by Phil Houseal | Apr 10, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Food, Philosophy
April 10, 2024–One of our kids’ favorite family activities was responding to The Kids’ Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock. It was a collection of 260 open-ended questions with answers you could not find in any book. Rather, they posed moral dilemmas, what-ifs, and...
by Phil Houseal | Mar 27, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Food, History, Philosophy
March 27, 2024–For some reason, grits was the topic of a recent online discussion. The food brought up clearly delineated preferences, “delineated” as in above or below the Mason-Dixon line. Southerners love grits; northerners don’t. This started a long discussion of...
by Phil Houseal | Feb 29, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Food, History, Philosophy
Feb 28, 2024–As a kid I remember first seeing the Jeopardy category “Potpourri.” I was not familiar with the word, but after watching I soon learned it meant “place to use up leftover material that all together wasn’t enough to make up an entire category with one...
by Phil Houseal | Jan 10, 2024 | All Articles, Food, History, Philosophy
Jan 10, 2024–I have come to the conclusion there is no more perfect universal human food than the egg. For some of you this might seem obvious. But it’s a case of forest and trees, as most of us grew up with eggs everywhere, so much so that we don’t see them. It...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 8, 2023 | All Articles, Events, Food, People of the Hill Country, Philosophy, Venue
Nov 8, 2023–For the semi-pro party planners that lurk among us, the holidays are their Olympics, Super Bowl, and Academy Awards, wrapped in a bow with a Christmas carol soundtrack. No group is more motivated to create a memorable event from scraps of paper and...
by Phil Houseal | Jul 5, 2023 | All Articles, Education, Food, People of the Hill Country, Philosophy
July 5, 2023–Soap in a sock, batteries in the dishwasher, and banana peels on burns. These are a few of your favorite hacks, according to responses to my online request. I always regret crowd-sourcing my column, but sometimes it’s fun to let people try at home what I...
