Not Quite Carbonara, and the Easiest Bacon & Egg Pasta Skillet

Leave a comment

One of the most challenging things about dairy free cooking is comfort food. So much of it is laden with cream and cheese, and truly: dairy free alternatives don’t do the real thing justice. But for those of us beleaguered by the unfortunate turn of events that says sayonara dairy, I have fantastic news: we can make a poor man’s rendition of creamy, comforting carbonara in under 30 minutes.

The idea for this recipe came from the cover of a fancy food magazine–you know the type: the ones featuring the sorts of recipes your single self just knew you would serve on the regular: things like Shaved Spanish Ham and Gruyere Galettes, Pappardelle with Arugula, Prosciutto and Pine Nuts; or Spatchcock Chicken with Chimmichurri. I rarely pay those magazines any attention these days in an effort to protect my still-fragile heart that misses the days I could cook anything at all.

But this recipe featured bacon and eggs and noodles–three safe, classic ingredients my irregular kitchen can handle. Mixing the three of them together didn’t make much sense, exactly, but the combinations in my kitchen rarely make sense. So I filed the idea away with a gulp and a prayer that someday my gluten free version of a bacon and egg pasta dish would make my family swoon.

That prayer was answered, people. This dish was a hit.

So ok, we still prefer bacon and eggs for breakfast, but this pasta is on point. Gluten free noodles lathered in silky, eggy sauce and dotted with crispy pieces of bacon, topped with chopped eggs and parsley? Definitely dairy free comfort food. If the idea of chopped eggs on hot pasta makes you think twice? I get that. Try topping your pile of noodles with an egg cooked over easy instead (or skip the egg on top all together. The pasta is delicious with the simple silky sauce and bacon).

It’s not quite carbonara, but it sure is an easy, satisfying substitute.

Prefer to print?Download your free copy here.

Always Hungry, and Homestyle Hamburger Soup

1 Comment

Cool weather finally showed up on our doorstep and no one was as delighted to greet it as I was. Trading shorts and salads for sweaters and soup pots is the best part of the year, in my book.

bed of white petaled flower

Cold weather always makes me hungry. I don’t know why, exactly, but I blame soup. Soup does more than fuel my body; it warms my bones. Once I start slurping, I almost can’t stop. It’s a matter of cold weather survival around here.

Chunky sweaters are part of the deal of Midwestern life, of course, but if I had to pick between hearty soups or trendy fall fashion? Soup would win every time. Cozying up with a bowl of it while dressed in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt does the trick too.

If I had to choose a favorite soup (and thank God I do not have to do so), Hamburger Soup might be my pick. It tastes like home to me. My mom made it all the time when I was young. She still does, I think. Don’t most moms have a version they serve on the regular? Gluten free, allergy life didn’t throw a kink in this familiar recipe, and I’m so thankful for that because it’s a dinner that connects our family table to the one I sat at when I was a child. We didn’t have food restrictions in our house when I was growing up, and yet I can’t recall a day when my mom’s version of this was served with a swirl of cream before serving. Simplicity makes this soup a star. Ground beef, onions, carrots and celery, and potatoes are almost all you need.

Well ok, you need beef broth too. And tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce too, but this soup forgives you if you’ve got to leave them out. It’s flexible and fast and filling. If you’re cold and hungry and soup sounds ideal? Cook up buns for biscuits and stir up a pot of Hamburger soup. It’s not fancy, and that’s why I love it. I can cozy up with a bowl of it in under 40 minutes.

Simple and satisfying, this one tastes like home.

Prefer to Print?Download your free copy here.

Comfort Food Reimagined and Gluten Free, Dairy Free Bacon Ranch Chicken Casserole

Leave a comment

Casseroles are like McDonald’s: they get a bad wrap, but secretly everyone loves them.

Well okay, I don’t love McDonald’s–anymore. But gracious me, how I adored their french fries until I learned gluten’s evil reach extends to even them. French fries don’t need wheat to be wonderful.

The same is true for casserole. I know I’m not the only one with childhood memories of noodles and meat tucked into a sumptuous sauce, layered thick with gooey cheese and baked until golden and glorious, right? Casserole was pretty much my favorite, but now gluten is ornery and unwelcome at my table. Ditto for dairy, so clearly, casserole complicates my kitchen. I bet it complicates yours, too.

