The Maladroit Wife

Champagne!  Brie!  French fries!  French wine, particularly pinot noir!  French bread!  French seams on my jeans!  Escargot!  Wait, that’s kind of gross.  If you’ve had it, then you really understand the conflict of how gross it is, and how much butter it’s drowned in.  It’s tough. But the champion of all things Française, the French […]

I’ve got the day off today.  No special occasion, just needed to use the time before I lose it.  Oh, and my house is in desperate need of attention.  I’m going to clean the laundry room.  You think that’s redundant?  Laundry rooms are specifically FOR cleaning, so they should not themselves need to be cleaned?  […]

I love vintage stuff.  I love kitchen stuff.  I spent several hours this weekend at antique stores very specifically not buying loads of vintage Pyrex with SUCH happy daisies all over it.  I did not buy any Russel Wright platters.  Or butter dishes.  Or ashtrays – I don’t know what it is, I love them.  […]

I’m a great wife because I cook for my husband.  I’m not so great because dinner hits the table around 10:30pm.  Points for effort? I know this isn’t when I normally talk about my attempts at frugality, but it coincides so nicely this weekend with my attempts in the kitchen that I really can’t avoid […]

I think I’ve mentioned before that my husband is a planner.  I, on the other hand, am not.  I think it stems from my inability to make a decision. These are at once strengths and weaknesses.  Take this weekend… we have options! There’s a BBQ shindig at an old college friend’s place.  We’d know a […]

I have a strange “weekend” setup.  Usually it starts around 5 on Saturday, and ends with work on Tuesday morning.  The Saturday night bit feels like a weekend, but the rest of it feels like a weekbeginning, filled with preparations for my upcoming workweek.  Sometimes that means cooking, sometimes it means cleaning, and it always […]

We’re having a garage sale.  No, not a two-for-one on garages, but a smorgasbord of discards.  There will be treasures ranging from absolute junk to stuff I just don’t need or use anymore.  Or ever.  It gets better… it’s not just my junk, but the junk of 3 other households as well!  The next few […]

Dinner is served! The husband named this post.  I finally made beer can chicken (he says “beer butt” is more fun to say), after having bought the stand/can holder, oh, 8 years ago), and then Saltine Cracker Toffee by The Girl Who Ate Everything, after I had to look at it on the blog of […]

Am I really the only one who feels totally overcaffeinated when the IKEA catalog shows up in July?  How about Restoration Hardware?  Or even just little ol’ Crate & Barrel?  I find it hard to believe that I’m alone here.  When he asks why I bother dog-earing the pages, I tell him that I’m just […]

Another success!  We had a great mix of folks over to our house yesterday for some amazing food and all around good times.  At times like these, it really pays to be friends with so many foodies/pastry chefs. Aside from the opportunity to do something nice for people we love, the best reason to have […]