Crazy Chocolate Cake! No eggs, no milk, and a bit of vinegar. Hand mix. You won’t believe the texture. If you follow the instructions and don’t let this cake overbake*, you’re going to throw away all your 15-Steps to the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipes. This one...
Why Did Most of America’s First Professional Athletes Disappear From Sight? Does it matter? Yes, actually, it does. Why? It matters because . . . in the first Kentucky Derby of 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys were black men, many of whom were born slaves. It matters...
Imagine being excited about calling your city a fruit. That’s exactly how several million people in New York City feel when they reference their city as The Big Apple. How that nickname came to be has multiple stories associated with it, but my favorite one is...
My Aunt Dobbie held certain religious views and didn’t, no ma’am, allow any of us girls to wear “blue jeans,” shorts, or sleeveless blouses. Not her four daughters. Not any niece who came to visit or stay for the summer. *that would be me* Back home in Arizona, I...
It’s Spring! Time to think about . . . Tomatoes! How we love them. How we need them. Need them? Sure. I’ll prove it. Forget all the antioxidant lycopene, the vitamins C and K, the potassium and folate packed inside these little guys and just try to imagine a...
Beginning writers face many obstacles. Recently, someone asked for advice in a writing group online. She wanted to write novels but said everything stays a draft because she feels too insecure to continue and doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Further, each time...
Why is the journey through a historical novel so different from regular reading? Because for that brief time, YOU ARE THERE! In the 1950s and 1960s, CBS featured Walter Cronkite narrating a history series that teachers especially fell in love with. Dramatic...
I pondered about writing a Christmas blog with meaning. It’s well known that the holidays are unbearable for some and joyous for others. The same can be said for any day or event of the year, yet it seems to exacerbate during the Christmas season. Truthfully, it has...
Route 66 is twenty-five hundred miles of pure Americana that meant the world to people living in the 1940s and 1950s. Though officially taken out of the U.S. Highway system in 1985, it continues to generate nostalgia and give birth to new generations of...
Did early Americans invent embroidery to make samplers and decorate hope-chest items for hopeful young ladies waiting to become wives and mothers? Hardly! The art of embroidery started in China thousands of years ago. China began to weave silk from silkworm cocoon...
