Today is a milestone for my blog: Six years since I started publishing it. I hoped it would help me redefine my journalism career, but I had no idea that it would propel me into this amazing niche where I write recipes professionally, take photographs and live and breathe food. I feel so blessed.

This year I would love to hear from you — my wonderful, kind readers who make me smile with every comment. Come out of the woodwork today and share a little or a lot about how long you’ve been reading, what your favorite posts are and who you are. I’d really love to hear from you all!

But what’s a blog birthday post without a little reminiscing? Let’s do it in food. It’s totally the best way, right?

Here are some of the recipe highlights of the last six years:

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries -For years, these have been a runaway favorite here — and with good reason. The seasoning combination of cinnamon and paprika give these fries incredible flavor that compliments the natural sweetness of the sweet potatoes. Read the rest of this entry…

Tasting cups ... different brew methods.

Coffee and I? We’re old buddies. I grew up in a coffee-drinking family, who gathered every weekend day for a leisurely cup. In summer, we’d all sit on the sun porch — even before I started drinking coffee myself — and chat, sometimes inviting neighbors in with a friendly call out the window. Sometimes, we still do that.

My first cup of coffee was had at age 10. We were in Florida for Thanksgiving, and my vacation friend (she and I were always there at the same time every year) and I decided to be a little rebellious and have a cup from the free coffee bar. My family didn’t bat an eye, and I’ve been drinking coffee ever since. By the time I hit sophomore year of high school, I had my own gigantic travel mug that accompanied me to school every morning until I lost it in college.

Eventually, I cut back on my consumption. I mean, really, brewing a whole pot just for me? That’s a little too much. These days, I usually have one to two cups a day. Sometimes I have three, if I end up at the coffee shop to get some work done. Turns out, all the coffee drinking is a healthy move. My husband is now up to two to three cups a day himself, something supported by recent research that drinking a couple cups a day can lower the risk of prostate cancer in men. (Ladies, good news for you too: female coffee drinkers also have a lowered risk of developing breast cancer.)

A Starbucks in Seattle

But coffee drinking is more than a health move or a morning ritual: it’s a social thing. Coffee brings people together — neighbors over a morning cup, spouses at the kitchen table, co-workers in the latte line. There’s no secret why the term coffee klatch came into existence. Coffee is naturally friendly. Read the rest of this entry…

Paige has been exploring lately, wherever I will let her. And wherever it is, she seems to relish in running her fingers through new textures — just-cut grass, warm sand, salt water . . . She’s curious and intrepid, unafraid. I hope she stays that way.

Meanwhile, I’ve been observing and thinking. It’s funny how you can fall into a period of retrospect and lose yourself in moments, memories . . . but we all need that inner movie once in a while, I think. And Will? He’s discovering everyday.

Three girls walked along the shoreline where Will, Paige and I were relaxing the other day. One was much taller with wind scattered hair pulled haphazardly into a ponytail. Another was medium height with straight, shiny raven locks. The third was smaller, shorter, with a sunkissed ponytail. Fifteen years ago, I was one of those girls, carefree, curious and believing that summer truly was just a collection of days spent walking with bare feet across hot sand. Read the rest of this entry…

When I saw these two posts on radishes over at Kalyn’s Kitchen, I was intrigued but not driven to make them. But over the next few days, this one called sauteed radishes with vinegar and herbs remained on my mind. And when I say it remained on my mind, I mean I was virtually obsessed with it. I had to have it. So I bought a bunch of radishes at the store and prepared to make it. As fate would have it, it took me another week to actually get it in the pan.

This morning, I decided I would quickly throw it together while Will napped to have with lunch. I made a few minor adjustments – using regular balsamic vinegar instead of golden balsamic, substituting extra light olive oil (since it’s cooked at such a high temperature, the good properties of extra virgin olive oil with be lost in the mix), and eliminating the herb finish. I just didn’t have any to use.

So how did it come out? Um, except for the five bits I saved for Will to try (since I think he will love it too), it didn’t make it to lunch. My one little bite (to try it out, of course) turned into two, which turned into almost the entire two-serving batch. This is a you-have-to-try-it dish.

But when I sat down to write this and started loading up the photos, which is always my first step to blogging, I got a little misty eyed. No, no, it’s not that the radishes were all gone! It’s that I realized this is a dish that my grandmother would have loved. She may have preferred simpler preparations to complex in her cooking, but she adored good food, good company and good conversation. Unfortunately, since she passed away when I was just 14, I never had the opportunity to cook for her.

I wonder what she would say if I could cook her some of my favorite dishes? If I could have just one more day with her, I would prepare an exquisite day of food at the house by the beach where we spent every summer. For breakfast, it would be broiled grapefruit with toast and some good, freshly ground coffee. For lunch, seared tuna with sesame-soy drizzle over sliced avocado and some fresh sweet corn. For dinner, we would have fresh, homemade bread, homemade manicotti, a tossed salad and these delicious sauteed balsamic radishes. And for dessert? My dark chocolate mousse with fresh whipped cream. It would be a delicious day.

