The Southern Yankee Kitchen

Have you ever had one of those weeks where things seemed to swing wildly from one extreme to the other? Where you felt as if you were a trapeze artist jumping off the platform and plunging toward the floor, only to find yourself suddenly zooming skyward to the opposite platform then back again at a dizzying speed? Is someone supposed to catch me? I sure hope that net will hold me. Wait….what am I doing at the circus?? Last week was one of those weeks. It was not unexpected, t

They call these the Dog Days of Summer. By definition, it is the sultry part of the summer that occurs during the period that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun each day. Officially, this period runs from July 3 to August 11, but most of us think of it as the part of the season that is just So! Dang! HOT!! The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, as Nat King Cole sang in the early Sixties. Watch it here Growing up, I don’t really remember my summers in Bosto

I was born a city girl. Concrete sidewalks, rows of triple-decker houses, here and there a tree, lots of cars. On my block there were mostly girls and we played on the sidewalks—jump rope, metal roller skates and games like tag, red light/green light and giant step. On the stoops, we played with our Barbies. It was rare that we got to play in each other’s homes. We walked to the library, the 5 and 10 cent store and very occasionally, the movie theater. In my fifth grade year