Good Libations: Gin and Jam

This happens to everybody, right? It's Monday night and you're watching The Voice and you'd really like a cocktail, but a quick look through your cabinet reveals that all your ingredients are completely gone. There's a bit of gin, but no Champagne, no lemons, no limes, no egg whites, nothing. What's a girl to do?

Well, I guess I could just drink the gin straight, but I haven't drunk straight gin since I was 14 and picked up my voice teacher's water glass by mistake.

Berry Tarts Are Not For Breakfast

Berry tarts are totally not for breakfast.

Whatever. It's eight o'clock somewhere.

What it Looks Like Inside a Mongolian Ger

Every day in Mongolia we stayed in ger, which is a movable round house similar to a yurt and often called by that name. (But it's not a yurt in Mongolia, it's a ger.)

Grandma B's Italian Crescent Cookies

I was in a massive funk when I first moved back to Chicago from Beijing. I missed my friends; I missed all the friendly stray cats I brought home (sorry, Nick); and I missed my disposable income. But mostly I missed the food.

Even at the time I knew it was a crazy thing to sit in Chicago and miss any kind of food, but the food in Beijing was some of the best I'd ever had, and I just couldn't find the same things or even make my own, having left behind the contents of my massive Beijing pantry.

But I can't stay in a food funk forever, especially in a food-centric like Chicago. After a few weeks I decided it was time to stop mourning my nightly jian bing and try to focus on the things Chicago did better, like sushi and Italian cookies.

That's when I attempted to sort my mother's recipe binder (an asylum of more than 35 years of magazine clippings and diet tips in a Joy of Cooking cover) and this fell out at me, literally:

New Cat-Eye Glasses With Rhinestones From Francis Klein

I have acquired new glasses! It was actually quite a long time coming, because I loved my old glasses so very much and had not found anything I liked quite as well.

I thought I was bereft of any other rhinestone-encrusted goodness, but then I discovered the wonderful world of Francis Klein eyeglasses.