Allergy life handed us a whole bunch of adversity. Shoot, it’s just plain bananas sometimes, but I have learned to leverage the crazy and bake banana bread. In other words, I’m good at making the best of bad situations, but casserole creates a crummy conundrum. No matter how you slice it, alternative ingredients just don’t swap out the same way in savory dishes.

Even so, when cooler weather compels me to click on the oven and cook something cozy, casserole calls my name. I usually argue with the voice, saying things like “Dairy free cheese is disgusting” and “Gluten free noodles get gummy.” Casserole patiently nods its understanding, then nudges me to try again anyway, saying “I’m problematic, but possible.”

Over the years I have tried to prove my beloved food friend right. Try after disappointing try simply confirmed my opinion until I realized this: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is just plain crazy. Daiya does not–will not— taste like dairy Mozzarella no matter how much I wish it did.

That’s the problem: I’m expecting my taste buds to adjust to something I just plain don’t like. Many alternatives are frankly unpalatable. Others are acceptable, but some really are inspired. Sorting out the bad from the good is an exercise in patience and fortitude.

It’s exhausting.

Once upon a time Mia asked me to make lasagna for dinner. Rarely one to deny a request for comfort food, I hesitated, and it surprised her. I mean, lasagna is all about the cheese. The marriage of ricotta and mozzarella is a match made in comfort food heaven, so I panicked. But something switched that night and instead of asking How can I make that? , I asked myself How will I make that? Saying yes to her simple request taught me to re-imagine casserole instead of trying to recreate it.

Does gluten have to be involved at all? Does dairy? The simple answer is, of course, no. A casserole is really just “food cooked and served in a casserole [dish]” (According to Merriam-Webster, that is), which essentially means anything goes.

So I looked my girl in the eye and said “Let’s do it!” and we rolled out sheets of homemade cassava flour noodles and stirred together a filling of garlic-studded meat and spinach, and layered them together with a simple marinara sauce. Then in a fit of inspiration, I got out a can of black olives. As I sliced them, Mia asked if she could put them on by herself. I laughed as I watched her arrange them into a smiley face.

I can’t redefine casserole, but I can re-imagine it. Food allergy life taught me that. My kids don’t know the difference between a lasagna covered with cheese and one simply slathered with sauce. All they see is lasagna served with a smile. Isn’t that the point? Food doesn’t have to be fancy or familiar to feed my family well. If it’s served with a smile, it’s enough.

Yes, it means letting go of what I know. But it frees my heart from stress and burnout and gives me the gift of saying yes.

Casserole isn’t comfort food because it’s layered with cream or cheese: it’s comfort food because it’s home food, made with all kinds of creativity and love. Experimenting with alternative ingredients yields all sorts of casseroles with character, and cultivated a cuisine unique to our table and taste buds. We top them with olives or thinly sliced tomatoes, seasoned rice-crumbs or crushed potato chips or savory streusel or even gluten free crispy french-fried onions, and then cheer when it comes out crispy and golden. We even argue over who gets the corner piece.

I’m sure the same will be true for you, too, because casserole is a framework, an idea, a canvas for a culinary masterpiece.

This Bacon Ranch Chicken Casserole is top 14 allergen free proof that comfort food of my childhood is possible after all.

It’s not comfort food the way your Grandma would have made it, unless of course your Grandma was cooking for gluten free, dairy free folks, but my family thinks it’s every bit as comforting — and way better than McDonald’s.

Prefer to Print? Get your free copy here.Download

Back When, Until Then, and Vegan Scalloped Summer Squash

Leave a comment

September can’t decide which season it is: one minute it’s crisp and cool and apple cider donuts call my name. The next minute it’s hot again and I silently judge all those other people stashing pumpkin everything into their shopping carts.

This in-between time puts me on a seasonal teeter-totter. There’s something inside me that’s really ready for what’s next, so in the cool of the morning I pull on a light sweatshirt and pair it with shorts, convincing myself it will be chilly enough to warrant my wardrobe choice. I head into my day wanting to make apple crisp and pumpkin bars and cider braised short ribs with sweet potatoes; I want to debate whether apple orchards trump pumpkin patches; and I want to order my Chai tea lattes extra hot. But none of that sounds appealing when it hits 88 degrees outside.

