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Our Charlotte Harbor, Florida, culinary adventures began with a visit to Catania'sWinery.
The folks who handle tourism for Charlotte Harbor and The Gulf Islands were kind enough to invite me on a media tour of the this pretty coastal area. Please indulge my sharing the highlights.
I just checked into the WannaB Inn, a pretty hotel down a quiet block with 900 feet of beachfront. Lemon Bay is one side, filled with dolphins and manatee. The Gulf of Mexico is steps in the other direction. The hotel has been around ...
Read moreBackground: For a friend's Christmas dinner, I baked a chocolate "decadence" cake from the Silver Palate Cookbook.
Read moreFor food-focused travelers, the most exciting part of the Magic Kingdom’s new Fantasyland additions will be Be Our Guest, arestaurant themed around Beauty and the Beast. Here are some inside details about what to expect.
The restaurant will be an immersive experience. You’ll cross a bridge lined with pots of fire to reach it and, upon entering, be swept up in the movie. Three dining rooms have entirely separate looks, such as the ballroom, which is grand and carpeted, and the ...
Read moreFor 17 years, Epcot has transformed its World Showcaseinto a mecca for folks who like to taste new foods and wines. And for 17 years, the Food and Wine Festival team has brightened the festival with new flavors. The 2012 event will have Florida and vegan (called Terra) marketplaces. Kids will get to drink frothed up Nesquick in chocolate or strawberry and adults can sample a wine made from key lime juice. The Florida Beer ...
Read more“It looks pretty saucy. Is it saucier than usual?”
This is Josh, my college student, home for the summer. He’s examining a frying pan filled with flavored chopped meat, perplexed, nay concerned, that the dinner set before him isn't quite right. It’s Taco Tuesday, you see, a weekly event in our kitchen because Josh misses Cornell’s make-your-own supper, in which he indulged every Monday last school year. (They don't menu plan via alliteration there, apparently.) Taco night relieved Josh from the monotony of ...
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When the editors of Orlando Home & Leisure couldn't fit all my "best of" suggestions into their next issue, they generously agreed to let me share the remainders here. These are sensational tastes and such in and near Orlando. Get in those cars, locals! For more -- the ones that did make the cut, check out the magazine's May 2012 issue.
Best Reason Never to Order Fried Mozzarella Sticks Again
We used to battle over ...
Read moreYou should have seen me Saturday night, wiping salt off my tongue. Not wiping. That’s too civilized a description. With a force of desperation, I was dragging a linen napkin over my tongue, from top to bottom, top to bottom. Occasionally I’d jam a finger in and wrap it around my tongue to scoop out more of the assaulting mess.
Read more“I am a underwriter by day.”*
Well that’s it. This food blogger surge must stop.
Every house in every subdivision, it seems, is home to a food blogger. In every apartment, petite or palatial, sits a would-be scribe compelled to share the joy of each smoky slab of ribs, silky slice of pie or chilled glass of single-origin iced coffee consumed. This I-shoulda-been-a journalist flits 10 fingers across a laptop keyboard by night, interspersing pedestrian photos with enthusiastic, ...
Did I mention the toilet? Ours worked perfectly well. I liked it fine. Only nowadays owners of upscale homes who redo bathrooms install “comfort height” units. They’re higher off the ground so we don’t have to struggle to squat so low. (I never struggled; did you?)
Read moreRyan has a brutal upper respiratory infection. He’s lucky. Why? Because if he felt good, if his nose and throat and head and glands weren’t swollen and achy, he’d be at band camp.
Read moreOne fine spring day in Oneonta, New York, my college friend Chris and I bolted out of her car in a bank parking lot while belting out the words to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Newspaper editors, serious students and overall ambitious young women, we were giddy with possibilities – until we came face to face with Clifford Craven, our school principal.
Read moreToppling out of a meeting at my kid’s school 8 o’clock at night, famished and damn sick of the black pumps squeezing mytoes, I was happy to learn that Son No. 1 had remembered to take the chicken wings dinner I’d prepared in advance out of the oven. Until I read his text: “Please never make them again.” Pissed, I scrolled to the next message, from my husband: “Wings for me? They’re all skin.”
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Low-grade terror of spills, stains and general culinary chaos aside, I decided to cook for company in my new kitchen.That’s a normal thing to do, right?
Read moreTake a look at this picture. It’s a blah picture of a spoon rest on a plastic plate, right? Oh no. It’s more than that. This is Michael and me being scared of our kitchen. This is an image of spoon rest on a plastic plate so the metal won’t somehow destroy the counter under it.
Read moreI was crouched to the ground of the hallway outside the kids’ rooms gently smashing hamburgers against the twin heated serrated panels of a hand-me-down George Foreman grill.
Read moreOK, clearly I'm so hot at inserting photos into blogs, either. Will have the teenagers take a look and fix it later.
You see this? That's us trying to choose a wall color for the common rooms of our house.
Read moreSo now cabinets are out of style.
Read moreNow that school has started, I'm faced with similar decisions every day: Do I lobby to get Josh the teacher he wants for AP Environmental or step back? Do I rummage through Ryan's backpack for papers I need to sign or let him get a zero if he doesn't follow through? And the big one this week: Do I follow up with the mother who threatened to go to the dean if Ryan calls her kid a mean name again (which he denies) and try to keep her calm, or do I let the school's anti-bullying system take its course?
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