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Friday’s Fresh Five! (9/6/13)
Helen, named after the main character in a children’s book, makes picking cherry tomatoes and cucumbers in my garden a challenging experience. People with arachnophobia would avoid this task, since...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (9/13/13)
Acorns dangle from oak trees to kiss summer flowers goodbye. With the weather still summery warm, it’s hard to believe that in nine days, fall officially begins. My backyard reflects the coming...
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Grilled Fish Tacos
If you raise children to have adventurous taste buds and you give them an appreciation for well-prepared food, most likely they will grow up to be good cooks. This little bit of parental advice may...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! 9/20/13
Purple flowers with yellow centers pose against a golden summer backdrop. These two colors sit on opposite sides of a color wheel making them complementary colors. In the world of color theory, they...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (10/4/13)
Several dozen rose bushes reside in my garden and, just like my children, I appreciate each one of them for their unique qualities and gifts. But, unlike my children, I have a favorite. With blossoms...
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Grand Central Bakery Jammers: Biscuits Topped with Jam
Imagine the smell of homemade biscuits wafting throughout your home in the early hours of the morning. You wake up early, before everyone else, because you enjoy the peace and calm of your empty...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (10/11/13)
With a lonely heave, a small oak tree fell across a pathway. People walked around the “nuisance,” refusing to break their stride. It was as if a fallen tree was an everyday impediment. No one paused...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (10/18/13)
Trick or treat? The early morning sun cast a spectacular golden glow on a rose, necessitating an impromptu photo session. After downloading the images to my computer, tone-on-tone color variations,...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (10/25/13)
A white door at the top of the stairs rests slightly ajar and tempts a young woman to enter. The floor groans as she takes her first steps into the dusty room. As her eyes adjust to the dim light, she...
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Bacon and Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese
Sometimes in life you have to color outside the lines, tell little white lies, or bend rules. It’s near impossible to toe the line all of the time. I experienced a moment like this, just the other day....
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (11/1/13)
An outing to a local farm provided me with photographic inspiration. Trays of plump and shapely persimmons, waiting for distribution to food banks, caught my attention. Too bad I didn’t think to bring...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (11/8/13)
The golden morning sun sneaks in through a kitchen window and kisses the autumn fruit. Three kisses to be exact. One, for being so sweet. Another, for being so perfect. And the third one . . . well,...
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Hearty Lentil Soup
“Can you stay for dinner?” an elementary schoolmate asked me decades ago. “We’re having lentil soup, she said. “What are lentils?” I asked. Being of Asian descent, lentils had never passed through my...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (11/15/13)
Rainbow lint covers every imaginable surface in my home. T-shirt scarves tagged and waiting to be bagged lie in yard-high heaps on my dining room table. 344 scarves to be exact, an amount that far...
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Whopper Cookies: Baking with Halloween Candy
When Halloween has come and gone, but the Halloween candy has not, what do you do with the leftovers? Do you force yourself to eat them up one by one or do you spare yourself the calories and take...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (11/22/13)
Shorter days and cooler air send signals to leaves to change their colors. As their veins constrict, leaves gradually loose their dominant green coloration, unmasking inherent yellow and orange...
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Saying Goodbye To My Dog Romeo
RomeoDecember 1998 to November 2013 As Romeo forces air into his lungs, his rib cage rattles and his entire body shivers. While I watch him breathe, tears roll down my cheeks. He lifts his head at the...
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Sugar and Spice Pecans
Do more ingredients and more steps make a recipe better? Not necessarily. Last week my daughter and I attempted to make an elaborate pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. The recipe involved more steps and...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (12/6/13)
His eyes close as the sun shines on his face and the wind blows through his hair. My dog’s face reflects sheer bliss during a recent car ride. Dogs live in the present moment and savor all of life’s...
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Friday’s Fresh Five! (12/13/13)
Like fog rolling in and stealing the sun, winter doldrums came and swept over me. Even though it’s not officially winter yet, I’ve been feeling kind of blue these last couple of weeks. Realizing this,...
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