Carrie Saum

For the first time in my life, I was lost after leaving Evangelical Christianity. I watched the shores of everything safe and familiar wash away.

No-bake cookies were always one of my favorite potluck eats. These seemed like straight-up magic to me, and I was fascinated by cookies that tasted awesome without baking them. It was potluck sorcery at Hogwarts level.

Summer is winding down.

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

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.

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.

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.

Am I the only one who gets pumped about using a crockpot during the colder months?

The result was a gorgeous, decadent, crispy-edged-and-soft-in-the-middle caramelized cookie skillet straight from heaven. It filled our entire building with sweet almond and fig baked goodness.

You are more than a body; you are more than your achievements and goals. Here are three resolutions that have nothing to do with your body.