Happy springtime to you! Hope you had a fun Carnival and an awesome 2025 thus far. Thank you for your patience regarding my slight delay in sending out this month's newsletter. To be clear, I'm not late. God made it so other things had to shake before sending. Glad you're here to see it!

What's New?

Since I last wrote you, some awesome stuff has happened! Will elaborate on a few later, but here's a briefing in random order...

• Updated my website's look and content!
• New story about po'boys in The Infatuation!
• Won a Black Women in Food award for food journalism!
• Got turned down for a job I was sent from a friend, so I figured OK GOD FINE I will just sit and work on my mom's book.
• Growing increasingly sober curious.
• My 2023 gumbo story for Bon Appetit was put into PRINT!
• New coparenting schedule!
• Quoted in Essence and National Football Post, about New Orleans tourism, essentially.
• The lady who used to use my lawn like a toilet, she has been sent away to a facility I think will benefit her.
• Realizing more and more there are things I just don't want, that I thought I did.

First, let's take a quick website tour!

• Subscribing to Adobe Creative Cloud again, so I redid my logo, header and slightly changed the shade of purple I use. Last time I did this was 2020.
• Made both my newsletter subscription and tip$ / donation$ page less text heavy.
• This, I shoulda been done: Removed graphics about yet-to-be-active pages and removed said pages from my menu.
• Updated my homepage as always, to include my latest blog post and article, also of course updating the portfolio page.
• Got back doing my weekly annotation of one news story I find particularly interesting.
• Put my tip$ / donation$ page on my homepage.

In case you missed these blog posts...

More fun, I'm almost done!

Grocery shopping method from my friend, Chef Will Coleman

It's his 654321 method! It feels unusual while you're doing it, but once you do it you're done and, if you can cook, will have a ton of yummy, varied and healthy food at the house with zero waste. Here's a video of him talking about it.

While I'm here, I ran into my 7th Ward couzan Vance Vaucresson, of Vaucresson Sausage. He and his wife Julie post online quite a bit, and it's so beneficial to their business. Before we even got talking good, he said I need to try to be on camera more. My friend Chef Will Coleman also told me the same. My friend Daniela Capistrano told me the same. I saw a post on LinkedIn saying it too. So I will try. Gotta make like it's 2020 again and I like being on camera...

Black Women in Food Awards

So exciting that I won a Black Women in Food Award, for my work as a food journalist. Like I said in my nomination acceptance correspondence, this award means a lot to be because I try so hard to write for Black people, especially Black women. So to be honored by my own people, Lord that means a lot. 

I'm freaking out a little bit though, since I need to buy my ticket to the award ceremony, airfare, hotel and incidentals. Days like this I wish I actually were an influencer*, and could get at least the hotel and stuff covered. Don't think there are any press trips to D.C. coming up soon, but I could be wrong!

*Please Jesus, if you value our friendship and your health and safety, do not call me an influencer. I am NOT. I am a JOURNALIST. I am an AUTHOR. I am absolutely not an influencer. Maybe folks are influenced or whatever, but that's neither my intent nor my problem.

New Coparenting Schedule

For years I've had Franklin Sunday-Wednesday. So there was never any time for sleeping in and also there were so many events we could never attend. Now his dad got a new job (must be nice, I'm a little jealous it was so easy for him when I've been fucking struggling to find something for years, and it's not even in his field my God in Heaven) and we had to switch the schedule up.

So now I have Franklin Wednesday-Saturday! It might sound bad to not have the grownup weekend baby-free, but honestly what do I do on those days anyway? Certainly not looking for a man, absolutely not going to the club or whatever.

Speaking of not going to the bar or club

Since I was a child sneaking (and being offered) sips of my Paw Paw's cocktails, I've liked the taste of liquor. And I write about food and drinks, so of course I enjoy a masterfully designed cocktail. However, I'm getting older (physiologically) and the drinks hit so different. One or two is my max. I see no sense in drinking alcohol if I can have a mocktail that tastes just as good. Or better! Since I'm not drinking to feel the liquor, or anything.

To be clear, I'm still drinking. No plans on being sober in earnest, because I rarely drink anyway. I still got liquor on my shelf from the pandemic! But I'm really enjoying the no- and low-alcohol options, especially wines, beers and ready-to-drink mocktails.