But oh, this Scalloped Summer Squash. It’s the perfect culinary bridge between the best of the summer season and comforting fall favorites. I don’t pine after pumpkin when I make it. I’m able to be perfectly present to the moment I’m in, right now. It points back to the beauty and bounty of summer and promises the warmth and wealth of fall.

It is a reminder of “back when” and “until then” in more ways than one. I used to cook with mainstream ingredients: back then I would have layered the squash with whipping cream and Gruyere; I might have added some breadcrumbs for crunch, and you know butter would have been involved somehow. Someday I’ll be able to cook with dairy again, but until then I’m finding ways to use what I have available right now to feed us well. I may be using uncommon ingredients this season, but there’s always something familiar from last season to combine them with. This casserole proves it.

Summer squash is a summertime staple, one that is still widely available during September. The stunning colors of the squash snuggle up beneath a warm blanket of velvety vegan cream sauce made with coconut milk and nutritional yeast, then topped with a little fresh thyme. The result is comfort food September is can be proud to call its own–but one taste and I bet you’ll make it all year, because oh, dear friends–it’s that good.

Of course the first time I made it I wondered whether my people would pout about a cheeseless casserole without noodles. I expected them to protest, but to my shock and delight they devoured every last bit of it.

I made it again last night and I paired it with pan-fried pork chops. When Mia came home for dinner, she walked in the door and and inhaled deeply, asking with a smile on her face, “Oh, mom–did you make that squash thing again? Ooh, and pork chops? Yay. This will be the best dinner ever.”

Back when and until then collided in a delicious, dairy free moment that had me celebrating the right here and the right now. I hope it helps your family do the same.

Prefer to print? Download your free copy here.Download

Ruin, Redemption, and Basic Bone Broth

Leave a comment

Warm fall days are fading into cooler ones that whisper winter is coming soon. Even the sun tucked a gray blanket around its neck again, bracing against the sharp winter wind I am still getting used to.

It is hard to have hope when I am chilled to the bone. The promise of ever being warm again is a tall tale my heart won’t receive while my body smarts against the sting of the pain that is now. When yesterday’s disappointments turn into today’s discouragement, hope slips through my fingers until I remember redemption always follows ruin.

I learned the lesson again this week when I stared down a pile of dry, brittle turkey bones. They were leftover from Thanksgiving, of course, and I dutifully salvaged every last morsel of roasted meat for all sorts of post-thanksgiving dinners that keep the gift of that bird going. I got out my stock pot and got ready to plunk the bones into it until that imposing pile of bones gave me pause. I stared in horror at the enormity of the mess, realizing I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t make broth because my stock pot was far too small to fit the carcass inside of it. I was stuck.

I have felt that way a lot this year: caught by surprising circumstances that make me wonder “Why?” The problems loom larger than the hope for redemption. Paralysis sets in when I don’t know what to do, and I’m tempted to give up. To get numb. To hide. To count it as a loss and toss it all away instead of pausing to ask “What’s next?”

A pile of bones looks like garbage. It is evidence of death, and the promise that anything good could come out of it is hard to swallow when the pain, frustration and the inconvenience is bigger than I feel equipped to handle. But I know better. I know healing comes after hurting. I know hope shines brightest in the middle of dark circumstances. I know death is not the end.

I looked at the carcass and realized I couldn’t change the magnitude of the mess, but I could break it up into more manageable morsels.

So I grabbed a cleaver and set to work, breaking down the bones further so I could move toward the promise of what was to come. I settled them deep into the base of the stock pot, like a casket, and I remembered the way God asked Ezekiel if dry bones can come back to life (Ezekiel 37:2).

I find I wonder the same thing about my own circumstances too.

But as I lay carrots and celery and onions alongside them, and fill the pot with cool, clean water, hope begins to stir in my heart, and I remind my soul of the promise God made all those years ago:

“Ezekiel, the people of Israel are like dead bones. They complain that they are dried up and that they have no hope for the future. So tell them, ‘I, the Lord God, promise to open your graves and set you free. I will bring you back to Israel, and when that happens, you will realize that I am the Lord. My Spirit will give you breath, and you will live again. I will bring you home, and you will know that I have kept my promise. I, the Lord, have spoken” (Ezekiel 37:11-14 CEV).

