Carrie Saum

This Harvest Vegetable Baked Ziti is a lovely late summer/early autumn harvest flair! Sprinkle it with whatever cheese sounds good and enjoy.

I cracked the sugar crust, took a bite, and then I actually DID cry. Huge, crocodile tears because it was good and this food tasted the way the city felt. It was home.

I am not here for your betterment. I am not here to be your dumping ground for all of your thoughts and fears. You are not entitled to my emotional labor!

After combing through mommy groups, I landed on a question that made total sense to my helicopter parenting mom-brain: Does that feel safe in your body?

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Heating up a kitchen while you are doing your level best to not become human molten lava is always the goal during summer, no matter where you live. I prefer batch cooking if I can make that happen, and never, under any circumstances, do I turn on my oven. Unless I'm baking a birthday cake or maybe some hand pies.

Every now and then, I produce something in my kitchen that actually blows my own mind. Heaven in your mouth - white chocolate cranberry cookie fudge!

Gather anything orange, brown, olive green, harvest yellow, and dead. Dead leaves, dead flowers, dead hopes and dreams, and arrange them artistically on your front doorstep.

The Internet has told us that instead of selling our wild summer children to a band of traveling performers, we should go swimming with them instead. At a beach or at the pool, your choice. The Internet also told us that us moms should get over our silly body issues and just play! Have fun!

I also kind of feel like whatever I do eventually put in my body needs to be quality and filling and full of nutritious goodness. This is hard on mornings when it literally feels like all I can do to make toast. Sometimes I look at it, contemplate it fresh out of the toaster and briefly wonder if I really need to spread the almond butter on it. Because effort.