Kathleen Purvis

No one food is perfect for everyone. And no one way to get food is perfect for everyone, either.

What a sour note to sound at the beginning of baking season. First, the price of sugar goes up. Then we hear that canned pumpkin may be in short supply.

Between the third bowl of gumbo and the fourth praline, it began to sink in. New Orleans is three cities now.

I used to be the kind of person whose cell phone rang so rarely, I couldn't figure out how to answer it.

Most people like Bill Smith.

She was a scrappy little thing, barely 5 feet tall with hair that seemed bigger than she was. Here's how scrappy:

One night, I was sitting in front of huge windows at the Crestwood Inn in the forest above Blowing Rock, nursing a glass of wine and debating which big blue bump was Mount Mitchell.

She had me at “butter.”

Ever go over a yellow jacket nest with your lawn mower? You don't mean to do it, you're just cutting the grass.

I'm a list-maker at heart. I start almost every morning with one, even Saturdays. To-do lists, shopping lists, meal-planning lists, chore lists. Santa's got nothing on me – if I'm not putting something on a list, I'm checking something off.