Cara Speckhals's Page

I was rummaging around the Huffington Post today (rummaging because it can often be the on-line equal of dumpster diving for news) and I saw a post about Rush Limbaugh congratulating himself for having predicted Ted Kennedy's death. The irony is striking because it does not take an inert talk show host with a rabid audience to figure out that Glioblastomas' are deadly. Obviously, my reaction was some what emotional because of own attachment to Mr. Kennedy's well-being. After my mother was diagno… Continue

Come monday morning, it's back to LA for me. I'll be packing my car, 13 year-old-dog included, and heading home. my mother has been sick for over four months now and i haven't written about the experience on an open forum - in large part because it's such an emotional time that i'm never sure from one day to the next if my words will hold any weight for me. it's difficult to articulate what it's like to face the mortality of my parent at such a young age. neither of us ever imagined going throug… Continue

so many thoughts are jogging through my head that i can't quite find a starting point from which to jump.

in an effort to tidy up my life a bit, i decided that now would be a good time to go through and dump some of the thousands of emails that i have in my yahoo box. once they made the storage of past emails and infinite equation, i began holding onto any and all communications from people i care about. the line extends all the way back to 2002 when i started using my current handle. there are… Continue

yesterday during bread class i was able to work with my usual partner, andrea. chef charles had seen to our separation in the week previous because he felt that my skills were over shadowing hers, which might have been true, but we work well together and the other young woman with whom i had been pared was too far behind to be anything but a babysitting gig for me. we worked on our loaves, talked about our lives and tried to have a laugh or two as the heat in the kitchen rose and the bread baked… Continue

Yesterday I found myself volunteering to cook some T-bone steaks for my friends at a BBQ. The urge had been with me for several days and I knew that it would please Ben very much for me to do so, though he exerted no pressure. After weeks of watching "Top Chef" I wondered if it was was an easy as they made it look to braise a steak. Really? You just sear it and bath it in juice while it cooks? That's IT? Per what I had seen, I rubbed olive oil on the meat, all the while telling this cow or cows… Continue