With any luck, burritos and cocktails will soon poke their heads out of some soil on my window ledge and bring forth much-needed quarantine sustenance and mirth-making. And, I didn’t even have to go out and forage for burritos or cocktails and cut their stems off to plant them and watch them grow.  No! There… Continue reading Growing Cocktails and Spicy Foods

Hot-off-the-griddle sizzling restaurant reviews, from ordinary people with access to Google, have simmered down.  And I feel a bit lonely.  I’d cozy up to these reviews, reading them on my lunch break.  Sometimes they were enlightening.  Often, they were not. (Very, very often they were not.)  So, when dine-in service was replaced by takeout and… Continue reading Reviving the Restaurant Review: Takeout Take-Aways

Extreme feats of quarantine “can-do spirit” abound on the Internet, so it’s only natural that the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Team would try to either fashion a gym out of logs or sew a set of masks with realistic-looking beards. Amazingly, we haven’t done either of those things. However, we HAVE converted an ordinary-looking Mason… Continue reading Starter Dough Time Capsule

My tightly-knit cocoon of a home—my oasis of creativity and comfort—is unraveling.  The cat and Zoom meetings have blown a big (metaphorical) hole through the middle of the house, and I feel like I’m falling through the floor while screaming desperately for a strong drink.  This all happened on Friday, which was maybe the 454th… Continue reading We’ve Escaped

To spice up the desperate days of lockdown, I told Nate to “meet me in the kitchen—”and that I’d be “wearing a plastic garbage bag.”  How was he to know that by “spice up” I meant “please help me cover my roots; the salons are closed?” These days are dark and strange, and for Nate,… Continue reading No One is Coming to Save your Hair

Hard-core hunkering requires the mindset of a cat, even if sharp things are falling from the sky and your roof is made of one thin sheet of plastic wrap. (Also, unlike the cat, you can’t get comfortable under the couch.)  During these weeks of mandated closures and limited movement, I’ve gone back and forth between… Continue reading Hunkering Hard

Capturing the clover fields of Ireland and cramming them into a cookie (through the magic of food coloring), results in a fantastically unappetizing-looking bakery confection. If this cookie were to grow legs and walk into an airport, all kinds of alarms would sound.  Yes, a dozen of these, lined up on a baking sheet, resemble… Continue reading “Safe Distance” St. Patrick’s Day Cookies

A caffeine and sugar jolt from a can of cola has always fueled the first six raging hours of my day, which is when I: –throw untidy couch blankets into submission. –tell students online to “take that thesis statement by the tail, hit it against the wall, and if that doesn’t work, unplug it.” –pound… Continue reading Green Tea: Is it for Me?

The elusive Leap Day Cocktail hides its clever, mischievous self in the shadows for years at a time, before pouncing on unsuspecting imbibers and shouting, “It’s my day now!” This year though, I was completely caught off guard.  I knew that Leap Day was coming, but for some reason, I didn’t care.  However, there are… Continue reading Leap Day Cocktail

It’s difficult to “quiet the mind” after viewing a link titled “11 Instant Pot Facebook Group Recipes That’ll Disturb You.”  Images of the gaping insides of a raw chicken that’s stuffed with pickles—along with lumpy meatloaf “doughnuts” glazed with some kind of pink ketchup—just stick to my brain like sushi rice. However, I’ve heard that… Continue reading “Quieting the Mind” with Coloring