Making broth from bones moves me every time I make it–which is often, because I can’t not make it. The rich golden stock that emerges from of the sad remains of yesterday cheers my heart and heals my body. I rely on it. It soothes my system and reduces inflammation; it gives my body the nutrients it needs to knit itself back together; and it helps my own bones stay strong.

When the weather turns cold–when things die, when my soul feels dry, when all hope seems lost, I do what I know to warm myself up again. I salvage the sad remains of yesterday and take them to the source of redemption who never wastes a thing. God radically brings life from death. He’s famous for it. Making soup from bones is the most delicious metaphor for this transformative truth I know.

After all the dirty work was over, the pot sat steaming on the stovetop. The lid clicked as it simmered something good, like a clock counting down the minutes until dinner. The Goobies shuffled in, starving, asking What’s that delicious smell? with anticipation in their eyes.

“Turkey broth,” I say, “And I’m going to use it for turkey soup, and turkey pot pie, and–”

“Turkey pot pie?!” they squeal, and their cheeks swell ten sizes bigger with smiles that brighten the room. They dance while they wait, expectant.

And it reminds me all over again: the miracle of joy is waiting on the other side of today’s loss. Dubious and distant though it may seem, it is there. This cold, dry, dismal season isn’t the end. New life will emerge from this loss, and we will be stronger for it.

Prefer to print? Download your free copy here!Download

When Nice Isn’t Enough, and Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Leave a comment

Emery and I spent a lot of time together these days. It’s nice, but it’s not enough.

On school days I scurry through the morning like a frantic squirrel, gathering up bits of this and that and packing things away for later, scooting my pups out the door while Emery perches himself at the window wondering when everyone will get home again. He barely eats a bite of breakfast until after we circle back from school drop off to our own make-shift classroom at home, and even then, staying on schedule distracts him from satisfying his stomach, and he ends up grumpy as we work our way through morning.

Snacks help. So do small breaks to get outside and wiggle. But most of the time Emery doesn’t even want to do that–he’d rather snuggle up close to me and read an entire Magic Tree House book from cover to cover in one sitting, or sit at the table alongside me and work on math games for the bulk of the morning. The laundry sits, as do the dirty dishes. And forget about my cup of morning tea and or a hot shower or any of the projects I thought I would be working on this month–things clearly didn’t turn out the way I thought they would this season.

I know I’m not alone in this. Change charged in uninvited everywhere, and most of us are doing everything we can to make the best of it. We’re saying yes to everything we possibly can to comfort and encourage, not coddle or indulge. It’s a fine line between the two, of course. Sometimes phonics looks more like snuggling on the couch and sounding out words than sitting at the table staring at worksheets. Morning math lessons sometimes happen while I’m making muffins or when we’re sitting in carline at the end of the day.

Like so many of you, I am thankful for the extra time I have with my boy, and most days I remind myself this time is a gift. So I pray for flexibility in my heart to embrace this season despite its disappointments, but still. It’s hard.

It’s hard because for as much as I used to toy with the idea of homeschool life, this isn’t what I imagined. Like, at all. My imagination conjured up images of all three of the Goobies home together all day long, happily learning alongside each other in an at-home school room straight from a Pottery Barn catalog, dressed in corduroy jumpers and leather shoes. We’d romp through piles of fallen leaves in the morning, throwing schedules out the window because learning together out there in the real world would be a treat, not a nuisance. Then we’d huddle back inside for hot chocolate and recite state capitals while munching on chocolate chip cookies. No one would ever be lonesome because there would always be someone to play with. The kids would get bad tempered sometimes, sure–but they’d never by themselves, like Emery is. How many other children are enduring these endless string of empty days looking out the window, waiting for something to change?

2020 taught us many things: how to be flexible, how to give grace, how to adapt and adjust and choose joy anyway. It also taught us the value of togetherness from the abrupt absence of it. Visiting through glass–while nice–isn’t good enough. Waving at people six feet away isn’t good enough. Staying away altogether because of what could happen if you get too close isn’t good enough for establishing friendships or maintaining relationships with the people we need in our lives. Nice things aren’t the best things.

I know we’ve all got to make sacrifices this week, this season, this year. I get that and I’m on board with doing our part to make things work for everyone. But the harder truth is this: I also want the best for my boy, and so much alone-ness isn’t the best.

