Without realizing it, I have been on search for a really great blueberry muffin.  I really miss the ones I used to get from a place called The Market, Market Street or MarketPlace or something like that.  I just remember it being across the street and one block up from my first job, on the 40th floor of 1 Dag Hammskjold Plaza in New York City (49th & 2nd Ave).  It was one of those gourmet markets that used to make fantastic sandwich platters when we had those big lunch meetings… and even better muffin, danish platters for those pesky breakfast meetings.  Of course, that was back in 1990…  Their muffins were oversized, with these huge crusty muffin tops sprinkled liberally with chunky, coarse sugar.  Inside, they were light, fluffy and moist, tinged with blue and full of berries.  They melted in your mouth and then there was that satisfying crunch from the sugary topping… ah, bliss.

Since then, my experience with the blueberry muffin has been somewhat lackluster.  In Atlanta, muffins were usually relegated to those purchased as an after thought in a (more…)

Apparently, I haven’t overnighted anything is a long time. Took an envelope by UPS the other day to overnight some papers and discovered that I had three options for overnighting…

1) Delivery by 8:00am – $50 something dollars

2) Delivery by 10:30am – $27 or so

3) Delivery by sometime later in the day was like $20 something…(at this point, my brain was busy calculating whether it was worth it to overnight this small envelope in my hand and the words of the guy behind the counter was but a mere distant buzzing noise)

Am I revealing my age when I say that I can remember overnighting things for under $20?  Something like $17?  I suppose most of my overnighting was for work purposes, therefore, I simply filled out the form and sent it off to the mailroom and let the company deal with it…

So in the end, I took my little envelope… drove down the street to the good ol’ US post office where I went ahead and sent it via certified mail – so it will take perhaps 2-3 days to get where it needs to go and I sent it certified to make sure I had a record of it.  All for just over $3.

Then I went and treated myself to lunch.

Just spent the weekend in the mountains of North Carolina… I had driven up straight from Atlanta after my meeting had ended and Ryan drove up with friends from the Island. I have to admit, packing for a weekend while it’s 100 degrees outside, I packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts… when I got to the cabin, I realized I had nothing warm enough to wear. What a concept. Here I was in July wishing I had packed flannel… (more…)

The weekend was basically going to be a working one… we’re heading up to the family cabin next weekend so my husband is trying to get ahead at work so he can take off Thursday.  But we got a nice invitation from friends to come over for dinner with their kids who were in town for the 4th.  Jimmy absolutely makes the best ribs in the world… and all the veggies were picked fresh in Tatnall County (the U-Pick Capital of Georgia) or home grown so everything was delicious. (more…)