The other week I took a run for the first time in…well, I’d really rather not say if that’s alright. It was blustery and cold and rain sluiced down my face, plastering strands of hair against my forehead. I blinked the water out of my eyes as I ran, and as I got to the last few blocks, I picked up speed and sprinted the final minute, ending up at the pier. I pulled off my running shoes and stripped down to my sports bra and undies (yup!), shivering as I did so—the wind was picking up speed and whipping droplets so hard that I looked up to see if they had maybe turned into hail. I raced down the dock and leapt into the water. In my opinion, this is the only way to approach a swim you expect to be quite cold: just dive in without letting yourself think about it too much.
Read moreCOCONUT LIME SABLES
Where would you live, if money and jobs and real life logistics were no object? Would you pick a flat in London or a pied-à-terre in the Loire Valley, surrounded by vineyards and all the Sancerre you could possibly drink? Maybe you’d want to live in Austin—eating the world’s best breakfast tacos and listening to great live music on the weekends. Or you’d pick a cool apartment in a cool city like Los Angeles or Sydney or Hong Kong, or in a suburb with tidy green lawns just outside Chicago so you could vacation on weekends in picturesque Door County.
Read moreRYE BANANA BREAD
Today, I offer a list of good things for you. In no particular order and having nothing in particular in common, beyond the fact that I like them all.
Fresh mint (mint limeade kombucha / fresh berries tossed with chopped mint and lime zest
Mayonnaise (controversial opinion, but just try eating a BLT without it)
Walking barefoot on warm pavement
Words that sound like what they mean: elision, lithe, disheveled
Nice glassware (I have these Burgundy ones and these for sparkling and these for juice and espresso)
CHOCOLATE CASHEW BISCOTTI
What are your desert island foods? Let’s say you only get three—and let’s pretend, for the sake of this exercise, that we can abandon all ideals of nutrition and health (by which I mean, you don’t need to pick the three that would actually best keep you alive for the rest of your days).
My answer would have been different over the years, and each one serves as a barometer of various points of my life, the foods themselves being signals of a flood of memories and moments.
Read moreGRAPE-NUTS PUDDING
In the hottest days of summer, we’d make ice cream. We had an old wooden ice cream machine—the sort that looks like it belongs in a scene out of The Music Man or Meet Me in St. Louis, with a silver hand crank and a spindly metal handle and a red medallion on the front that spelled out the words White Mountain. It held four quarts of ice cream: first you’d make the custard base, then pour it into a narrow metal canister which fit inside the wooden bucket. You’d pack the space between the canister and the bucket walls with ice and rock salt, then fit the crank on top and get to work.
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