I remember in the last years before she died, one of my favorite things to do when I visited her in Charlotte was to climb up on her bed, get under her cozy flowered quilt, snuggle up close, and look through magazines to daydream about delicious meals we’d like to cook. We’d sit for hours and ogle over mouth-watering photographs of pork tenderloin roasted with apples and Vidalia onions, spinach and grape tomatoes sautéed in olive oil, buttermilk mashed potatoes, honey-glazed carrots, or homemade Parmesan cheese straws.

In between recipes, she’d ask me about life and work and family. She always thought I was being too hard on myself (which I know I am much of the time) and was always a little worried about me. She thought I deserved the absolute best and nothing less. She was proud of me, even when I felt like there was nothing to be proud of. She’d always interrogate me about any men in my life—she was determined that I was to be treated like a princess. When Pat came along, she was suspicious at first (as she was with every other man I dated), but grew to love him as she saw how happy he made me.  She would accept nothing less than the best for her granddaughter.

Mimi died in July 2010 and I miss her terribly. She loved me so well. She was undoubtedly one of my biggest fans and advocates. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how hard it can be to advocate for yourself and I find myself desperately missing Mimi’s pleas with me to work just a little bit less, to visit my family more, and to eat more apple fritters (her favorite!). I miss trips to the beach with Mimi when we’d take long walks in the mornings to comb the beach for shells and go to the Pawleys Island Hammock Shops in the afternoon. I miss those delicious oatmeal raisin cookies she always had from the Harris Teeter on Park Road. I just miss her so much.

So, in honor of my Mimi and those days when we used to cuddle up in her bed to look through page after page of recipes, here’s a recipe she’d marked in an Everyday Food from November 2008. I’m not sure if she ever had a chance to make this, but this week, I’m going to make a loaf and remember my Mimi.

Fresh Cranberry Bread

Serves 8

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total time: 1 ½ hours plus time for cooling

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for the pan

2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan

1 cup packed light-brown sugar

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

¾ cup whole milk

1 bag (12 ounces) cranberries

1 tablespoon turbinado sugar, for topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; butter and flour a 9-by-5 inch loaf plan and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, combine butter, egg, and milk. Add wet mixture to dry mixture, and whisk to combine; fold in cranberries.

Pour batter into prepared pan; sprinkle top with turbinado sugar, if desired. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack; let bread cool 30 minutes. Invert onto rack, then immediately turn right side up to let cool completely.

I’ve been sick all week. It’s no fun. P.S. If you’re sick, you should go to the doctor. They might give you some antibiotics and these might make you feel better.

Now that I’ve been on my fancy azithromycin pills for 4 days, I want to run!

But, what if I get a whooping cough? Or pneumonia? Or double pnuemonia in both lungs? Or an ear infection? Or sinusitis? What if my body collapses on the road from exhaustion and I get eaten by deer? Or by the beagle that lives next door?

Hopefully these things won’t happen. I’m just a little bored and feel like I’m going to blow my brains out. And I’m irrational. That’s why I want to go running with an upper respiratory infection.  It’s okay. Don’t worry, I’ll take some Robitussin before I go.

Biscuit says I should run.

9. Coffee. Register at Mint.com and see how much money you spend on fancy (cough, cough Starbucks) coffee each month. I did this and it was not pretty. When Hurricane Irene came in September, I drove around for 3.5 hours post-hurricane, looking for a business that was open and making coffee. Putting my life in danger for a bit of bitter-flavored caffeine drink is not okay.

Yep, I make my coffee at home now.

8. Our schedules. Heaven forbid my schedule is thrown off.  My entire day is strictly regimented: I wake up at 6, check my email and eat breakfast at 6:15, run at 6:30, take a shower at 7am, check my email at 7:20am, and on and on. If my schedule is thrown off at all, it’s like my whole day is ruined. I am a little crazy about schedules and I get the feeling many of us have this problem. What if we just let our schedules take a break for a day and let ourselves relax a little bit? I am going to do this on Saturday. Promise. You promise to, too.