After a turbulent couple of days last week, Emery fell into bed, emotionally exhausted. He clutched my neck and held on tight, unwilling to let me go. My mama heart should have swooned, but the thought of all the broken moments that left him crying and asking questions I simply couldn’t answer nagged my protective heart. The weight of loneliness settled in as I remembered the hurt in his voice: “Why did they have to go? How come I can’t go too? Where did daddy go? When will he come back? How come the girls get to do that and I don’t? Why do I have to stay here? I don’t want to stay here.”

I know there will be a day when these moments will be a memory. The dragged out days of Kindergarten homeschool will fade into a time I wish I could return to, just like the hard and hazy first years of parenthood did. The sting of this season will wane as time ambles on, but for now, it hurts. I hug him back tight and memorize the way he breathes, and he whispers something into the dark of the room: “I would be delighted if you made pumpkin muffins with cinnamon sugar for breakfast tomorrow.”

I smiled, laughing a little as I hugged him tight and replied, “I would be delighted to make some for you.”

I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but it most certainly was not that. Hadn’t he had enough mommy and muffin mornings? But I realized there is comfort in the familiar, and when we ache, we look for something to cling to that calms us down and consoles us, steadying us for what comes next. Mornings, muffins and me–those are his constants these days. I can’t solve the world’s problems. Muffins can’t do that either, but they can smooth out rumpled feelings for a little while at least. Making them is one small act of love I can do right here behind the glass, despite the darkness swirling just outside the panes. Baking them won’t change much outside, but perhaps they’ll change something on the inside a little. After all, when love charges into the darkness, it changes things.

It might not be enough, but it’s a start. And since we’ve got to start somewhere, muffins are a delicious place as any. These gluten free Pumpkin Spice Muffins are top 14 free when you use an egg replacement. They’re warm, comforting, and flexible–just like we’re all trying to be these days–and a beautiful reminder that good things are right here in front of us when we slow down enough to see them.

Prefer to print? Download your free copy here.Download

Starting from Scratch and the Reason I Keep Writing

5 Comments

Dear Readers:

When I first started writing here, I called this blog “Love, Scratch.” It was a love letter, really: notes and recipes from my kitchen addressed to Joey, the man who called me Scratch before circumstances earned me the nickname.

In those early days, I wrote to relate my days to him, the ones spent in small spaces with two baby girls who kept me busy. My words were limited to the pages here, and that was enough for me. It was a season, and I knew it would pass before long. When it did, I wrote to remember: documenting days of struggle and success, heartache and hope. Life unfolded and revealed all sorts of things we didn’t expect, as most of you know. The food and the kitchen and all the things I cherished about both went from friend to foe in an instant, and the light-hearted spirit with which this blog began faded. I wrestled my way toward hope during those scary, painful days right here and many of you followed along, praying big prayers for us even as our life got smaller.

It was a hard road.

The kitchen got complicated and messy, and the table got lonelier and lonelier as the years wore on. Food kept complicating things that should have been simple. Throwing open our doors and inviting people over got inconvenient; accepting invitations to other homes felt impossible. But the Goobies stayed hungry. We all did. For food. For friendship. For life around our table.

Under normal circumstances, food slows us down and calms our hearts when pain and uncertainty wrench us out of our normal routines. Showing up with chicken enchiladas and a pan of lemon bars screams I see you right in the middle of your mess and I’m coming to you anyway. Food doesn’t fix the problem, but it acknowledges the pain and whispers hope that things could turn out ok after all. Friends show up with casserole because it invites people to catch their breath.

The very tricky part about our particular pain was this: food couldn’t soothe the ache away even if we wanted it to. Dietary restrictions barged into that sacred space that ministers hope to the hurting, and it doled out fear and loathing right along with rules we didn’t know how to follow yet. I was hurt and needed help, but it was extremely difficult to ask for it and even harder to accept it.

Letting go of the way things used to be wasn’t quick or easy for me. Lord knows I folded my arms and clutched what was left tight to my chest. It felt safer to live that way. But life became small and living in fear wasn’t really living at all. Fear told me staying home meant staying safe. Faith taught me God is good everywhere, within my home and beyond my walls, regardless of whether I’m what I think of as safe.

