Monthly Archives: July 2014

July 28, 2014 · 11:34 am

A Little Life Hack: WordPress Customer Service

Poster designed by the author via keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

Earlier this month, a horrendous customer service call made headlines. Being the glass-half-full kind of gal that I am, I want to share a sunnier experience with people paid to listen to us whine.

It starts with a WordPress blog–just like the one you’re reading now. I’ve used WordPress for nearly eight years now, and currently own or contribute to half a dozen WP sites.

When I’ve bumped up against the occasional website snafu, I’ve always been able to pluck an answer from the help topics or the forums and fix the problem myself. Then I came up against email forwarding that mysteriously stopped. We’re talking about the service where you can take an address like info@funkycucumber.com and automatically forward it to me@gmail.com (if you’re not doing this yet for your own website, look into it!* It’s free. And it works great. Except when it occasionally doesn’t). Continue reading →

Publication: Morsels on Morse in The Washington Post

This sign inspired the lede of my article. Photo by moi.

My article in this week’s Washington Post Food section opens:

A sign on the door of Best Kitchen Supply on Morse Street NE asks patrons to press a buzzer to get in, but regulars know the truth: The door is rarely locked. Within, they find more insider secrets in the form of kitchen treasures of every kind, their prices as inviting as the open door….

You can read the full article online now and catch it in tomorrow’s print edition.

What a fun process this was–really an excuse to bum around some of my favorite shops in D.C. and pick the minds and hearts of the people in them. I focused on three places: Best Kitchen Supply, A. Litteri, and Afrik International Market. I both hope and worry that these morsels on Morse won’t stay a secret for long.

My reporting, as well as my 11-year history as a shopper of Florida Avenue Market businesses, all come together in this piece, and will be tested by readers in the online chat. Tune in to Free Range on Food on Wednesday, 7/23, at noon. I’ll share the virtual Q&A with, among others, a 10-year-old chef-to-be.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Morning Bread

In the previous post, I shared some of my experience cooking for 40+ acrobats. Though the menu board in the dining room listed details of only our lunches and dinners, the breakfasts were also documentation-worthy. Part of what made them legendary (at least in my mind) was the bread.

Let me set the scene: The four of us cooks would stumble into the kitchen by 6:15 a.m. to set up a breakfast rotation of housemade chai and granola, a hash with whatever grass-fed meat the monkeys (aka acrobats) hadn’t gobbled up the night before, potato hashbrowns, oatmeal, and/or kitcheree. Coffee, hot water for tea, and hot chocolate, too.

One mainstay of these breakfasts was Chef Josh‘s overnight bread, which is an easy and delicious project for cooks at any level. As the name suggests, you start this bread the night before. Instead of the usual routine of letting the bread dough rise for about an hour a couple of times before baking, this one rises slowly over six or eight hours. (If you’re interested in the technical why and wherefore, the key is the high volume of salt. It slows the yeast’s activity).

Here’s a recipe for the bread, scaled down to make one large or two small loaves (recipe after the jump). Continue reading →

Monthly Archives: July 2014

A Little Life Hack: WordPress Customer Service

Publication: Morsels on Morse in The Washington Post

Morning Bread

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