7. The Bachelor and the Bachelorette TV shows. Maybe this one is just me. But I am obsessed with this show. That crazy girl Vienna got me hooked three years ago and I’ve been addicted ever since. If Ashley and JP break up, it will feel way too personal.

6. Healthy eating. I get so exhausted by thinking about all the vitamins, antioxidants, organic, non-junk food stuff that I’m supposed to be eating. I just saw a 10 minute clip on the news about how we should all stop eating cereal. Ahhh. I’m just saying—I don’t think eating sugary cereal for breakfast is going to kill me. Lucky Charms are so colorful and bright. They might have a lot of sugar, but they put me in such a good mood when I start my day with their bright marshmallowly goodness. It seems like all the stress we cause ourselves by trying to eat so healthy is going to be the real culprit behind later stress-induced health problems.

5. Work (and ourselves). I was sick this week with a deathly cough and fever. While it probably should have been my first impulse to stay home and get better, it took way too much convincing on Pat’s part. Everyone’s world is not going to stop turning if I stay home when I’m sick. I need to take myself a bit less seriously.

4. Black Friday shopping. People pepper sprayed each other this year. What in the world? Do we all really need big screen TVs so badly that we’d take a can of pepper spray to someone’s face? I just don’t get it. There are good sales, but if we have to risk our safety to go to the outlet malls, it seems like there’s something wrong with this picture.

3. Facebook. I check it like 500 times a day. Half the people that pop up on my newsfeed I haven’t talked to in like 5 years. You’d think that would stop my obsession, but it doesn’t. If there was a Facebook Anonymous support group, I maybe should join. Just think, if we turned off the Facebook website for a week—how much time would we get back?

2. The Kardashians. If I read, see, or hear one more story about Kim and Kris Humphries, I’m going to gag. Or Kourtney being pregnant; or Khloe doing whatever. Enough. I’m not sure how the Kardashian craze started, but I just don’t get it.

1. Email. I check my email incessantly. I was writing emails at 5am yesterday. I checked my email at least 15 times on Thanksgiving. That’s 15 too many times. The world is not going to end if we don’t check email every 10 minutes. (I know you’re probably multi-tasking and checking your email right now. Stop.)

I had a scratchy throat yesterday and it turned into a hacking cough overnight. And then I had a fever this morning. I haven’t had a fever since I was in high school and I had pneumonia.

I keep thinking I might have pneumonia. Maybe I’ll have to go to the hospital.

So, I laid on the couch for multiple hours today, alternately feeling bad for myself and checking my email. BTW, if you’re already feeling bad, I wouldn’t recommend checking email. There wasn’t anything preposterously bad in my email, it’s just not the most uplifting way to spend your day. I should have watched some Queen Latifah instead. I love her.

Anyway, I laid like a lump on the couch until 3pm. Then I rose and tried to make cookies. I know, I have pneumonia, but if only I eat them, only I will catch the germs (and I already have them, okay?).

And then I ran out of flour when I got to the part when you roll out the dough. Figures; it’s just that kind of day, I suppose.

Pat went to the store to buy me more flour and more cough syrup.

He came home with flour, cough syrup, and a bottle of red wine. Sounds like a dangerous combination to me.  Add some pneumonia-germ covered-cookie dough and you have a recipe for disaster.

I’ll let Pat drink the wine this time. I’ll drink the cough syrup and make the cookies.

October means so many things: my sweet husband’s birthday, leaves changing, pumpkins for Halloween, the beginning of pumpkin pie and sweater season, and my personal favorite…the infamous singing ghost that dangles from the ceiling and makes its ghosty noises at the drop of a pin.

For those of you who have taught or still teach, we also know October to be a time when, well, things can be just a little different. We’re antsy. Kids are antsy. We’re all starting to think about the holidays even though they still seem dreadfully far away. In October, there’s always at least one day when things just feel like the world will absolutely end if… you have to get out of bed, make your lunch, drive to school, teach, eat the lunch you made (“Yes! Another peanut butter and jelly sandwich!”), teach some more, go to the staff meeting, and drive home… one more time.

