A few things I love lately are surprising, and others wholly unsurprising. I hope they brighten up your October in some unexpected way. I hope something here makes you smile, or feel a pang of the good kind of nostalgia, or gives you a little shiver of comfort. The sort of comfort that makes you sink into yourself: The same sensation you get when it's chilly outside and you wrap a sweater tightly around yourself, or when you're cold and you step into a warm storefront, or when you smell the aroma of garlic and olive oil cooking on the stove.
Read moreFRENCH APPLE CAKE
Fall is arriving, reaching in and out teasingly with its chill. A crispness has returned to the early mornings, but by the afternoons the saturated heat of summer returns, heavily soaking the low hours in the depth of the day in syrupy sunlight. The leaves are changing; I stepped onto my stoop last Thursday to a single fallen maple leaf, crimson around the edges with a vivid yellow center and a bright vermillion in between.
Read moreMIDDLE EASTERN LAMB + CAULIFLOWER
Cities are strange and occasionally wonderful places. The strangeness hits me differently, depending on the days. Sometimes the hodgepodge of it all is too much: I feel an acute sadness pressing in when I watch an old man clutch the subway pole as three loud teenage girls bump against him, shrieking and giggling, with no regard for their surroundings. The crowded streets give me a near-feverish anxiety one morning; the next, they infuse me with energy. Something new around every corner! People! Cars! Noise!
Read moreCornmeal Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies
What I'm loving: The warmth of just-tumbled clothes from the dryer. Today is unexpectedly chilly, with a gray drizzle that stops and starts, set against a similarly slate gray sky. I pull on my softest long-sleeved t-shirt, an old heather gray one that's worn around the cuffs and neck, emblazoned with the name of my college.
Read moreDARK CHOCOLATE PISTACHIO BUNS
Warm bread is one of the nicest small comforts. I like everything about baking bread, from the yeasty smell as you mix it all together to the soft suppleness of the dough after its first rise. I like the way the surface is taut and elastic, and how it yields to your fingertips as you press it into a rectangle, pulling and pushing and prodding.
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