Change. They say it’s the only thing you can count on in this world, and yet people have mixed feelings about it. Dread, eagerness, fear, hatred, relief, or even indifference. Often, the emotion tied to it depends on the change itself and how it comes to our door. A change for the better that comes unexpectedly is commonly called a [...]

Alternate title: There’s more to this blogging thing than my corny jokes. Really, there is.
 

 
Last Thursday, I attended TECHmunchNYC with fellow blogger Maggy Anderson of ThreeManyCooks. I have to mention her because if not for her prompting, my dorky intimidated-by-strangers self likely wouldn’t have gone. And I’m so glad I did. It was a day packed with panels that had [...]

Well, not really fishing. I’ll be gone alright—off to New York today to attend TECHmunch, and I’ll probably end up hiding in a dark corner battling first-day-of-school flashbacks. But it’ll be such a rare day for me away from work that it’ll feel like fishing.
 
Except, without the awesome seascape and saltwater spray.
 

 
 
 
And without the pretty boats lined up by the [...]

Two years ago, finally tired of always losing the precious bounty of our fruit trees to wandering animals, we finally put a fence around a good portion of our backyard. We had three fruit trees—an apple tree and two pear trees—but cordoned off an area large enough to accommodate four more fruit trees and three large raised vegetable beds. Then [...]

Two months ago, I was at my local library borrowing Pam Anderson’s “How to Cook Without A Book” and quickly going through my new stack of post-its to mark the pages. How I got from there to having the amazing trio of Pam, Maggy and Sharon of Three Many Cooks guest post in my blog is still a bit of [...]

 
1. Pretty colors can sometimes be a guide to creating new recipes.
 

 
 
 
2. When you miscalculate the amount of ground meat needed in a recipe, it helps to have a good meatball, bolognese sauce, and meatloaf recipe handy. Especially when your grill is out of commission and you’re too tired from a 10-hour cooking marathon to go grilling burgers, anyway.
 

 
And most [...]

 
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had quite the storm here the other week. The winds snapped some of our bamboo in half, a big tree decided to fall over and rest on our house, and our power went out. Which wasn’t unexpected. We thought it would come back up fairly quickly, but nothing doing. And although we [...]

This past weekend, I witnessed the most fascinating storm I’ve seen yet outside of the Philippines. It started Friday evening, when the wind suddenly started blowing so strongly that it sounded like there was a freight train chugging along our street. It was so loud, it drowned out the hungry grumblings of my tummy. And that’s saying a lot.
 
Saturday morning, [...]

It’s Friday! Time to get ready to bid the work week goodbye. (Haha. “Work week.” It almost sounds like I have a normal life, doesn’t it?)
 
In case you’ve had a hectic week (like I have), and need a bit of help unwinding (like I do), here’s what usually works for me:
 
First, I close my eyes, grab a nice refreshing glass [...]