travelingmcmahans

And now for something completely different

My vacations aren’t vacation. They’re Trips. They include museums, sightseeing, ancient monuments, foreign languages and little to no rest. I usually come back exhausted, not to mention jet-lagged. And since I’ve been freelance writing, they’ve not been true vacations. I’ve written in Morocco, Slovakia and France. I leave my day job behind but not my [...]

Eating Lexington

How much food could a food writer eat if a food writer had to eat at ten restaurants in 24 hours? I have a new sympathy for guidebook writers and for Top Chef judges. On the summer solstice weekend I was assigned by Kentucky Monthly magazine to eat my way through Lexington. In order to [...]

Hard, hard, hard

I don’t mean to sound overly melodramatic, but I feel like everything in my life will be either remembered as before I killed an animal or after. Anything before I stood outside yesterday, sweat flowing freely down my arms, hands shaking almost comically, if it weren’t so deadly serious, as I prepared to slash my [...]

So I can meet my dinner, but can I k i l l it?

Last year in Morocco, my friend Tracy and I took a cooking class.  Our shopping expedition to the souks for our ingredients for the day included picking up chicken. Not tidily wrapped chicken segments, but clucking, feathery, beady-eyed staring you in the eye chicken. I wrote a story about the day for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Discovering [...]

Meeting my dinner

Eating meat is a curious thing. I do it now, but have such conflicting feelings. I see so many compelling reasons not to, but can also understand the reasons that it can make sense. All I really know is that I want to do it mindfully. And part of that, for me, is not only [...]