Blueberry Biscuits with Almond Glaze
We love our blueberry biscuits here in the South, typically scooped up from a beloved fast-food fried chicken chain. For a quick option, the drive-thru variety works just fine, but graduating to a homemade version is well worth the additional effort – which is not much effort at all.
Sweet Biscuits
Today I took my sister shopping for a professional suit for her first interview after graduating college a couple of weeks ago. In the process, I met two Christians. But only one of them showed me Jesus.
Shopping for clothes is never easy, but for someone who doesn’t fit in a male or female box like my sister, it’s exponentially harder in ways that cisgender people like me haven’t imagined. There are very few gender-neutral clothes, and even fewer gender-neutral professional clothes. Belk even has entirely separate stores in our local mall for men and women. My sister, who is nonbinary, and I had already had a difficult conversation about how to balance her gender identity and her marketability in an interview, something most people never have to think about. Should she err on the side of being herself and potentially alienate an employer? Should she err on the side of getting a job and then worry about how to be herself later? There were no easy answers. We decided to go to the women’s store and look for a neutral, professional suit.
Thanks to Philadelphia Cream Cheese for sponsoring this post.
Coconut Cheesecake Breakfast Braid
So many holiday mornings of my childhood were spent climbing into the car with my dad to drive over to the French Bakery. I think it had an actual name other than “French Bakery,” but that’s all we ever called it. We drove down Sharon Amity Road and turned right onto Albemarle. From there it was a short trek to the little strip of shops out in front of Eastland Mall where the bakery entrance was situated under a big arch. As soon as we walked in I was transported to France.
Really, I had never been to France and didn’t know much about it. But Elliott Erwitt’s iconic print, Provence 1955, hung on the wall and I knew that was quite French. Just look at the bicycle! The baguettes! The beret! And the ethereal perfume of freshly baked pastries — not just any pastries, but the ones with the dark golden sweet crunch on the outside and perfect flaky layers on the inside — was undoubtedly French! So what I mean to say is, I was transported to the France of my imagination.
Peaches and Cream Cheesecake Braid
I’ve had a terrible day. Even those Super Bowl macarena sharks only helped for a hot minute. So let me tell you a story about an island of joy.
The island happens to be my classroom. At 1:05pm on the dot every Friday afternoon, two of my students bounce through my door. They’re not running in because they’re excited about P.E. or lunch (although they love those things, too). Instead, they’re running in to grab up their crochet hooks.
Buttery Almond Pastry Braid
I made you another pastry braid, because I can’t help myself. But before we get to that, how about some wedding talk? My wedding was over a year ago, but it only just occurred to me that I could share how I threw together an inexpensive wedding.
Have you noticed that just adding the word “wedding” to any product increases the price exponentially? Wedding plates are more expensive than regular plates. Wedding shoes are more expensive than regular shoes. Wedding venues are more expensive than regular venues. My friend was drowning in her own wedding costs recently and threatening to throw herself off a (scenic, perfect for weddings!) cliff. When she asked for advice, I decided to put together a little outline of how I managed to have a crazy cheap (less than $1,000) wedding.
