The other day, I took a cue from my smart, stylish neighbor and found a new home for the dish soap at my kitchen sink. It's an incredibly tiny tweak to this constantly used space, but it makes me really, really happy. My problem: I just didn't like seeing the dish soap on a counter … Continue reading The Kitchen Sink
I am no baker. My grandmother, one of the most intuitive and clever cooks I've known, was no baker. She did make great biscuits, but those were biscuits. That's different. In fact, whenever Grandmother needed a cake made, she would call Aunt Mayretta and have her do it. Aunt Mayretta was known for her cakes, … Continue reading Pound Cake: It’s Good Enough, and It Tastes Great
Nick's Original Filet House (aka Nick's in the Sticks) is one of Alabama's oldest restaurants, serving great steaks at fantastic prices for more than 75 years. Photojournalist Brittany Faush and I went there for dinner recently, and we share our experience on Alabama NewsCenter. You can read our entire story here. My biggest takeaway (other … Continue reading Alabama Eats: Nicks in the Sticks
I had the opportunity to sit down with Birmingham design expert Lisa Caldwell Flake for a story in Portico Mountain Brook. Lisa has a stunning sense of style, and she comes by it honestly. Her mother, Mary Ruth Caldwell, is a designer, too. The mother-daughter team at Caldwell Flake Interiors works to uncover the character of a … Continue reading Update Your Space in One Afternoon
Gabriel and Maria Isabel Marrero whetted Birmingham's appetite for Caribbean foods with some highly popular pop-up shops. Now their Puerto Rican kitchen, Tropicaleo, has a permanent home at 4426 4th Ave. S. in Avondale. This is a bright, cozy space serving authentic Puerto Rican cuisine made with fresh, Alabama ingredients. It's a perfect fusion of … Continue reading Local Bites: Tropicaleo
We have a wall full of folk art, which my husband, Rick, and I have collected over the past 30 years. We started our collection with a piece by famed Montgomery artist Mose Tolliver. It's called Fountain Ducks with Eggs, and it was an engagement gift from our colleagues at The Alabama Journal. We lived … Continue reading A DIY That Should Have Been Done Already
A couple of my kids are great thrift-store shoppers, so I took them to the thrift-store mecca Unclaimed Baggage Center. This huge store in Scottsboro, Alabama, is where unclaimed bags and cargo from all over the country eventually end up. "You never know what you'll find," is the logo of this store. It's an understatement. We … Continue reading Day Trip to Unclaimed Baggage
I had long been a fan of Alabama artist Beverly Erdreich when I got an assignment to interview her. Funny how things work out that way. This was for the first issue of Portico Mountain Book, and while this happened a while ago, I'd still like to share the story. You'll need to scroll to … Continue reading Art Lessons with Beverly Erdreich
We made Melissa Clark's shakshuka from the New York Times Cooking website all fall, and this North African dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce had become my go-to. Wanting to change things up a bit, I decided upon the Southern Italian version of this, Eggs in Purgatory. Then I got sidetracked by Ande ki … Continue reading Dinner at My House: Put an Egg In It
Here are the books I featured on WBRC Fox 6's Good Day Alabama on January 2. The Missing (William Morrow) In this twisty thriller by C.L Taylor, made highly intriguing by an unreliable narrator, a teenager goes missing from a family with lots of damaging secrets. The story is told from the perspective of Claire Wilkinson, who is … Continue reading Fox 6 Books: January
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