So, I’m officially starting a movement to end the bleakness of October. Remember that list of happiness that I started off with? That’s what I want to be thinking about in October! October just doesn’t have to be this way! If we all just committed to seeing the happy each day in October, I swear it could revolutionize the world! We could have all these happy teachers creating happy students and happy schools and coming home each day feeling….happy!

Maybe I’m a little overzealous; but seriously, I just think we have to do something to stop the rampant October slump.

So, for me, I’m making a happiness commitment this October and here’s what I’ve accomplished so far:

1. No longer having to rely on my parent’s singing ghost, I bought a bigger, badder version of the singing ghoul for Patty and I to enjoy. Unfortunately, the TV sets it off, so it is very loud and goes off every 5 minutes. We have LOTS of October spirit with this thing in the house.

Our singing ghost. He moves up and down and plays creepy music.

2. Little Debbie fall tree cakes for my lunch. We used to have to wait until Christmas to get those delightful little cakes. But now we get fall cakes. The Little Debbie company and I are clearly on the same page about this personal mission to bring happiness to October.

My Fall Tree Cakes sit in a place of honor on the counter.

3. Pat had the longest birthday ever. We started celebrating the week before his birthday and celebrated a full week after his birthday, too. We pretty much can do and eat whatever we want and excuse the behavior because it’s Pat’s birthday week(s).

Pat blowing out the candles on his favorite red velvet birthday cake.

4. Last October, I laid in my bed and hibernated as soon as getting home from work to escape the seasonal slump.  This year, I’ve been training for a half-marathon. Woot! Woot! This has kicked my butt and created endorphin-induced warm fuzzy feelings. (I’m running the Ramblin’ Rose in Durham on October 16th!)

4. I bought a pumpkin for the porch. It makes me happy every time I come home.

5. I bought the Tartine bakery cookbook and I am going to make some delicious croissants. The total hours to make these things looks to be about 26, but my philosophy is: you have to do whatever it takes to make October happy. 26 hour croissants, here I come.

What makes you HAPPIEST about October?

Anyway, the point of all this is that today (imagine me as Maria in the Sound of Music singing this excitedly from a hilltop in the Swiss Alps), I’m swearing off health magazines. Even though I’m a self-proclaimed healthy person, I think those things are crazy.

"I'm forever giving up health magazines! Yippee!"

I swear, every time I pick one up, it tells me I’m going to lose 10 pounds if I only:

• Chew gum for three twenty-minute sessions before lunch so that I can eat 100 less  calories at lunch. (This sounds like a plot by the chewing gum industry to encourage addiction.)
• Eat lychee extract for 10 weeks to increase my adiponectin. (Yeah, I don’t know what what that is either.) If I have more adiponectin, I’m promised my metabolism is increased.
• Sprinkle flax seed over every meal to increase my fiber. (Gross.)
• Don’t drink soda.
• Don’t drink diet soda either because my body registers it as fake sugar and so then it makes me crave real sugar. (What?)
• Take at least 30 minutes to eat my ice cream cone so my brain registers I’m full. (Seriously, it’s 90 degrees outside and my cone will definitely melt and then my brain will only register sadness at my melty ice cream cone.)
• Eat soy beans with every meal. They’re loaded with potassium and antioxidants. And protein and fiber. (I think soy milk is gross, but I do like edamame so maybe I could swing this one.)
• Eat egg whites everyday for breakfast cooked with spinach. (I’m a health nut, but I do NOT like spinach in my breakfast, and egg whites just don’t have that much flavor.)
• Eat fish at least 4 times a week so I can have a lot of omega 3s to ward off all kinds of things. (Does it ward off even ghosts and witches and vampires? Because I’m super afraid of the dark and this would really help me out. )
• If you don’t eat fish, then eat fish oil vitamins. (These are REALLY gross. They make you belch fish all day. My parents feed their dog, Paisley, these vitamins and she belches fishiness 3-4 times a day. Really. It is super, duper gross. Please don’t eat these or feed them to your pets. )
• Eat more folate/iron/Vitamin E/Vitamin D/Vitamin C/multivitamins/gummi-vitamins/whatever vitamin is the talk of the media. If only I eat ______ (insert vitamin of choice), I will INSTANTLY drop 10 pounds.
• Eat once every 2 hours. (How much time do they think I have?)

