Carrie Saum

Visiting my family in the Sierra Nevada foothills is one of the great pleasures of my life. I get to work, cook, and play while my amazing folks keep an eye on my kid. My inspiration and productivity skyrocket when I'm able to step away from my version of the daily grind and get a little refocused and centered. The food I make tastes a little better, and I move a little easier without a three-year-old constantly in tow.

I can't do this on my own. This life thing, this parenting thing, this figuring out how to make it all work thing? Yeah, those things. I can't. And what's more is I don't think any of us are meant to. It's time to shed the taboo around asking and receiving help.

Easter is rapidly approaching, which means that we all need to get our collective ish together and figure out how to eat all the chocolate.

Oh, you say you’re making this for your neighbor who just had a baby and a traumatic birth experience and you want to be an Exceptional Neighbor and bring her post-partum love and healing in a warm, bubbling cake dish? Fantastic. Just make sure to eat half of the cobbler straight out of the pan first, and then transfer it to another pan and pretend it’s meant to look like a pan of berry mush.

So, what do you do when you make something that looks a mess but tastes like the Virgin Mary give birth in your mouth? You add more sugar and salt to hide its minor imperfections and nobody gives a damn how it looks after the first bite.

Soothing warmth from the inside out to help ease your aches and pains, help you rest, and stop coughing.

Friends. I have discovered something magical.

Thin Mints are my favorite. They’ve ALWAYS been my favorite. I would hide a sleeve in our freezer as a kid, and wait for my brothers to leave the house so I could eat them in peace. As an adult, not much has changed. I look forward to that time of year when Girl Scout cookies make winter doldrums bright again.

[CN: emetophobia] I wish my son's gut could handle more than a few foods. I wish there were a magic Google function that could tell me and all of Echo's doctors how to manage this jerk of an allergy.

We're in flu season hell! In fact, according to, uh, science, it’s one of the worst seasons we’ve seen in the last 10 years.