There is a surprising amount of controversy over chili. “Chili” is short for “chili con carne” – literally translated as “peppers with meat.” For our purposes, I’ll define chili as a spicy stew made with meat, peppers, onions, garlic, cumin, chili powde… Read full post »

 


Tim Tebow is the second coming of the Christ child according to most Florida fans. If you ask them, he single-handedly delivered two BCS championships, won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and just one touch from Tebow can heal leprosy or rickets. There’s no doubt that Tebow is a magnificen/… Read full post »

Every parent faces heartbreaking decisions.
Pudge is my baby - my fourth and last child.
There will never be another first haircut, first tooth, first smile, first step or first word. There are lots of other firsts that will come and go. But, each of them holds the bittersweet knowledge that it is… Read full post »

 


I have always thought I was a writer. I wrote my first original joke at the age of five. When I was seven, I thought I could improve upon the Bazooka Joe jokes, so I made my own wrappers and then carried them up to the Mom & Pop store in front/… Read full post »

 

 



No, I didn’t lose 72% of my body weight (though I would not be opposed to that). After an especially embarrassing incident involving several glasses of wine, a 20 hour day and a few completely nonsensical comments on my part, I have decided I’m cutting back on my OS us/…

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I believe that there are both positive and negative aspects to the current violent murder of stereotypes. I admit a measure of trepidation as I begin, but I hope to equally offend everyone and thus balance out the righteous indignation scales. At heart, I am a comedienne, so I do have/… Read full post »

 
 

Most of the wisdom I have gained in this life came from other people. For the most part, I don’t have especially good judgment – I just fake it well by not making any sudden moves and applying the comma rule to everything I do. Most people who have taken a writing/… Read full post »

 


The general impression of the middle class Victorian home, especially in London, normally includes a servant or two. If a family had a single servant, she was a “maid-of-all-work” – a general purpose helper who would primarily give the lady of the house a hand with/… Read full post »

 


Me: “The recycling dude won’t take the aluminum foil, Mom.”

Mom: “You just haven’t cleaned it enough. If it’s clean enough, he’ll take it away.”

Me: “I don’t think they take foil. They’ll take the cans, but they won’t

… Read full post »

::Note: This is not meant to be a witty commentary or prize-winning writing. This is just a conversation I'd like to have with my e-blip peeps.::

Everyone has a favorite song. Usually, it changes over time. Something poppy and mindless from our youth is replaced by a song that got us through
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There's something about the turning of the year that makes folks want to resolve to do better in the year that's to come. For whatever reason, resolutions have become part of our society. In my world, the New Year is part of its own month and happened about two months ago. But,… Read full post »

 


Open Salon is a really big place. It's also almost two years old. We often tend to look back at the past day, month or year, but we have all had that sinking feeling that there is a body of work here that escapes us. This is my effort to guide… Read full post »

 

Somewhere in here, there’s a confession that is starving to death. I can smell it.

How does the Christmas cactus know it's time to go all pinky when the air conditioner is still running?

The Wiggles sang, "We're All In the Madhouse Now" today. I'm going to take that personally.

There/… Read full post »

 


It's been an amazing year on Open Salon. One would be hard pressed to find a subject that has not been given thoughtful analysis and inspired passionate opinions in the past year.

Choosing just ten of my very favorite posts has been a challenge to say the least. I hav/…

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Religiously, I'm a rare bird. I don't talk about religion much because there's no way to satisfy anyone and there's nothing to prove by doing so. But today, I'll peek into that Pandora's box. As I became educated and read my way through the world, I realized that all religion…

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After last week's Nutella Cream Puffs - a fat and sugar explosion if there ever was one - I thought I'd share something a bit more sedate. Maybe you're craving a little something - a cookie perhaps - yet, you've surreptitiously emptied the office candy dish (twice) and bitten the heads off… Read full post »

 




 
We’ll call this one “Jodi vs. Better Homes & Gardens” – as this recipe is a modification of one that appeared under the name “Gianduia Cream Puffs” in the Better Homes & Gardens publication Christmas Baking. Gianduia is the name for a ce/… Read full post »

 

 

Saturday I went to the mall. I’m not going to give you some spiel about how I hate the mall because it’s a vast wasteland of desolate, soulless consumerism. For me, it’s just a place to buy stuff. I picked up an especially fetching blanket the same shade of/…

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Last year, several OSers posted some amazing recipes that resulted in a Holiday Food Orgy beyond our wildest dreams. Today, I'd like to reprint my favorite recipe post from that time and invite my fellow bloggers to link up in the comments with their Ghosts of Recipes Past. Hopefully, we'll/… Read full post »

 


When I first heard about the Salon Kitchen Challenge for “political food” I thought I had it in the bag. I fancy myself a rather funny person. I can come up with Bill Clinton’s “Mind the Gap” Meringue Cream Pie or Ollie North’s “Lucrative D/… Read full post »

 

 

At this time of year, we’re all looking for that one simple food to bring, take, give and gift. All of us have that one go-to recipe that isn’t gourmet or expensive but never disappoints. For me, that is my mother’s recipe for date balls. This recipe has just six/…

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Long before Martha frenched her first standing rib roast or Rachel Ray opened her first tin of Rotel, there was Mrs. Beeton.

In the 185os, at the ripe old age of 21, Isabella Mary Beeton began contributing household and cookery articles to one of her husband’s many publication/…

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Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not something most Americans think about. When I was in Britain five years ago, every other story on the news was about the dangers of GMOs and how they were sneaking into the food supply. GMOs sounded like a very bad thing according to the folks… Read full post »

 


I strive to be an extremely polite person. Really, I do. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone's feelings. But, I suppose that I was born lacking the gene that allows me to enjoy talking on the phone. I love whiling away twenty or thirty minutes giggling with/…

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Why, as Americans, are we so unhappy and hostile? We’re better off than ever before in terms of equality and freedom. Racism, sexism and other “isms” aren’t gone, but we have a black president and a female Secretary of State. The economy may be in the toilet, but/… Read full post »