me now. Calling up restaurants in hopes of convincing hosts to reserve outdoor tables. Basing my after work drinks on whether or not the restaurant has…
“People blame one for dwelling on trivialities, but life is made up of them.” Reading, “What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories,” I came across this line and paused. How true. How beautifully, hideously true. Some days the trivial stuff is the best stuff. What to eat for dinner.…
Forget 36 hours in D.C., just give me six. Wake up on a perfectly sunny blue sky day and walk to the Georgetown Waterfront. Perhaps stop for coffee somewhere like Baked and Wired (enter and go to the counter on the right, the left side is the line for cupcakes and they’re delicious, but literally…
What do you get when two slightly hungover American tourists board a flight at London-Gatwick bound for Skiathos, Greece with two rowdy hen parties in matching t-shirts with incomprehensibly British sayings? I don’t know, I fell asleep. But when I landed. Wow. Or better, “Mamma Mia!” (sung loudly, with an exclamation point). We landed in…
“We’re the same age but you have an architect!” Perched on a white stone balcony high on a hilltop above the idyllic whitewalled Skiathostown in the Sporades island chain of Greece, the girlfriend of the friend who owns said white balcony sardonically said that line about our ages and my architect. This woman has a…
“Why don’t I ever say no?” I lamented to a colleague after getting a text from a 73-year-old woman whose grandfather used to live in my home and who dropped by months earlier and left a note asking if one day we’d mind letting her see the house. I dreaded giving up an hour of…
I love hosting friends and family overnight at our home, partially because guests are the best excuse to bake something sweet for breakfast. This past weekend my sister-in-law and boyfriend visited and Safeway had strawberries on sale 3 for $10. So I did what any person would do on Sunday morning: Wake up at 6:30…
