Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
Last week my students and I took a break from our regular academic program to participate in what we call Intersessions: a weeklong immersion into a new skill or area of curiosity. A colleague and I have worked together for the last few years to host Kitchen Nightmares (apologies to Gordon Ramsay), an Intersession during which kids ask, “How do you find and make great recipes?”
Twice-Baked Sweet Potato Egg Boats
How’s your fitness going lately?
After illness, a battle with my menstrual cup (I’ll spare you details), and some other issues, I’ve had three weeks now where I’ve only exercised once per week in a hot yoga class. In some ways it was a good break — my knees were a wreck and it gave them a chance to rest. But it also got me out of my morning workout habit. I don’t know why, but whenever I take a break, I get anxious about starting up my workouts again! It’s like I think I won’t be able to do it after taking some time off. This morning, though, I finally got myself to the gym to lift weights for the first time in three weeks.
Chipotle Shrimp Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes
Shopping thoughts lately:
A. If my Target would put in a Starbucks, I could go ahead and move in.
B. The fact that I got out of Target without leaving my phone on a shelf somewhere where I was smelling 800 scented candles, evaluating whether or not I’m a “water carafe” kind of person, or hypocritically judging people who would buy fake succulents (I literally own fake succulents, but cognitive dissonance…) was a miracle. #ADHD
Coconut Tres Leches Skillet Cake with Whipped Icing
During my sophomore year in college, I moved to Beaufort, a small town on the coast of North Carolina. I lived there for a few months before traveling for a month down the Eastern seaboard to study marine zoogeography. That semester changed my life, and I’ve continued to process the memories over the years. Periodically I’ll share stories here on Willow Bird Baking from that time.
One of the stops on our trip south was Sapelo Island, Georgia. It’s not a place most people get to go — you have to get your name on an approved list to get on the ferry over to the island. Because of our work cataloging invertebrates — work that often amounted to crawling through the ocean on all fours hunting for critters and then poring over dichotomous keys to discover their identity — we were granted passage to the University of Georgia Marine Institute on the island.
As a result, I found myself on a ferry whose wake catapulted unlucky fish into the mouths of waiting seagulls. My classmates and I eagerly watched off the sides of the boat, all but ignoring the beautiful Georgia lowlands sunset in hopes of catching a glimpse of dolphins. When we arrived on the island, we walked through a fairy tale of trees weeping with Spanish moss, which my more-Southern friends warned me not to touch. “It’s full of all kinds of creepy-crawlies,” they noted, careful to use the scientific terminology we were painstakingly learning. We were welcomed into Hogg Hummock, a Gullah-Geechee community that has been on the island for generations, and treated to what is still one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in my life.
Hot Maple Cake with Crackle Icing and Maple Candied Pecans
My church does this thing that everyone should do. I don’t have “everyone should”s too often, but trust me: I think they’re on to something here. This thing is called Life Story Groups.
