Carrie Saum

My grandmother planted these gorgeous Meyer lemon trees

This is a recipe for pastry. It's ugly. It will make your kitchen hot in a summer's day. Hotter than the surface of West Texas. Hotter than Jesse Williams scorching the BET Awards with universal truth that we all need to heed and hear. It won't win an award or any baking competitions. But it will win your mouth's undying gratitude.

If you are like me, you weren't raised to tune into your body, mind, or spirit. Tuning in was something you did to television, or something you made fun of when your weird Aunt Susan told you how to breathe into your third chakra to release your blocked Chi from three lifetimes ago.

If you tend to eschew your inner child and prefer to feel somewhat sophisticated and faux-healthy, you can call a frozen wine drink a smoothie and it totally counts. Because we are all of a legal drinking age here and there is no shame in consuming your daily super fruit serving in a nutritious, fermented, frozen liquid form. The best part about all of this is you don’t need GOOD wine, you just need not-chardonnay.

We saw Hurricane Ike coming for days before it made landfall. It was just two short years post-hurricane Katrina, and all of south Texas and Louisiana were still reeling from her trauma. My husband and I began deliberating if we should stay or go. This is my story of surviving natural disasters.

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.

Winter is coming with the cold bite to the wind, the short days and long nights. We can’t escape it but here's how you can cope with winter like a boss!

Quiche. It's a bit of a unicorn, isn't it? You chase the perfect texture, combination, flavors, and rise in hopes that it equals perfection.

As a mom to a child with profound food allergies, I get a little terrified around the holidays. We are joining the Teal Pumpkin Project this Halloween.

In celebration of the first juicy strawberries of the season, I make a special treat. These chocolate covered strawberries are anything but ordinary.