Carrie Saum

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.

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.

Tamago kake gohan is made with hot sushi rice, an egg, soy sauce, and good dash of furikake (a traditional seaweed and sesame rice seasoning). It is comforting, filling, entirely satisfying, and stays with you for several hours. This is great fuel for a school day, a sick day, or a day spent hiking — or marathoning Project Runway.

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?

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!

Whoever Waldorf is, I love their style of salads the most. Fruit, celery, creamy goodness. It's hard to go wrong. I mean, you CAN go wrong, but you shouldn't because that would be silly.

Nothing says fall to me like a pumpkin treat, and I love the combination of cloud-like cookies and frosting. It’s like an Oreo and a birthday cake had a baby during pumpkin spice season and created a true joy of autumnal desserts.

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.

The country is kind of obsessed with KonMari. I get it. Truly, I do.

In February, you gave me that soul-punching gaze again and told me it's okay to eat bread while we obtain Our Best Bodies. You lost 26(!) pounds and you eat bread every damn day! I feel how miraculous this is for you because you've probably made bread evil, along with All The Carbs and fat on your body.