by Beth Woolsey -

Bread and Body Fluids: I’d Come Up With a Less Gross Title, But I Have One Kid Crying, One Harfing, and One Bleeding… I’m Sure You Understand

Took my kid to the orthodontist this morning.

He had to have brace wires removed so I could take him to the dentist to get four teeth pulled.

Spilled my coffee.

All 20 ounces. All over the floor of the orthodontist’s office. I put it on the floor, then immediately kicked it over. I hadn’t had coffee yet, so I couldn’t clearly think through coffee placement. It’s a Catch 22, I tell you, this whole Had to Perform Coffee Tasks Before Having Coffee situation. It’s not right. We live in a broken world, friends. ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

Milk and How to Use it… Yogurt, Cheese, and Labels: Oh, My!

I have a few “rules” this week as I try to eat no commercially preserved, packaged, or processed foods, the foremost of which is DO NOT BECOME A HANGRY JERK, BETH.

Greg and I learned through the joy of travel early in our relationship that there is no jackass jackassier than a hangry, exhausted jackass, and that, unless we wanted to go ahead and file for immediate divorce and save ourselves a world of hassle, we ought to travel with snacks. Snacks = Marital Harmony. Snacks = Marital Bliss. Snacks = the difference between being kind, flexible and accommodating of each other’s tiny flaws and foibles and I AM GOING TO RIP YOUR EFFING FACE OFF. We were precious, I tell you. Darling. ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

It Looks Like Granola, But It’s Really Self-Care

The first step was to stop saying, “Stupid, stupid, STUPID, Beth. How could you be so STUPID?” to myself in the car on the way home from work. It didn’t matter, really, what I’d done during the day; I’d slide onto the cloth seats of my Pontiac in the late afternoon and berate myself, like clockwork, sure I’d done something unforgivably foolish or said something truly humiliating.  ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

Easy Peasy, Two Ingredient Jam Tart

Alright, folks. It’s 5 days ‘til Christmas, and I don’t know about you, but I still have 85,000 things to do and the energy for, like, 6 of them. It’s OK, though. I am not panicking, and do you know why? Because I intend to half-ass All the Things from here on out. I will give partial effort that LOOKS like full effort. I will do what delights me and spreads magic, and I will let go of all the things that do not qualify. ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

Easy Peasy 2-Ingredient Fudge (and Day 3 of 7+ Giveaways)

Reposted from December 2012 because Christmas is almost upon us, and I don’t know about you, but I need something to be ridiculously simple right now.

Do you already know about this fudge recipe? Do you? Because, if so, you should not have been keeping it to yourself all these years. I cannot even believe the amount of time I spent standing over a stove waiting for marshmallows to melt, you guys. That’s time I’ll never get back. ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

Easy Peasy One-Pan Sausage Cashew Stuffing

Turkey Day for us Yanks is one week away, and counting. For some of you, that means fine-tuning your menu, grabbing a few last-minute items at grocery store, and spending the weekend blissfully rolling pie crusts on your immaculate marble slabs (they keep the butter colder, I hear) while your children decorate the house with all the leaves you so diligently gathered and pressed in October when they were at the peak of their fall colors and not, you know, rotting brown goo like the leaves in my gutter. All of you who are living that dream, please say so; I mean it very sincerely when I say I want to live vicariously through you, because there’s no way my weekend’s gonna go down like that. ...  read more

by Beth Woolsey -

Easy Peasy FAST Homemade Scones

BruceandBrendaIt’s time for another Easy Peasy FAST Homemade recipe, and since my friends Bruce and Brenda are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to open an artisan bakery in our home town, I thought this would be the PERFECT time to sucker them out of one of their top-secret recipes. And… bwahahaha… my evil plan worked!

The Pacific Northwest is famous for a few things. Gorgeous evergreens. Pristine mountain lakes. See-through air. A little rain here and there. Weird weirdos who are weird. Blackberries. And scones. In other words, our family loves it here. ...  read more