So its been a while since I’ve blogged, and  I have to admit, I was inspired again by a new, unlikely and unpleasant phenomenon.  Safely returned from Paris, and after throwing caution to the wind on many occasions (steak tartare, soft cheese, you name it, a pregnant woman’s nightmare), it wasn’t until I hit a [...]

We’ve all been listening to and reading the news about Swine Flu (especially if, like me, you live in Austin, just an hour from San Antonio, and bordering Mexico.)  And , if you’re also like me, your instinct might be to take your child out of school and hibernate on a desert island until the [...]

“Here. Blow.” Another mother gives my son a kleenex and makes a motion to her own nose which she hopes will facilitate the exchange. My son looks up at her blankly. “Blow,” she says again. “Its not good for them to have so much mucus in their nose.” The [...]

Well, I’m back from an extended summer vacation – if by vacation, I mean having to entertain my amazing, precocious and only OCCASIONALLY demanding six year old 12 hours a day. Now he’s safely back in school, where someone else, in this case a beautiful young French woman named Katell, can be his intellectual [...]

My family likes to travel. Ever heard the expression ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’? Well maybe that’s us. Because as much as we like to ‘keep it local’, there are days when we still try to gather as little moss as we can. Enter the summer road trip. Even [...]

My son has taken to attaching the phrase BBC America to everything that he says. “This is BBC America, announcing Aidan has to go to bed,” “This is BBC America saying I’m still hungry and won’t eat the rest of the ratatouille.” You name it, it has become newsworthy. And not [...]

I wish I were the perfect Mother-Ambassador of perfect children’s health (and Mary Poppins, with Elle McPherson’s body, and Einstein’s mind), but for anyone who has read my blog, I think quite possibly the jig is up. I drink coffee, I eat the occasional cupcake (the whole thing, all by myself) after a raw [...]

Its difficult to live in a different country, I’m not going to tell you it isn’t. Maybe the difficulties are part of the fun of it for me – turning everyday routines into grand adventures. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my blog for Grocery Geeks.) There’s really [...]

When I was a little girl, my mother was not allowed to go to the grocery store. My father, instead, did all the cooking and shopping. He had retired early while she still worked, so this decision was both pragmatic and ahead of its time. On the rare occasions when my mother [...]

We did it… a mere 12 hours after posting my last blog, we went to grab some more produce for dinner from the market across the street — and voila! — If you look carefully at the black chalkboard in the picture, you just may see it — pain frais sans gluten (fresh bread without [...]