FAUX REAL THO

Dinner Club, Desserts

Another Dinner Club is coming up, and the theme is bite-sized desserts. The current plan, thanks to the overflow of blueberries from the local U-Pick place, is to make these blueberry crumble bars fancy and serve them on a toothpick with pretty garnish. This is a humble dessert, not the prettiest thing at the party,…

More on the WL Signage Wars

In 2013, I interviewed Peter Bunder and Eddie VanBogaert on the WL signage wars. City government threatened to crack down on local property managers for increasingly putting up larger and larger signage in student neighborhoods that did not adhere to zoning laws, further exacerbating the tensions between local government, the campus neighborhood associations, and landlords. When Granite…

Who’s that girl on Meridian Street?

My neighbors and I were profiled in the Journal & Courier today for our creative attempts to slow traffic on our crash-prone street: The idea came on June 27, as wreckers worked for nearly three hours to pull out a car wedged into the trees in Breschinsky’s yard. No one was hurt in the crash. But…

A History of Creepy Dolls

When I first started going to auctions, I accidentally bid on and won a creepy doll. At an estate auction, I didn’t like the cut of some lady’s jib, and bid her up on a random item to be a jerk and give her a hard time. This is a common, if ill-advised, auction practice —…

How to Identify Stanhope Jewelry

Several months ago, I lucked out and found a large stash of Stanhope novelty pieces at a garage sale. The collection I had to choose from was mostly religious icons, like tiny paintings of saints, the Lord’s Prayer, and other iconography hidden in keychains and cross pendants. The naughty Stanhopes, however are highly collectible —…

Chicken Dum Pukht

This chicken curry recipe is one of the better things I’ve found online, maybe ever. It’s spicy without being too hot, it makes the house smell delicious, and it provides an excellent lesson in making your own curry paste. I’ve also skipped the meat and made a good vegan version with hardier veggies (eggplant and…

Southern Creole Sausage and Cornbread Dressing

This sausage and cornbread dressing is one of my favorite recipes of all time, a dish present on every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter table set at my mom’s house. The original recipe lives in a non-descript church cookbook from somewhere in the Middle South in the 1970s, and it’s in danger of being destroyed with time…

Plum and Apple Torte

I made this plum and apple torte on Wednesday night, and it looked and felt wrong until I pulled it out of the oven. It didn’t seem like there was enough batter, the batter was too thick like cookie dough, there seemed to be too much fruit-to-batter ratio, and the springform pan was too large….

1 2 3 4! Oi! the Boat Records, the World-Renowned Punk Rock Record Label in Our Backyard

Fascinated with what it takes to run a record label out of Lafayette, Indiana, I met with Max Campbell and Joe Yakamicki of Oi! the Boat Records to discuss the ins and outs of operating a punk label in flyover country. And then, inspired by our conversation, I spent the next two days researching the…

Blue Apron Taught Me Some New Tricks

A friend gave me a free week of Blue Apron, a weekly cooking and grocery service that provides you with high quality produce, including seasonal ingredients directly from farms, importers and family-run purveyors, and easy instructions on how to use them. I like good food and I’m a good cook, so I decided to try it…

The Map Collective: Your Favorite Place in Town

Google Maps lets you carve out meaning in your geography. With a good map, you can fly around and view all the different sites shared by friends and strangers. I love how you can tell a story in — or laid on — the place it took place. Your assignment, should you choose to accept…

Riding Bikes With a Teenager

There are so many pieces out there about riding with young kids, but not many about riding with older kids, so when I started riding with my older child, a young teenager, I felt like we were on the steep end of the learning curve. The Big Kid learned to ride a bike when he…