When you’re a mom, a plan is rarely THE plan. One of my friends on Facebook posted this as her status update yesterday, and the phrase immediately stuck a chord with me.

Yesterday morning, my husband, kids, and I left the house at 7:15, about 25 minutes later than originally planned, ready for our day trip to Disney World. We have annual passes which expire in early March, so we wanted to get at least another trip or two in before then. My 4-year old son was intent on adding to his stuffed animal collection, and I think his entire reason for wanting to go was to look for another stuffed Eeyore. My 7-year old daughter’s wish was to ride Space Mountain with me. She likes to watch me scream in fear; it makes her laugh.

We had been on the road about 45 minutes when I looked down at my phone and saw that I’d missed a call from my mom. I listened to her message.

“I need you to call me back as soon as you can.”

An hour later, I was sitting in the emergency room at the hospital where I work, holding my dad’s hand. He couldn’t walk without nausea and vomiting. His jaw hurt so badly he needed morphine. The left-side of his face wouldn’t work. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said when I arrived. “It hurts.”

Today, multiple blood tests, an MRI, and a CT angiogram later, we know he has a small brain tumor that has caused this whole mess. We knew he had this little tumor, but it was benign-appearing, so surgery wasn’t done a year ago when it was found. It has now tripled in size, most likely because it bled on the inside.

Tomorrow a neurosurgeon will operate on my father’s brain to remove the tumor.

My dad is doing better today. He’s still a little dizzy at times, but he’s able to walk on his own. He still can’t move the left side of his face. He’s flirting with the nurses and the therapists. He tells me he’s not scared of the surgery. He knows that he doesn’t have a choice. He’s just worried for all of us, for his family.

In the "friendship line", Grandaddy is the one on the left (G). Nana (N) is on the far right.

I had planned to cook all day today. I had been looking forward to baking something, something I could share with you here. Instead, I spent the day at the hospital with my father, holding his hand, giving him hugs, refilling his cup of ice water when it ran out. My children visited him, and he gave them graham crackers and cookies that he sweet-talked the speech therapist into fetching for him.

When you’re a mom, a plan is rarely THE plan. This rings true whether you’re a mom, a daughter, a wife, a sibling, a loved one.

Tomorrow a neurosurgeon will operate on my dad’s brain.

I will be there waiting for him to get out so I can hold his hand again, and so he can hold mine.

My husband and I have a continual debate over how to pronounce pecan. He says it pee-can, and I pronounce it pe-kawn. I, of course, am correct.

However you say it [and you totally should say it my way], pecans are fabulous nuts. I grew up gathering and shelling pecans that fell from the pecan tree at my parents’ house, right in the backyard. Talk about convenience foods. In the fall, all I had to do was walk outside and look on the ground, and I had an instant snack. These days, that poor tree is not producing nuts like it used to. Of course, it’s 20-something (okay, maybe 30-something) years older, and it has never really been tended to properly.

My mom – prompted, I’m sure by a conversation about gathering pecans from that tree – gave me a huge bag of shelled pecans for Christmas. It took a lot of willpower and self-restraint, but I finally made myself stop snacking on the raw pecans. I wanted to come up with some great recipes for the nuts, but the truth is that I just like them plain.

To get just one step away from plain, I made roasted spiced pecans. Roasting changes the flavor quite a bit – it makes it deeper, and perhaps a little less sweet and more savory. Tossed with melted butter, sugar, and spices, the pecans are a mouthful of salty sweet heat. Oh, and completely addicting.

This recipe is going at the top of my list for potential gifts next time the holidays roll around.

I’d love to know if you have a favorite pecan recipe to share. If so, please tell me about it in the comments. And if you’d like to side with me on the pee-can versus pe-kawn debate, feel free.

Yield: About 2 1/2 cups.

Roasted Spiced Pecans

Adapted from Bon Appétit, December 1990. I decreased the amount of cumin and added cinnamon to the spice mix. These are great stored in an air-tight Mason or Ball jar for up to 5 days. Toss them into salads or eat them by the handful - my favorite way, of course.

Ingredients:

10 ounces pecan halves
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300°F. Place pecan halves in a medium bowl. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add cumin, cayenne, and cinnamon to butter and stir until aromatic, about 15 seconds. Pour over pecans. Add sugar and salt and stir well to coat. Transfer to baking sheet. Bake until nuts are toasted, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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I went north this weekend, and I found the South. If you know Florida – and I’m pretty sure some of you are familiar with it – you probably also know that Florida is unusual. It doesn’t really fit into the South the way Georgia and Alabama do. Blame Miami or Orlando, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s a unique state, and I sort of like that.

I consider myself a southerner. I resisted it for a while, but the charms of southern culture have grown on me. Over the weekend, a group of food writers, stylists, photographers, and bloggers convened in Birmingham, Alabama, to embrace and celebrate all that is the South. foodblogSouth was the brainchild of Shaun Chavis and Jason Horn, with the dual purpose of bringing together food bloggers and raising money for the Desert Island Supply Company and the Alabama Gulf Coast Environmental Recovery Fund.

The conference was packed with sessions aimed at different levels of food bloggers, from novices to those of us that have been doing it a little while. The session with Virginia Willis and Alison Lewis on developing, writing, and testing recipes was a great reminder of technique, and it didn’t hurt that Virginia and Alison are so engaging. Jennifer Davick and Marian Cooper Cairns, both from Southern Living magazine, led the food styling and photography workshop, walking us through the process of styling and shooting a meal. Kim Severson, author of Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life, was the keynote speaker, and – whether she meant to be or not – she was hysterical. She was down-to-earth and genuine, and it came across in everything she said.

A food blog conference wouldn’t be a FOOD blog conference without food. Saturday morning started off with a great cup of coffee from FinerGrind Coffee Roasters. Lunch was a grits bar, and of course I had to have the shrimp and grits. Have I mentioned lately that I adore grits? An afternoon pie break was sponsored by PieLab, a wonderful Greensboro, Alabama, restaurant and community space. While the sweet potato pie with cinnamon meringue was pretty darn good, I couldn’t stop eating the apple pie with cheddar crust. Oh, holy yum.

At IFBC in Seattle, a theme that I took away from that conference was that blogging should be about doing what you love to do. After spending Saturday in a variety of sessions at foodblogSouth, I started thinking about why I blog. Why exactly AM I spending so many hours creating this? It’s a lot of work, and I have to do it when I get home from my real job or on the weekends or after the kids go to bed at night. In its simplest form, writing a food blog involves researching recipes, cooking a dish, photographing the dish, editing photos, writing and editing each post, and finally pressing that “publish” button. Time consuming is probably an understatement.

So, why do I do it? Do I want to be famous? Do I want a cookbook deal? Is THAT why?

The answer is not simple, but I’m pretty sure the answer is NO, I don’t do it for those reasons.

I do it because I love to write. I love to create. I love putting my voice out there for someone other than me to read. I do it because it makes me a better cook. The process of seeing food through a camera lens and then on a computer screen gives me an entirely new perspective on the food that I put in my mouth and into the mouths of my loved ones. I do it because I need a creative outlet. I do it because my job is often stressful, and I need to make something beautiful after a long day in the hospital. I do it because I love the community. Through this blog, I’ve met the most incredibly talented people. The time I spent with Chris, Tami, Taylor, Helene, Paula, and Kelly was the best part of this weekend’s conference.

So, no. I don’t do it because I want to see my name in lights.

I do it because I must.

(Note: If you want more information on each photo, click through each one to my Flickr stream.)