India Hicks Envy
Rural Iowa in January. The sky may be blue, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still get the blues. Between the post-Newtown letdown after our manic pie-making/pie-sharing cross-country journey, the bitter cold Iowa weather, the isolation of winter and my inability to get my ass moving on my next book, all this is conspiring to […]
Cool Stuff from Chef’s Planet
I’m having lunch with my friend Carolyn tomorrow. Carolyn volunteered many, many hours last summer for my Pitchfork Pie Stand. She would come over on Thursday evenings and we would weigh and roll out pie dough, slice lemons (not her favorite job, especially picking out all those seeds, but she did it anyway), cut strips […]
A Question of Privacy
I know you keep coming back here to see if I’ve updated my blog. I know this because many of you have sent me emails telling me so and subsequently asking, practically demanding, when I’m going to update my blog. I know, I know, I promised months ago – right before Labor Day to be […]
Pie Poetry by Bill Graeser
Saying goodbye to the RV, with Bill behind the wheel.I immediately returned to my pie duties in the kitchen. In July, I sent The Beast to summer camp for a week. Actually it was RAGBRAI, the week-long bike ride across Iowa. Des Moines Register columnist Kyle Munson had asked if he and his “Team Sauerkraut” […]
I Miss Being a Writer
When I moved into the American Gothic House I thought it would be a good place to write. And it was. I wrote “Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie” my first winter here. Winter being the operative word. Winters in Eldon, Iowa are supremely quiet, void of tourists and ideal for holing […]
CBS THIS MORNING did a story on me!
I have so much more to say about this experience, about having a TV crew in my house for three days while trying to make 100 pies, about the TV correspondent Michelle Miller pitching in and peeling 43 pounds of apples, about producer Chris Weicher sitting in my living room with her camera rolling and […]
Life After the RV Book Tour
A lot has happened since my last post, nearly a month ago. Last you heard from me I was driving in The Beast from Southern California to Texas (after surviving not one but two trips to the emergency room). After that 3-day drive from LA (with the help of “Saint Paul” Szendrey), I arrived in Austin, […]
RV Book Tour: LA to Austin
Here’s one of those “It could only happen on an RV book tour” kind of stories. And even though I should be taking a nap right now (I need it!), I can’t sleep because I really want to – NEED to – tell this story. I’ve been sick – as in two trips to the […]
RV Grief (er, BOOK) Tour: Welcome to the ER
I once heard that grief is held in the lungs. If that is true then it’s no wonder I’ve had bronchitis since I arrived in Portland on my book tour. (That was on April 6!) Portland is where Marcus and I had lived together for nearly two years out of our six-year marriage. Portland is […]
RV Book Tour: Week Five, Stats So Far
It is Week Five out of six on my “Pie Across the Nation” RV Book Tour to promote my new memoir, “Making Piece.” I’ve traveled from Eldon, Iowa (where I live in the American Gothic House), driving the 24-foot RV my husband left behind. Affectionately called “The Beast,” I packed up my two terriers, my […]