I know. This is all so confusing. So, like, what am I supposed to eat? Or not eat? All of these statements came from an actual magazine and the magazine has new tips for me each month. Half the time they’re conflicting statements. And there are at least five different health magazines to read this conflicting advice from. What in the world is a girl supposed to do?!

I just want to eat my favorite dinner at the beach (hamburgers on the grill made by my dad; boiled potatoes with butter, salt, pepper, and parsley; romaine salad; my mom’s chocolate pie with a graham cracker crust) and I don’t want to sprinkle flax seeds on it, or turn my salad into a spinach salad, or eat fish oil on top of my burger. I don’t want to take lychee extract because I don’t even know where to buy it, and if I did, it would probably be expensive and I don’t even know what the heck adipecntoninitis is. Okay, I just made that word up.

I like diet soda, thank you. I also like regular soda (Cheerwine!).

I’m sick of all this mess making me feel crazy. I want to be healthy, but sometimes it just feels like information overload. So, from now on, no more health magazines. I’m sticking to this. It’s not a New Year’s Resolution, so it’s not pre-destined to fail. It’s a June 23rd, 2011 resolution.

I’ve started reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and it’s  hammering the nails into the health mag coffin (sorry Women’s Health). Pollan says it better than I can, “It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, [because] the better to assuage [us, the consumer] with new products.” Yes. I 100% agree. I think that there’s a heck of a lot of money in the diet industry and the only way to fuel that fire is to increase our anxiety about all the vitamins we are (or aren’t) eating.

Put simply, I feel like all of the craziness over a different food or vitamin or diet or anecntopinitis (that lychee extract deal again)  is just trying to make me buy more stuff. Gahhlee, I’m not made of money! What do you think money grows on trees? That’s what my dad would say.

Anyway, I’m writing this because I think you should think about this too. I hate to be preachy, you know that’s not my style normally. But I just think we could all do with a little less anxiety over what we eat and just use our common sense when it comes to sitting down to dinner.

You should read Pollan’s book. If you don’t have time for Omnivore’s Dilemma (it’s lengthy, but well worth it), pick up a copy of In Defense of Food. Same messages, shorter length. Promise you won’t be disappointed. Whatever you do, don’t pick up some crazy old health magazine. I swear, those things will get the best of you. Before you know it, you’ll be grinding flax seeds, soybeans, and lychee extract together for your daily breakfast.

If you do pick up the health mag; and if you do eat all that lychee extract, well, power to you. Whatever floats your boat, old friend.

My dear friend Amanda first comes to mind, when a couple years ago, her date was shot with a Taser gun while running down the street with no shirt on. And really, he seemed like a completely normal guy. I met him and I NEVER would have thought, “hmm…I bet this guy will get Tasered on his date with Amanda later this week.” Anyway, see, he wasn’t normal. He was crazy with a capital C.   He’s history now.

For me, there’s one date that comes to mind as particularly t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e. First of all, I was set up. Blind date. Lesson learned: don’t blind date. Ever.

I’d just gotten out of a long-term relationship and had a friend who was determined to set me up with her friend Mike.

We went to dinner.  Mike was a nice guy, but he was the kind of guy that’s just too nice. You know…that kind of glazed-over, smiley, oddly happy personality (think Ryan from the Bachelorette); this was Mike. I could say, “Hey Mike, do you want me to read you my thesis on subatomic blah blah blah?” and he surely would have grinned from ear to ear and heartily agreed like this was the most engaging proposition he’d had in years. Flattering, but definitely uncomfortable.

After we left dinner, he said he was taking me to a comedy show. I am NOT a girl who goes to comedy shows or really shows at all, to be honest. Or clubs, or anything with loudness, crowds, etc. etc.

I am a bookworm, a perpetual homebody. I don’t mix well with clubs or shows or comedy. (Okay, I do like comedy, just on my TV, preferably while watching the Golden Girls, Troop Beverly Hills, or Baby’s Day Out.)

