Some days I wake up and check the news (note to self: maybe just stop doing this), and it feels as if the entire world is being dismantled, piece by piece. This is most certainly not a bad thing entirely—there are so many customs, rules, institutions, and systems that don’t serve us well. It’s as if we’ve pressed pause on the world and started pulling everything apart, erasing some things altogether and re-building others and questioning every single thing in between. I have a niggling sense that no longer can you assume anything will carry on as it has been, both in a big picture sense and in our own little lives.
Read moreBUTTERNUT SQUASH TAHINI ICE CREAM
The humidity is intense lately. If you forget to close the open door, the warm, moist air seeps into the cool kitchen; pints of milk or cans of cold seltzer left out on the counter will be covered in delicate beads of liquid within minutes, as if they’re sweating from the heat. Everything outside feels damp—jumping in the water offers a brief moment of relief, but in the height of July, even the shallow end of a swimming pool feels tepid and limp, like the water has just given up even pretending to stay cold.
Read morePEACH BERRY COBBLER
Reading one of my favorite blogs, Cup of Jo, awhile ago brought me to an excellent article on The Awl. The prompt was "what have you learned?" and readers answered with everything from the hilarious ("plastic grocery bags stuck in trees are called witch’s britches") to the practical ("two ice cubes is the right amount to immediately bring a fresh cup of hot tea down to a more drinkable temperature") to the deeply wise ("I’m smarter and more powerful than I believe I am"). Another notable entry made me happy to discover that I am, in fact, not the only person in the world who didn't know how to spell/pronounce segue properly. And it all got me thinking about what I've learned.
Read moreFRESH STRAWBERRY PIE
The first social outing (weeks and weeks ago now) since quarantine felt like an inching return to normalcy—a tip-toe towards the ordinary, towards days filled with spontaneity and people and summertime routines. As I sat in the backyard of friends who live the next town over, their twin girls napping inside and their tiny dog yapping and carousing happily around my feet, I tipped my chair back and closed my eyes for just a moment, my head tilted towards the sun. I could smell the chlorine from the swimming pool behind me—the water a dazzling, fluorescent aquamarine—and a fruity, yeasty scent drifting up from two glasses of Nectar Blender IPA sitting on the table. (This is Greenport Harbor Brewery’s latest summer release: a hazy-looking beer with a blend of hops, citrus, tropical fruits, and milk sugar.)
Read moreTRIPLE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
I’ve never smoked cigarettes. Twice, in college, I thought it might be an interesting thing to try on, in the manner that one is constantly auditioning new habits around that age—mimicking the crowd around you and seeing what sticks—much like pulling on skinny jeans instead of bootcut or listening to a different kind of music or drinking espresso when you’ve only ever had milky, sweet coffee.
One poorly performed drag (a too-sharp inhale followed by an agonizing minute of doubled-over coughing on the tiny balcony outside my dorm room while my friend Peggy laughed so hard she almost fell over the railing) and my smoking career came to an abrupt end before it even began.
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