The beginning of this week felt more like March than January. The snow outside melted in the sunlight, running down the sidewalks in little rivulets, the last bits of it hiding in the shade of trees. It’s below freezing again today, but that little taste of spring has me pining for spring blooms.
We still have to wait a few weeks for summer dresses and sandals, but in the meantime, why not bring some spring into your home with these DIY decor ideas?
Cake or pie? Most people seem to prefer one or the other, but that doesn’t matter today – it’s National Pie Day!
One of the world’s first recorded recipes was a meat pie made in Sumer over four thousand years ago. Sweet pies were made in Egypt as well, and can be seen depicted on the walls of Rameses II’s tomb. These pies weren’t much like the pies we know today, though. They were flat, round cakes, with a crust made of ground grains. Because there was no sugar in the fertile crescent, the pies were sweetened with honey and dates instead.
It was the Ancient Greeks who developed what we know as the pie pastry. Their knowledge then spread to the Romans, who served small pies with birds and eggs in them at banquets. As the Romans began to trade and spread, they took their pies with them, solidifying their place as a staple pastry.
Snow is everywhere in Greensboro right now! What better way to enjoy the cold than with some warm apple brie crepes? These crepes feature tender apple slices caramelized in butter and topped with melted brie.
Making apple brie crepes starts with the prep. First, I make my batter. Then I get the apples ready, as they need to cook the longest. I recommend cutting the apples in half, peeling them, and then slicing them.
After the apples are sliced, melt the butter in your pan and start softening them. They cook faster when covered, but you need to keep an eye on them and stir them often. While cooking the apples, I usually start making the crepes.
Today’s Ask Carolyn addresses Borderline Personality Disorder and how it can affect the divorce process. Borderline Personality is a Cluster B personality disorder characterized by unstable behavior, moods, and relationships. BPD is challenging to deal with in relationships, and can become even more difficult during divorce.
My custody file is at least a foot thick at the courthouse. I thought this would be the year that we were done with custody, but custody is an ongoing saga. My children are 8 and 10 year old boys. Every time I think we are finished, my ex (the mother) files a new motion. She has fired every counselor and psychologist that she has had. She is always right about everything, in her opinion. She is intensely angry. She has even been married again and divorced again in the five years that this custody battle has been going on. The court gave me fifty percent of the time with my sons at the initial hearing and this has been confirmed by the court at every subsequent hearing. She just filed another motion for primary custody this week. What do I do?
One of my most popular posts last month was about crazy divorce stories, including the incredible saga that was the Wee Man’s Chronic Tacos custody hearing. Since so many people have been enjoying them, I’ve dug around the internet and found five more crazy divorce stories to delight and appall you.
An ex-wife was too lazy to work – and not just on a career. To prove her laziness, the husband had his construction crew remove 5 to 6 truckloads of dirty laundry from the house and photographed them. He brought the photographs to the court as evidence to support his case in reducing his temporary alimony. It turns out that rather than washing any clothes, the wife had just been buying new clothes every week.
New year, new you, right? At least, we want to think so, but oftentimes our resolutions end up getting abandoned because we tried to start doing too much at once. This is especially true for health-related resolutions. We want to get healthy and think we have to make the big changes all at once, but too much change is hard to stick to. Instead of making a complete health routine step 1, try easing yourself into a healthier lifestyle with some of these simple healthy habits.
Most of the time, we want to get healthy so that we look good. Your diet is a huge part of that. There’s tons of advice on what to eat or what not to eat or what new “superfood” you should put in every meal. Often though, how much we eat is the more important part.
During my holiday travels, I found myself in Hot Springs, Arkansas. As a little adventure, we made a stop at the Arlington Hotel.
The Arlington Hotel originally opened in 1875 and has been rebuilt twice since. The hotel has had many famous guests, including Al Capone, who used to rent an entire floor for his gambling scheme. The bathhouse spa looks like it hasn’t changed since the 20s, either – what a nostalgic event for Dwight and me! Of course, men and women have separate sections of the bath house.
The spa experience starts with a relaxing mineral soak. The tub had what looked like a hot tub pump in it. When we’d soaked for long enough, we went into a sauna to steam the water away. After drying, we were wrapped in hot towels. We laid on a cot, a cold towel on our face to keep us from overheating. A shower in Mineral Springs cooled us off after the sauna and towels.
It’s almost a new year – the days are already getting longer, sunlight stretching out a little further every evening. You can feel a fresh sort of energy in the air. And, like many, that energy might inspire you to think about how you’ll change this year, how you’ll make efforts to be a new, better, you. You might even make a New Year’s resolution.
But, in two weeks, or a month (or for some of us the third day of January), most of us will give up on our New Year’s resolution. That inspiring energy fades, and life gets in the way. We just can’t make our resolution stick.
The thing is, changing our habits is hard, and New Year’s doesn’t change that. But if you approach it right, you can make a change any time of the year.
Today marks a turning point – it is the winter solstice, the day of the year with the least light. Our days have been waning since the middle of the summer, growing shorter and shorter with each nightfall. Think of the winter solstice as the sun’s version of a new moon – we will see the least of its light today, but tomorrow, it will wax once again.
Scientifically speaking, the winter solstice is caused by the Earth’s tilt. When the northern hemisphere tilts closer to the sun, we have summer, but when it’s tilted away, we have winter. The winter solstice is the point when the northern hemisphere is tilted the furthest away from the sun, which causes us to receive the least sunlight.
The solstice (and winter itself) is one of the origins for our holiday season. Before we had greenhouses, refrigerators, and 24/7 supermarkets, our food supply was inescapably tied to the changing of the seasons. Winter was an unforgiving time of year – food, warmth, and light were all scarce. The entire year was essentially spent preparing for the winter. Cows were slaughtered so they wouldn’t use up precious food during the winter, and the wine that had been fermenting all year was finally ready to drink. The solstice festival was the last feast and celebration of life before winter.
Peppermint is one of the most iconic tastes of the holidays, nipping at us with the same frost as the winter air. We usually see peppermint in the form of candy canes during the holidays. I remember as a child, we used to eat candy canes like lollipops. We tried so hard not to bite into them because we knew that if we did, they wouldn’t last long.
Though we see candy canes as an emblem of Christmas, they were originally just made to keep kids quiet. Back in 1670, the children at achurch in Germany kept making noise during a Christmas ceremony, frustrating their choirmaster to no end. The choirmaster, having given up on discipline at this point, asked a local candy maker to make sugar sticks for the kids. If they’re busy eating candy, they can’t talk, right? Obviously giving kids candy just to shut them up doesn’t look great, so the choirmaster had the candies made to look like shepherd’s crooks. This way the kids were quiet, and he could pass the candies off as a reminder of the shepherds that visited Jesus during Christmas.
Chocolate’s another iconic holiday taste. Nothing makes you feel quite as festive as a cup of hot chocolate heaping with whipped cream. Hot chocolate itself wasn’t originally a holiday treat, though – it has its origins in Latin America, where the Mayans made a cold chocolate drink with chili peppers in it. Hot chocolate as we think of it today wasn’t invented until the 17th century. During the chill of winter, sweet hot chocolate was bound to be a success, so it’s no surprise that it became a holiday tradition.
Ask Carolyn