We arrived at the show and we were one of ten people in the audience. There had to have been at least 100 empty seats. AND, it was a stand-up show which meant that there was a possibility of interactive comedy which just completely made my stomach turn. Read: people being called onto the stage. (My brain screams, “Not me! Not me!”)

After ten minutes of sitting quietly in the dark while Mike stared at me with a goofy smile on his face, the show began.    As I’m prone to do at any given time, I was having a hard time focusing and staring off into space throughout most of the comedy routine.

However, my attention was rudely seized when one of the men on stage yelled, “hey you, Barbie!” I looked around and I was the only woman on the entire left side of the room where he was pointing.

“Hey, yeah you, Barbie! Come on up here,” he shouted.  (First of all, I am NOT Barbie. I have blonde hair, but I’m short. I’m 5’1″ and I do not have the extreme bodily proportions of Barbie.)

Needless to say, my face turned fire engine red. The man wouldn’t stop shouting for me to come on the stage and not knowing what else to do, I walked to the stage feeling as if I was walking the plank.

Once on stage, I had to pretend I was a coal miner and argue with one of the guys about the quality of the coal he was mining. It was AWFUL. Nightmarish.  Mike took me home after the show and called a few days later. I didn’t answer the phone and I didn’t return his calls. I was too embarrassed. Anyway, that’s my most awkward, awful date ever. What’s yours?

P.S. Which reminds me of my middle school break-up style. In 8th grade, I had this boyfriend who I had liked for, say, 5 days (in typical 8th grade style). He’d call me each night between 8-9pm. On the 6th day, when I decided I didn’t like him anymore, I decided to disconnect my phone line every night between 8-9pm.

Seriously. I know that sounds a little kooky, but I did not want to talk to this guy. This continued for two weeks, until I got up the guts to dump him. Over AOL Instant Messenger. (Remember how cool that was in the late 90s?? Maybe that’s just me. )

I’m on Pawleys Island in South Carolina for the week and there couldn’t be any place better to experience summer. This morning at 9am, the humidity was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.  And, to step back 30 minutes earlier to 8:30am, it was already 87 degrees outside.

While this might make some cringe with visions of sweat-soaked shirts, shorts, undies (you know it’s true!), foreheads, you name it…it makes me twinge with delight. It’s not the heat, but it’s the routine of it all. It’s what I expect. It’s what summer is to me. Heat, humidity, beach, sand, and the quiet of the marsh at Pawleys.

I haven’t written in a while because work has been quite, well, crazy. The end of the year always brings a certain frenzy, and this year it was coupled with over a hundred new teachers arriving in North Carolina, and me supposedly in charge of it all. Yikes! Time for me to buck up and get my act together, and thus, let my writing go for a bit.

But now I’m at Pawleys; it’s summer; we’re cooking a giant pot of shrimp tonight for dinner; it was Pat and I’s one year anniversary this week (I know, I can’t believe it either!) and we’re going to a super fancy-smancy plantation to stay tomorrow night and life just couldn’t get any better.

By the way, Old Bay seasoning ROCKS when you’re cooking shrimp. Buy some. Boil some shrimp and follow the trusty, tried-and-true instructions for some truly deeee-licious shrimp. Trust me.

The view from the back porch. Perfect.

Okay,  before I say any more, just look at this:

meat and beans. perfect.

At Rudy’s BBQ, located in a gas station on the south side of Austin,  you order meat by the pound. AND, the best part is, before you even order, if it’s your first time at Rudy’s, then you get to have FREE SAMPLES of all the meat before you even order. I could write a book about my love for free samples, so this was just like a dream come true. (Seriously, there’s nothing better than Whole Foods at 5pm on a Friday when they’re giving away free samples of everything in  hopes you’ll buy some a take it home to enjoy…yeah, I just taste the freebies and relish in the free-ness.) Anyway, after we sampled some deliciously smoked turkey, beef brisket (both wet and dry…the wet is extra fatty but extra delicious; the dry is a leaner cut), and a bit of their smoked ribs, we decided on a 1/2 lb. of smoked turkey, a 1/2 lb. of the dry brisket, and a 1/2 lb. of the wet brisket.

