In addition to working tirelessly on getting my first cookbook ready for publication, I’ve been posting a bit less lately due to an adorable addition to our family! We got a beautiful ten week-old puppy!

Meet Pixie! This is Pixie in the kitchen being watched over by her new big brother, our eight year-old black lab Sawdust Romeo. They are fast friends, and Sawdust is adjusting to what it means to share his Mom & Dad with a little tiny puppy. He’s doing very well, as you can see!

When I was a kid, my parents often took us to the Oregon coast to Lincoln City, home of the Pixie Kitchen (closed in 1985). It was a total Griswold kind of place, a siren of the sea for kids of the 70s and 80s. Colorful signs with giant cartoony characters inspired our begging from the back seat “can we go to the Pixie Kitchen??? Can we???!” We always did. Our new puppy Pixie now fills these oversized cartoon shoes at our house, as I’ve named our kitchen after the magical wonder of both Pixie and that magical place on the Pacific Northwest coast.