How are you doing? Last week, over the span of 24 hours, everyone in my Rolodex seemed to reach out asking the same question. How are you doing? It was comforting until I realized they were just as worried about us as we are. 38 weeks pregnant during a pandemic, this must be a storyline from a movie, a movie we’ve all been cast in. Read more
I was going to tell you all about wild rice. About the time Kev’s grandma, who grew up in Minnesota, gave us a small packet as a gift after we were newly married. Rice? Thank you? I didn’t realize what a gift it was then. I was going to tell you about this sacred grain that grows wild by Minnesota lakes and streams, harvested then and now by members of the Ojibwe Nation. I was going to tell you how the cost of a tiny packet matches the richness of flavor. It’s worth a splurge. I was going to tell you about all that… Read more
How do you hold tradition? With careful, stern hands or with fiddling and curiosity and a little bit of this and that? We’re asking ourselves the same questions about the cabin. How much do we tinker with and how much do we preserve. And if you read any forums on Irish Soda Bread, you’ll hear the same questions, though it sounds more like yelling. “My Aunt would never put baking powder in her soda bread. It’s soda bread for heaven’s sake!” I tinkered and I yielded, to curiosity and tradition, landing somewhere in between to create this Rosemary Orange Irish Soda Bread. What a moderate thing to do. Read more
I have a big, little secret to share with you. Not just to tell you, but to share with you. An invitation of sorts. To a place and a space that’s become quite special to me, to us. A place they call “Up North” around here, known for its breathtaking beauty and superior shores with craggy coastlines and wild woods. If you’re from Minnesota, it’s a place you probably intimately know and love. And if you’re not from here, like us not so long ago, I’d like to invite you over or up or down, but especially away. Read more
When I mention that we eat a dinner salad almost every night, M-F, I get furrowed brows and lots of hows? No one asks why, because most of us know, because most of us are looking for simple ways to get more vegetables into our day and into the bellies of our tiny humans. But how? I once heard a simple vegetable wisdom. It goes like this: If you want to get more vegetables into mealtimes, especially with kids, start with them. Fill up on them first. Read more
If you walk by our house on any given winter night, the house flickers with wood-scented candles curated by our inhouse candle man, Kev, with hanging battery-powered candles curated by our inhouse mom, me, with the gas fireplace, too. If you read any articles or posts on how to hygge in the winter, how to cozy, they’ll tell you to light candles and drink something warm. Nighttime rituals. But what about the daytime? I’ve made it my job to add a little merry to our indoor winter decor this year with these wreaths and this Nordic Winter Garland. Maybe you need a little extra merry too? Read more
It was the first week back at school, back at work, post-holidays, and I was on the couch nursing the bug I managed to get after dropping everyone off at the airport. I was in need of adding a bright spot to our house, for the rest of winter, in place of the downed Christmas decorations leaving bare walls, that could also stand in as decor for the Nordic Winter Party. Were we moving? No. In fact, we were just settling into our long winter lap, the most significant 4 months of winter. Let there be light by way of an Indoor Winter Wire Wreath, I wished. And there was. Read more
I miss the good ole days, the days where I’d test a recipe over weeks, if not months, and post it when it was ready, when it was just right. I’d test it on Saturday mornings, when we’d eat it for breakfast, not 6 times in a row over the course of a Monday and Tuesday, a speed I learned when recipe testing for a cookbook. I started testing these Blueberry Spelt Pancakes with crushed walnuts on the underneath side sometime last year, like the good ole days, over slow Saturday and Sunday mornings. Read more