And then comes the 2nd best part (the 1st best was the samples): the pickle and onion bar. For all you pickle-lovers out there, this may just be your dream come true….once you get your delicious tray of meet, huge vats of pickles await you, free for the taking. I think I went through 3 cups of pickles. I know that’s a lot, but they’re so FREAKING GOOD. LOVE PICKLES. And yeah, so I also love onions and they have free vats of these too, but, I was scared to eat too many for fear my company might not recover from the smell of me eating 3 cups of onions. So anyway, I stuck to my pickles.

At Rudy’s, the plate consisted of a sheet of butcher paper. F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S.  Here’s my first (note, first) plate of delicious goodness:

Mmmm.... meat.

And Rudy’s was just one (ONE!) meal (Sunday lunch to be precise). To rewind a bit, we started Friday night with sweeter than sweet Soco Sweet Teas at Hopdoddy’s followed by delicious beer and burgers at Black Star Co-Op and Pub;  proscuitto and spinach pizza, chocolate chip bread pudding, ice cream cake, and Apricot beer at the first-ever Whole Foods for lunch on Saturday (okay, so I didn’t eat all of those things, that was shared between me, Pat, and Mary Kate) and wonderfully salty, perfectly limey margaritas at Fonda San Miguel Saturday night; and, to top it all off, my sister is pretty much the BEST biscuit maker ever and so we had homemade biscuits, bacon, and eggs each morning. Yum. Yes, Pat and I came back feeling about 5 pounds heavier. Was it worth it? Yes. Deee-licious.

So, yeah Austin is pretty much awesome. And delicious. And make my pants fit tighter. But also makes my mouth smile wider. AND….YES. I did go looking for Bachelor Brad’s infamous bars on 6th Street (he has 4). AND…YES, let’s be honest, I was a little disappointed I didn’t catch an in-person glance of him and (YAY!) Emily. But oh well, I did find the bars, I just didn’t my fav reality TV stars. Maybe next time.

I love Austin. It’s delish. I love my sister too. She’s the best. She makes really sweet biscuits. (Maybe if she reads this post, she’ll even post her recipe.) Hint, hint, MK…please share that delicious recipe.

we think we look pretty silly in cowboy hats.

And, what else am I to do when I wake up at 5am on a Saturday and there’s no hope of going back to sleep? Clearly, making and eating lots of cinnamon bread is the only answer.

To be honest though, even though 5am is W-A-Y early for Saturday morning, Saturday mornings are T-H-E best. And even if I wake up at 5am, I’m still pretty pumped because it’s Saturday. Saturday, the best of days EVER.

Here’s why:

1. There’s time to bake cinnamon bread that might or might not take 3 hours.
2. I can do anything I want today! I can run around my apartment with my underwear on my head and do a crazy dance if I want. Only Pat (poor Pat) might judge me.
3. My inner girlie-girl can come out. I can get my nails done, read Shopaholic books, daydream about being Becky (clearly if you don’t know Becky, you need to read the Shopaholic books), watch the Bachelor and read all of the bios of the cast and then go to the store and buy trashy celebrity gossip magazines to read even more about the Bachelor (and Emily and Chantal), and wear hot pink!!!! Because today I don’t have to be a professional!!!! Sweet.
4. Need I even give any more reasons? The last one was so good.
5. Okay, okay, so the Durham farmer’s market is pretty sweet too.
6. We might eat somewhere really yummy tonight like Vin Rouge or Pop’s or Dain’s. I just can’t let Pat choose because he’ll make us go to the Chinese buffet.
7. Reason number 3 still stands as the best reason. If you still need more reasons, I suggest you revisit that one. Umm, yeah.

So, there you have it. Saturdays are glorious. So is celebrity gossip and cinnamon bread. Perhaps at the same time, while getting a pedicure would be MOST glorious. Basically, in a nutshell:

Cinnamon bread + celebrity gossip involving the Bachelor + pedicure + running around with underwear on my head + no one judging me for it = HAPPINESS.