The tricky part was this: the risks of leaving our safe zone are very, very real. Getting glutened. Cross-contamination. Alienation. Hurt feelings. Accidental ingestion. Anaphylaxis. Just because God is good doesn’t mean those things aren’t real. They are. We’ve experienced them all. But the rewards of leaving our safe zone are very, very real too. Making friends. Connecting across tables. Bearing each other’s burdens. Acceptance. Adventure. Life.

A few days ago, I was exploring all this in a project that’s diverted my attention away from this space for awhile now. It’s been taking shape and going well until suddenly, surprisingly, my words dried up. I stomped my feet and cried ugly tears over the ones refusing to be written. I tried forcing them into a place they didn’t belong, and it just plain didn’t work. I labored over that document for hours clicking it open and snapping it shut and getting nowhere fast. I pouted. I cried. Lord knows I shouted a thousand times over “That’s it! I quit!” but something inside told me to start from scratch.

But staring down a fresh blank page and stringing together beautiful, brilliant words while the cursor blinked at me, taunting my effort felt foolish too. The idea of scrapping all the work I had already done made me mad. No thanks God. I’d rather quit than start over. Starting over hurts. What we leave behind feels wasted, as if walking away from it means it never mattered in the first place. (Or am I alone in that feeling?) But I couldn’t shake it. My spirit whispered, “Start from scratch.”

I clicked open a new document and sat with it for a moment, begrudgingly at first, waiting. The cursor finally winked at me, and words rippled across the page like cake batter tipped into a sheet pan. It settled and smoothed, and I realized God was right. Starting over hurt, but it’s what changed me, what shaped me, and what grounds me. As it turns out, starting over heals too.

That’s why I write any of these words at all: because starting from scratch hurts, but it also heals, if we let it.

Opening myself up to the possibility of starting over did more than just save my life: it made my life. When I realized God is just as good now as he ever seemed before, that’s when I realized why he had written it on my heart to start Love, Scratch in the first place, and why changing course with Rachel Maier Writes makes perfect sense: Rachel Maier writes to Joey, always. But she also writes to you: to remember with you and relate to you and remind us both that God is good in both places.

Later that day, satisfied and surprised at what had just spilled out on the page, my doorbell rang. I opened the door to find my brother standing on the stoop, juggling a box of frozen fish sticks and a covered casserole dish.

“Hey Sis!” he said. “Mom sent fish sticks for the kids’ dinner tonight. She sent over this chicken casserole so you could eat something too.”

I eased the pan out of his hands and laughed in spite of myself. The chapter that spilled out that day was about showing up anyway, arms heavy with casseroles if you can. Just like that.

There were days when my mom wouldn’t have dared to send dinner over on a whim. She would have stuck to something less risky, like nestling a whole chicken in a crockpot, sprinkling it with salt and cooking it low and slow until the thing fell apart. She’d serve it with a baked potato or a mound of white rice, and coleslaw with vinegar and sugar and not sleep all night long, worried and wondering if she fed us well or made us sick. But we’ve come a long way from there, and we’re both armed with more confidence now.

She walked alongside me–alongside us–and invested her time in learning how to make food work for our family so that she could feed us well, even in this complicated place. At her house and at ours. She helped me learn how to put feet to my faith and walk out the message I preached: that life is more than food. That people make food what it is food. That God provides and makes a way and gives us every single thing we need, like comfort food I didn’t have to make, but trust enough to enjoy.

I know this life is hard. Exhausting. Overwhelming. Scary. I know you feel alone sometimes because I did too. I still do. But this place is also a sacred one with an opportunity for connection and camaraderie. All of it together makes the reason I keep writing: to share the reason I have hope into the homes of women like you and me–and our mothers and sisters and best friends and neighbors–women who are hurting and in search of healing, and the people who love them but don’t know how to help. I remember how it was. I’ve tasted what it can become. Life is good here too, because God is good in both places. Starting from scratch–painful as it may be–is worth it when we do it to make room at the table for people we love.

Homesick, and My Mom’s Potato Salad

Leave a comment

Dear Joey,

When I was a kid I suffered from severe homesickness: the kind that rendered me very poor company indeed. Tears and sleepless nights were my companions at sleepovers, and I vividly recall instance upon instance of begging my parents to let me go to a sleepover, only to call them in tears near midnight, begging to go home. More often than not, my dad lumbered his way to the car and drove to pick me up and waving his thanks to my hosts for their hospitality as he ducked back into the car to go home.

IMG_6647

Read More