I’m over here, day five in this horrible business of being sick. I don’t think anyone quite prepared me fully on how awful a thing it is to be quarantined away from your loved ones — especially the freshly trimmed blondie you spent almost a week away from — or the even more pitiful qualm of needing to be quarantined but cannot be because, well, you’re mom and how else is the laundry going to be folded, runny noses wiped or your little house going to continue chugging along in a somewhat peaceful manner.

Thankfully we’re slowly on the mend and hopefully I won’t be down for much longer. But while I am here, lazily in bed trying to ration out my last few aloe-veraed ultra soft puffs and sip my quickly depleting mug of hot tea I thought I would take a moment to tell you about some really great soup. I think tomato soup is something everyone should have in their arsenal of go-to recipes, which is odd because only recently, err when I made it from scratch, did I ever begin to question the sincerity of my former favorite: condensed tomato soup. Yes, I was a lover of the canned tomato soup — the kind that required two things: water and a bowl. It’s what I grew up on, it’s what I was familiar with and when nostalgia and the only frame of reference to base tomato soup upon is what you like and prefer, well, there’s a phrase: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. To me, it was unbroken. It was what I liked. And though my husband violently opposed such beloved affection I was set out to make him love it.

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It’s on days like today, when the sun decides the world is not worthy of its rays leaving us destitute with the bitter cold, I overdose on green things. Whether it be a plastic black cup with a lone brisk stalk holding up an over sized non-seasonal daisy or a chunky vegetable I presume to loathe, I need something in the bleak of winter to get me through the chest-aching 25-and-below degree days January always punishes us with.

Usually I spend the beginning part of every year (like this part, right now) coming down with a bad case of cabin fever. And I get it bad. I’m stir crazy, severely vitamin D deficient and a complete nut case — just ask my husband. He came home last week from a business trip to an entirely rearranged house and a room full of sealed boxes ready to be sent off to storage. His things, yes, they are gone. Thrown away. It’s what I do. It’s how I cope. Come save us all. Because if I don’t throw away the excessive amount of (what I’m now told were) receipts and random scribbled notes from the desk void of its owner, then I would have to step outside and do normal things, like get the mail or take out the trash. And let me sum up quickly what would happen to me if I actually did those things: I would die. My inner core would succumb to the air so dry, so cold it forces what feels like a thousand knives into my chest making it ache like I’m having a heart attack until, well, I actually do have a heart attack. So the complaints I get about this clean desk being, umm clean, is really my way of showing him I have serious self-preservation skills, meaning I’m still around to cook. But I hate to air out our little quarrels my surmounting life problems (did I mention teething? We’re doing that over here too…), so back to what I was saying previously:

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I don’t think there will ever be a day when I declare this site biscuit complete. You see, I find myself in somewhat of a predicament every time I make them. My shoulder angel — yes, I’ve got one — tells me you all think like me, you can never have too many biscuit recipes. In fact, there is so much you can do with them it’s practically impossible to find one and declare your search over for the rest of your biscuit eating life. Or my shoulder devil who says people don’t eat biscuits any more. This is a somewhat carb-concious society.* We don’t like filling ourselves with things that we will have to later spend an extra 15 minutes on the treadmill over. Seriously, biscuits are so 1952.

Yeah, this she-devil is weird.

Not only does my shoulder angel always speak sound logic, I also happen to be a bread (okay, carb) fanatic.  I will gladly eat buttermilk honey biscuits, biscuits with salami and scallions, absurdly flaky buttermilk biscuits and creme fraiche biscuits. I could never pass them up. I think everyone should have these tucked away in their recipe box, because I know you too appreciate the nuances between a buttermilk biscuit and a cream biscuit. Us buttery, flaky bread people, we just get it. We get that you can’t have just one biscuit recipe to carry you through chili and a braise and holiday dinners. Each one has a specific time and a specific place.

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We’re chiming in from the beach this week, but before you start perusing our few vacation pictures and getting jealous over what seems like the picture perfect family vacation, let me just tell you this: we booked a week long vacation in a beautiful two bedroom beach house with a huge granite-clad kitchen, hard wood floors that were pristinely clean and baby gak-free (ohmygawd yes!), was surprisingly and wonderfully wicker-free, and came complete with an adorable front yard hammock swing for two during the week that was 1. muy caliente, similar to what I imagine a cayenne pepper dry rub on your tongue would feel like, except not just contained to the mouthal region. 2. Raining, raining, and raining as predicted for the only week we’d be hoping to catch some rays instead of thunderstorms and a few random doses of lighting and down pours keeping us permanently sealed up inside. 3. Came directly after the week that everything went wrong, including our AC crumbling into shambles 18-hours prior to leaving, and 4. A dramatic teething epicenter after my 7-month old decided to unexpectedly without warning suddenly grow and pop out his first two itty bitty teef which carried along the associated grumpiness that accompanies such endeavors. I mean, really. I hate to sound like the world’s biggest complainer here, but is it just me or does anyone else feel like their life seems to turn completely upside down as if you, your world and all its contents were baton twirled in a rain stick at the most inopportune moments.

I promise, though, not to complain, or even mention the staggering list of negatives. Regardless of everything, we are having ourselves one of the best, relaxing, fun vacations we could have. The sun has popped out on a few occasions letting us take baby to the beach where he’s experienced everything from naps in salty ocean breezes, to face planting in hot sand with a full tasting menu of all its glorious grit, to the feeling of cool ocean waves lapping at toes and baby rolls. A sand castle was even attempted, though quickly ditched as the heat wave we tried so desperately to escape never let us out of its grasp and ran us right back inside. We’ve even managed to have a few beautiful sunsets as I seem to be the typical woman and drag my husband across islands to see which spot gives me, err, us the best viewing advantage of this daily occurrence. He never gets annoyed — I’m so lucky.

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Almost two years ago I made coleslaw for the first time. I admitted doing so only to keep my better half, the one who funds my kitchen, happy as he wanted a coleslaw topped pulled pork sandwich replicating the kind we had deep within South Carolina barbeque country the year prior. I, for one, was not going to poke the bear. Along the way I realized coleslaw was not nearly as horrible as my dramatic woes led me on. Coleslaw did not need to be a bowl of mayonnaise soup (my biggest fear) and my taste buds actually enjoyed the flavor of a lightly dressed cabbage salad. Like, a lot.

Unfortunately I’ve only made it once. Despite being decidedly uncreamy, as the name implies otherwise, it seemed to have more steps than I thought a simple cabbage salad should have. It required a four-hour wilt marathon over the sink before it had to be rinsed it off, patted it dry, and coated with a light dressing before being served — unless you prefer it chilled, and then time would need to be factored in accordingly. It’s not that I am unable to make myself useful during that four hours — frosting cupcakes, form smacking burgers for the grill, or splashing in the pool — I just frankly am impatient. I want it now.

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