family traditions - grace grits and gardening

Sunday Letter: 12.01.19

December 1, 2019 By Talya Tate Boerner 17 Comments

Dear Sunday Letter friends,

Happy December!

Ready or not, here we go headfirst into the holidays. December is busy for my family not only because of Christmas, but also because we have lots of family birthdays this month. Really, the whole month is a celebration.

Fun! Fun!

I’ve missed a few Sunday Letters lately. Last weekend, we were in Denver for a quick visit with our kids. (I’ve gotten pretty good at leaving my computer at home when I travel. Yay me.) This Sunday Letter almost didn’t happen because I watched so much football yesterday, I had a hard time taking a break to write.

Speaking of football—did you see the Alabama | Auburn game? Oh my gracious! I bet Nick Saban blew a neck vein afterward…

Lake Girls. Lake Time.

May 24, 2019 By Talya Tate Boerner 8 Comments

Lake Girls. Lake Trip.

This weekend marks our first lake trip of the year. Our first official trip of summer, not that summer is here yet (but you know what I mean). Now that Momma and Staci are both living in Fayetteville, we are much closer to Lake Norfork. And we can go for long weekends. That was practically impossible to do when we lived in Texas.

So we’ll kick off lake season the way we did when we were all living together on the farm, when Staci and I were kids, before college and marriage and family and careers. We’ll spend the weekend doing many of those same things we always do when we go to the lake. Lake girls are like that.Continue Reading

Cole Slaw in Vintage Pyrex (and other kitchen traditions)…

April 28, 2019 By Talya Tate Boerner 8 Comments

kitchen

I love our kitchen. The longer we live in this house, the more deeply I believe it is one of my favorite places anywhere. I love it not only for its expansive windows that look out over our backyard (the space where we spend most of our free time), but also because it’s the room that holds so much tradition. If a house has a soul, its core is rooted in the kitchen.

Don’t you agree?

I thought about this recently as we prepared our Easter meal. We kept it simple this year, deciding on ribs with all the trimmings. Yes, it may have been more typical of a 4th of July picnic, but no one seemed to mind. Our kitchen comes with no rules, other than that one rule standard for all southern kitchens—we don’t want anyone to leave hungry.Continue Reading

Lake Girls. Lake Trip.

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.