Posole and tortillas

I recently had friends visit from Colorado. This essentially led to a 5 day cooking marathon! Kahlua pork with fresh corn tortillas and lime-dressed cabbage, fritatta with onion, garlic, herbs and potatoes, gf pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cheesecake muffins (thank you Tyler!), two types of granola: peanut butter and maple cinnamon, crunchy asian-inspired meatballs with soy-lime…

Posole and tortillas

I recently had friends visit from Colorado. This essentially led to a 5 day cooking marathon! Kahlua pork with fresh corn tortillas and lime-dressed cabbage, fritatta with onion, garlic, herbs and potatoes, gf pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cheesecake muffins (thank you Tyler!), two types of granola: peanut butter and maple cinnamon, crunchy asian-inspired meatballs with soy-lime…

How to peel an egg?

Yes, how to peel an egg… I’m not professing to be an expert, far from it, in fact! This is a plea – how do I peel an egg? I beg of you to share! I’ve eaten my weight in eggs – hard boiled and soft, jammy eggs (my favorite), fried, scrambled, strata and fritatta….

Toasted Pecan & Dark Chocolate Scones

Almost 10 years ago, I started working at the Airman and Family Readiness Center at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. It was a wonderful and challenging journey, being of service to our military families. Shortly after I started working, I had the opportunity to go to a resilience course. In 2009, the course was delivered to…

Being…

Being calm in this busy world is a game changer. It allows you to think, feel, observe, and be present to those around you. Perhaps those are the very reasons people tend to stay so busy. Not everyone has a safe place to “be.” Let’s all try to be a kinder, gentler version of ourselves…

Perfection and Ravioli

Boy, what a year it’s been! We’ve all had things that challenged us, and if we’re lucky, we didn’t break. Cracked maybe, but like the Japanese art of kintsugi, our “gold-filled resin” will highlight our personal strengths, our forged bonds we’ve made with our neighbors. [Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. If a…

A Very Different Kind of Christmas

What a year this has been… for the world. Hurt, loss, grief, change – I believe most have experienced at least one of these things this year. For the ever dwindling Lombardo household, change was the BIG one. Loss of a kind of life we’ve been living for more than 30 years has been the…

Death of the Cabbage Rose…

I was SO cocky. I was just so sure of myself. “Wait for help!”, they said. “I’ve got this!”, I said. “You’re going to wear yourself out!”, they cried. “It’ll be easy!”, I vehemently assured them. And then, those darned cabbage rose wallpaper demon spirits set out to put me in my place, arms dangling…

10 Days in Vietnam

We are nearing the end of our  Okinawa Chapter of this military life. And like many others in our position, we are soaking up the extraordinary travel opportunities while on this side of the world before we leave. In January, we were fortunate enough to have our daughter visit one last time. Besides luxuriating in…

Calling all Cha…

Calling all Character[s into question] “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ― Maya Angelou My cooking camarade and friend extraordinaire, Renee Thomas, once shared a children’s poem on her Facebook page… The Crayon Box That Talked.  What a beautiful message this collection…