Living and Cooking Solo

  Sweet Potato tastes better dressed simply The only sweet potatoes I recall eating as a youngster swam in brown sugar syrup and hid beneath toasted marshmallows.     Consequently, this dish, generally served on Thanksgiving or Christmas, seemed more like dessert than a vegetable side dish.     To be polite, I rolled my eyes and placed a small spoon full on my plate and hoped I could dump them when no one was looking.     I preferred good old mashed white potatoes topped with gravy or smothered with homemade noodles. A few years ago, I decided to try a baked sweet potato at a steak restaurant and was surprised when it arrived smothered with butter and brown sugar.  It looked a lot like the syrupy side dish I recalled from my childhood, but I decided to dump the topping and try the unadulterated vegetable itself.  I was surprised to find a mildly sweet delicacy beneath the overly sweet topping.  I have been baking and enjoy...

  Life is ever changing and often without a deadline Building a website for my church recently enticed me to revisit this blog, which I started in 2011.  I then sputtered with occasional stalls until May 2017.  I suppose I could blame the happenings of life for the inconsistency of my writing, but I know deep down to blame the real culprit, which was not having a deadline to drive me. haxtunchurchofthebrethren.org Publishing a weekly newspaper for nearly 30 years created a drive in me that forced compliance when confronted with the dreaded deadline.  I couldn't begin to count the number of last minute editorials I pounded out, forcing the words from mind to fingers and then through the computer keyboard and ultimately landing on the page in time for the page to head to the printer. That same fear of failing to meet a deadline drove me to research and write Homesteading Haxtun and the High Plains , a history book commissioned by the History Press, once I retired from ...