Living and Cooking Solo

            Thirty-plus years ago when I moved to Colorado, my mini high-plains acreage came with three rhubarb plants.  Rhubarb fell somewhere between liver and homony in my less-than-fond childhood food memories, so the first six or seven summers I watched these plants go to seed and mowed them down when the leaves began to fade from neglect by fall.  It proved a forgiving plant, however, and returned each spring, green and lovely as ever.               The waste of these plants, not really a fruit, but often considered one, continued until one fall when I attended a Phillips County Fair Queen lunch as part of my duties as a reporter for one of our county’s two community newspapers.   The fair queen that year happened to be Jodi Starkebaum, the granddaughter of Phyllis (Anderson) Starkebaum, a wonderful, gentle-speaking woman who went off to college, returned to the are...

           The seasons come and go and life continues even as blogging takes a three-year hiatus.   The purple blooms on the lilac bushes outside my back door signal the arrival of spring and remind me that last year at this time I was away in Texas offering support to my granddaughter as she began the battle of her life against breast cancer.  She continues to fight, showing more courage than seems possible from that remembered toddler who would climb onto the back of her highchair daring it to tip over.  She speeds toward life head on, just like that two-year-old who raced on short, chubby legs to the dog door where she poked her head out and shouted, “train, train,” each time one traveled past our back yard; even when no one else heard the “clack, clack” of its iron wheels beating against the tracks.             Shannon continues to thrive as she battles this horrid disease, ...