Recipe: Super Easy Beef Stew

Beef Stew

I make this beef stew pretty much by heart, and have been doing it mostly the same way for YEARS. But when I posted that I made it tonight, a few people asked for the recipe. So here it is, as best as I can actually recollect it. It’s so super easy and it’s THE [...]

Getting Answers

Amber Naslund - BIrds Suck

Two years. That’s about how long I’ve been living with this strange illness that leaves me breathless all the time and that has totally and completely screwed up my life and my health. No one could figure it out, until Mayo Clinic came along. Today, I finally got the answer I was looking for. I [...]

15-minute Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I threw this together on the fly tonight with a handful of things from the fridge. It’s a great use for leftover steamed broccoli, but frozen works just as well if that’s what you have on hand. My kid happens to love broccoli, so she was thrilled and it was the easiest dinner EVAR. 2 [...]

Amber’s Ultimate Bloody Mary Recipe

AmbersBloodyMary

I was a bartender for almost 9 years, all through college and for several years afterward. I worked a LOT of football Sundays, which meant that I served a LOT of Bloody Marys. I’m a Bloody Mary lover, so in that time, I had the chance to really perfect my take on the iconic Sunday [...]

Defective Mystery Clue #1…and Big Bird Would Be Sad.

I just got back from the Mayo Clinic on Friday of last week, and before I left, the very nice vampires…er, phlebotomists took sample number 4,329,972 (approximately) of blood from me to check a few very specific and rather obscure things that my Team of Pulmonary Magic asked of them. Just yesterday, I got a [...]

Defective? Maybe. But Determined.

If you’ve been around me much at all in the last couple of years, you may already know about my lingering and very stubborn breathing issue. It’s pretty lame, actually. Me, all huffing and puffing and not getting to blow down one. freaking. house. in the process. No pigs, either. I was actually rather reticent [...]

The Reality of Inaccurate Realities

Social media isn’t very healthy for people who suffer from depression. It’s a minefield of platitudes and rah-rah wrapped in generalizations and self-help wisdom, of superficial relationships that are given the illusion of intimacy by heightened and frequent communication that feels personal, accessible, and real. It’s rife with opportunism and insecurity, the scrabblings of people [...]

On Vulnerability

If you haven’t seen Brene Brown speak on this topic, I’ll put her most recent TED talk for you to watch now or later, depending on your preference. But here it is. And it’s amazing. Now then. I’ve realized lately that I have a few very special people in my life who see me not [...]

On Luggage, Heavy Stones, And Gentleness.

On Luggage, Heavy Stones, and Gentleness - Amber Naslund

We all carry baggage. Sometimes, matched sets of patinated, tattered leather, scarred from years of travel yet we drag them behind us. We drag them whether they wear us down, or teach us anything. It’s as though we believe that because we’ve earned those scars the hard way, we owe it to them to carry [...]

Confessions of A Sometimes Hermit

I know it’s trendy to be an introvert these days. Or, perhaps the internet is just full of more of us than not. It was made for us, after all, the shelter of screens and keyboards and typewritten eloquence. But I finally realized a few years ago that that’s exactly what I am. I mean, [...]