RASPBERRY ALMOND TEA COOKIES

July 18, 2018 Posie Harwood

You don’t need me to remind you that being stuck in an airport for over 6 hours is not a desirable way to spend a day, but I’m here to tell you anyway. I’ve been in Portland, Maine for the past two days; instead of flying out as planned, thunderstorms kept us from leaving. I waited patiently as they cancelled flights, one by one, to nearby destinations. The blinking notice board at my gate kept refreshing: 30 minutes late, one hour late, two, two and a half, back to one, back to two, and so on. At each update, I clutched my crumpled boarding pass, debating whether to cut my losses and at least make something of the day. The flight attendants swore our flight would leave, and promising signs kept happening (bags loading, an order for jet fuel placed, pilots entering the cockpit). Finally—nearly 7 hours after I got to the airport—we started boarding, only to see the sign at the gate suddenly flash with red CANCELLED letters halfway through zone 1 boarding.

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER MARSHMALLOW SANDWICH COOKIES

June 27, 2018 Posie Harwood

When we were little, we used to go to Nantucket to stay with my grandparents in the summer. I remember some details so vividly: the smell of the salt water, the tangle of low blueberry bushes edging the sandy driveway, the sticky feeling on my fingers after eating bags of penny candy from the fudge shop.

On bright Nantucket mornings, we'd pack up for a day of swimming. That, too, I remember in flashes: the beach was hot, the sand baked under the midday sun. My bare feet would burn as we'd walk to stake out a spot and settle down, beach chairs and towels and plastic buckets and all. Then my sisters (and cousins and parents and aunts and uncles and whatever family friends were there that week, too) and I would energetically and enthusiastically throw ourselves into the business of beach-going: swimming and building sand castles and boogie-boarding.

RASPBERRY CAKE, TAKE 1

June 21, 2018 Posie Harwood

Tonight is the sort of evening that reminds me why New York isn't always wretched in the summer. Most of the weeks between June and August are spent in a perpetual sweat, the air hot and sticky, the city smelling ripe and crowded. Every place that might be verdant and cool and breezy (Central Park, the Hudson River piers, ferries, the Frying Pan bar on a docked boat in Chelsea) is overrun with people, people, people! It's no wonder that everyone decamps to the beach the moment they can catch an LIRR train out. Come Friday afternoon, it feels like the entire population of the city is crammed into vinyl seats on the eastbound trains, drinking beers and checking their phones, until the crowd thins as everyone gets off at Southampton, East Hampton, Montauk...and so on.

WARM CHORIZO VEGETABLE BOWL

June 11, 2018 Posie Harwood

Today was a nicer-than-usual Monday. As someone who works from home, I don't quite get the Sunday night doom as office-goers do, but still a fog of oh-this-again usually hangs over the start of the work week. But today was good: a cloudy, drizzly morning gave way to a sparkling gem of an afternoon. Warm and sunny and worthy of an outdoor lunch on the terrace with a good book.

SCALLOP BUCATINI

June 6, 2018 Posie Harwood

Some nights, the subtle alchemy of cooking blows me away. It never ceases to amaze me that a handful of ingredients—humble and cheap—can be transformed and spun into endless, interesting, delicious variations. Cooking will probably always do that for me; it gives me a "this came from this?!" feeling at the end, even though I was right there performing each step.

Eating and Adventuring