Author: Barbara

Small Town Day … a fun scavenger hunt

As the darling of all-things-cool small city Asheville bursts at the seams with tourists, we locals are known to look elsewhere for more low key mountain adventures. Especially now during fall leaf season. That’s when you’ll find me at one of the less trodden, delightful mountain small towns that dot […]

How to do Spoon Making, sort of

My dad is a “do-things” guy. At 90, he roasts and grinds his coffee, makes bialys, bagels, bread and pies, fixes everybody’s computers, tends his stunning 1+ acre native plant garden in Richmond, Va. ….. And he has a shop (that he built) where he crafts furniture, cutting boards and […]

How to do Things with Apple Cider Syrup

Welcome to How to do Things Thursdays! If you were to walk into my kitchen in early November, what you would see is apples. The gnarly red ones that fall from the overgrown antique trees in our lives as well as about 80 pounds of magnificent GoldRush apples that I […]

How to do Things Thursdays

I don’t know about you, but it’s been on my mind to learn how to do more things for about …. oh…. maybe decades. At least since I lived here in this tumbledown farm in 1976. Well, actually, I did learn plenty of  things back then, but as you can […]

Speakin’ of Russia …

Political vitriolic nattering and scandals aside, I’ve been pondering Russia. Specifically what goes on in and comes out of some extraordinary or even perhaps ordinary Russian kitchens and bakeshops. Pies. Stunning pies and tartelettes. Come Sunday, I’ll be teaching a week of domestic and international pie-making at the John C. […]

On Matters of the Heart

    Valentines Day is nearly upon us and I can’t help but sing this enchanting holiday’s praises. I get that it can be a tough day for those who are lonely and have experienced loss, but it’s also the one time of the year when we somewhat restrained Americans […]