But really, if I could have just one more day, cooking wouldn’t be my total focus – although I would want to spoil her with my time-developed skills. The focus would be on making the most of every single moment – making sure that she could enjoy Will, her great grandson, talking incessantly about everything she has missed and everything I hope for the future, showing off the photos from my graduations, wedding, Will’s birth and my latest ultrasound photos. Essentially, I would try to cram 13 years into a day.

I can’t have this day of my dreams. But maybe, someday, in some other dimension I will be able to. Who knows?

For now, I have my memories to share with my children, and old photos to help me go back in time, if only for a minute. And I have my cooking . . . to create new memories with my living family so that one day they can look back fondly too.

About Radishes:
Radishes are a root plant with edible leaves (you can wash them and use them in salads if they are extra fresh). Although raw radishes have a pepper-y flavor, the intensity is greatly calmed when you saute them a bit. In terms of nutrition, radishes are low in calories (only two calories per radish) but rich in potassium (47.6 mg of potassium per radish, which is 1 percent of your daily intake. So if you eat 10, then you have 10 percent of your daily intake.) and even richer in vitamin C (8 percent of your daily intake per radish - wow!).

Balsamic Sauteed Radishes
serves 2 (adapted from Kalyn’s Kitchen)

1 tbsp extra light olive oil
1 bunch red radishes, ends trimmed and quartered lengthwise
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Stir in the radishes and balsamic vinegar. Cover with a generous amount of salt and pepper.

Cook radishes, stirring often, for 5-7 minutes. The radishes are done when they are browned and slightly softened (they could still be a bit crisp too).

Remove from heat and serve immediately with an extra sprinkle of sea salt.

Will was wide-eyed with amazement this morning when he saw that the Easter bunny had indeed dropped by our home to leave a basket of fun things. Fortunately, he’s too young to be disappointed that there was no candy in his basket. And besides, he got some cool stuff.

This Easter, I vowed to keep the candy out of the baskets for Will and my stepson. I succeeded, except for the two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a Snickers that my husband slipped into the stepsons.

However, that is not to say that it’s a candy free Easter. As luck would have it, I was in Walgreens one morning this week and was seduced by the candy. It lured me in with its sweet promises of smooth delight. So I bought some. Okay more than some. I bought a lot.

Instead of candy filled baskets, the boys got other stuff in the baskets. For instance, Will’s basket has a pair of rain boots for the yard, gardening gloves (to help Mommy in the garden), and other fun stuff. The candy is hidden away in plastic eggs, which they will have to locate this afternoon in a mini egg hunt . . .

Let’s just hope that Will doesn’t eat all the candy before I can stop him.

Easter was a blast growing up. I would awake to an overflowing basket of candy covered in bright cello wrap. I would examine every chocolate and candy before slowly digging in. I liked to save some of the treats for later, though I am pretty sure my mother would pilfer from one ones I didn’t eat right away.

But perhaps the best experience of my yearly Easter celebration was crashing my neighbor’s celebration. See, we’d eat Easter dinner as a family pretty early. And oft times I would have skipped at least one meal, replacing it instead with candy. So by the evening I was hungry.
And that’s when a friend would appear next door at her family’s home for their buffet style Easter.

I would never go with the intention of eating, but once there it was hard to resist the succulent ham and the moist rolls and the steaming veggies . . . oh yes, I would eat a second Easter dinner at a party I crashed. (This was but one of many holidays I crashed at these neighbor’s house . . . It was a bit of a tradition that continued well into my teen years.) Eventually, the Mr. Hebert passed away and Mrs. Hebert moved to a smaller home. That was the last I saw of the family.

Memories are good.

I was just talking about spring the other day. Sitting here today, I realized that means that summer isn’t far behind. As a child, summers meant endless days at the beach, reading book after book after book – sometimes well into the night. My grandmother and I would stay at our house there from late June (when school let out) until a day before it started back up again. I would play at the beach or with my beach friends (though back then there weren’t many kids my age around there). But mostly I would read and write and imagine (and spend a hell of a lot of time in the sand and water).

There was this one summer where I decided that my closet should be my private “office” for writing. I dragged an old side table from the basement up two flights of stairs and stuck it in there . . . then I got this purple file case and put that in there too. And by the light of a flashlight hung from the closet rod, I had light . . . hey, it was a creative venture.

I can’t say I always appreciated the gift of being at the beach all summer – sometimes I wanted to be home with my friends or at least have someone my age around. That was the tough part, but at the same time it was the part that made it great. Without the distraction of a million friends buzzing around I was free to let my creative juices flow wildly. I created poem after poem, and thought up story after story.

For sure, it was a whole lot of good times.

There are somethings that bring me back there, reminding me of the happy days I spent with my grandmother. One of those things is IBC Root Beer (no kidding!).

See, back when Chili’s was still a primarily Mexican restaurant with great tacos, yummy nachos and remarkable chili, my grandmother and I would occasionally drop in for dinner during summers at the beach. I’d usually eat a plate of nachos. I can’t remember for certain what she would eat though. I wish I could. Taco salads sometimes, I think. But what I do remember is each ordering an IBC Root Beer. It would come chilled with a frosty mug and would taste oh so yummy. Having an IBC was a special treat and I would savor every drop.

And drinking the IBC you see pictured while writing this, I still savor every drop. And I miss her so much.