FUNFETTI ROLLS

November 23, 2020 Posie Brien

I can barely hear the music (Brandenburg Concerto No. 3) playing quietly on the kitchen speakers over the sound of the rain on the skylight overhead. Water is streaming in sheets from the eaves of the house next door, drenching the neatly planted beds of flame-colored butterfly milkweed and heart-shaped caladium.

Intermittent periods of hail drum in a steady percussion on the patio table outside. (Sidebar: Did you know that hail only forms during thunderstorms? The storms’ strong updrafts carry raindrops quickly into ultra-cold areas of the atmosphere, where they quickly freeze, becoming heavy enough to begin to fall. As they fall, they merge with regular raindrops, which freeze upon contact, making the hailstones bigger and bigger.)

POWDERED SUGAR DOUGHNUT CAKE

November 18, 2020 Posie Brien

The past four days in review: Two emergency plumber visits (and counting). Fifty kilometers of an ultramarathon run by one of us on Saturday morning, necessitating a tiny bit of hobbling about for a day or two, although shockingly little in the way of fanfare or recovery . (Do I need to clarify that it was not me, or is that painfully obvious? If you are not familiar with the term, “ultramarathon” doesn’t mean “a really awesome marathon”—although it should—but rather any running race longer than 26.2 miles. Some people even run ones as long as 100 miles, and yes, people are nuts. By way of further clarification, if it had been me who’d run 50K, you would know because I’d be broadcasting my accomplishment widely and casually dropping into every possible conversation. “Oh, you need me to copyedit something on page 250 by Tuesday? Sorry, I was distracted by the number 50 which totally reminds me of all of the kilometers I ran this weekend. In my ultramarathon. The one I did. With my own two legs.”)

CONDENSED MILK CHOCOLATE FUDGE COOKIES

November 10, 2020 Posie Brien

The undeniable fact of our existence is such that even on joyful, soul-uplifting weeks (YASSS 2020 way to step up a little!), we still have to deal with the messy, daily business of being alive. Perhaps nothing is going awry and your to-do list is clear and you can sail through these next few days feeling buoyant and allowing your energy to float brightly in the air, untethered from your body and the sticky ins-and-outs of being a human who is alive and breathing.

BROWN BUTTER SOURDOUGH CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

November 8, 2020 Posie Brien

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For the first time in so long, I feel a lightness and a brightness. I think it’s the physical manifestation of hope—there’s an almost electric undercurrent in the air, as if everyone was standing in a silent room and suddenly there’s faint (really good, very catchy) music playing.

If I narrow in to the smallest possible sphere of my life for the past 6 months—to just this house and this street and the daily experience of sleeping and waking and cooking and existing and so on—I’d actually say that life has felt joyful and good. If I stay in the exact present moment (which a small baby pretty much demands most of the time), then I’m generally anchored by pleasant sensations, as if the day is quilt stitched together out of discreet bits of thread—a cup of tea, one length of thread; a walk down over to the little harbor, one length of thread; a chapter of “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar, one length of thread; a run down Moores Lane then over past the Island’s End golf course; another length of thread.

EXTRA-SPICY PUMPKIN BREAD

November 7, 2020 Posie Brien

If you missed it, you should spend a few minutes reading this beautiful piece by Christopher Solomon (contributing editor at Outside magazine) that ran in the New York Times last month. It’s a meditation on the nagging worry of the impending winter and what it will bring this year.

He writes with a lilting, melodic style that brings you right into his moment, even if you’ve never been there yourself. Sentences like: “October’s yellow afternoons smell of winter at the edges. The soft ovation of the cottonwoods sends another round of leaves adrift on the water.” or “We put our hands on the still-warm granite of the climbing pitch rather than cook down the applesauce. We take ridgeline hikes among larch the color of struck matches when we should be at the work desk. We run for hours through the mountains without thought of tomorrow’s soreness, or the firewood left uncut. We tear at the days immoderately, like animals, and we wolf them down, hoping to fill a hole we see yawning ahead.”

Eating and adventuring.

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