My best writing comes to me at night. It arrives within warning. Sometimes it steps politely, almost tentatively, out of the dusky edges of my mind as I’m falling asleep. My thoughts recess obediently, filing out of my head, and the writing pokes its head in, as if it’s the last straggling coworker in the office, as if to say: “Excuse me? Just a few things quickly before I head home.”
Read moreBANANA LAYER CAKE WITH CARDAMOM CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
How’s your weekend going? I saw a sign in a shop today—a quirkily illustrated poster with the words ‘have a marvelous day!’ scrawled across the top. It showed 12 hand-drawn squares, each depicting something to marvel at: the scent of roses in a flower shop, a hot cup of coffee, the sun on your face.
I liked the reminder of what the word can be—not just excellent or fantastic but related to stopping and marveling at something (especially little things). How nice to wander through the world with a healthy dose of wonder: willing and ready and looking to be surprised or delighted or both.
Read moreLAYERED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE CHEESECAKE BARS
I live just a few steps away from a very famous bakery. (No, it’s not my own kitchen, weird right?! Funny how word hasn’t caught on about my mad kitchen skills yet…) People come in droves to buy their cookies; I’ve counted lines of 70+ people on more than one occasion. They make a lot of excellent items—a perfectly domed blueberry muffin, squares of thin-crust squares of pizza shingled with rosemary-flecked potato slices, a dense banana bread packed with chocolate chunks—but most customers only have eyes for their cookies. Granted, the cookies are worth the wait.
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TRIPLE CHOCOLATE RYE BANANA BREAD
The other morning my yoga teacher said the following, as she encouraged us to lie quietly in between postures and not fidget: “The past has already happened. What will come next hasn’t happened yet. The only thing we really have concretely to experience is what is happening right now.”
Before you start thinking “wow, this girl has her chakras lined up, all refreshed and on the ball with her life and mentally centered”, let me assure you that just like every other human, my days are not one smooth stretch of blissful yoga classes where I stretch and smile beatifically, then head home—rosy-cheeked and glowing—to an immaculate apartment where I whip up dinners for my husband (not splattering oil all over the stove or accidentally spilling the g-d turmeric over the counter, no no), and so on.
Read moreEVERYTHING BAGEL BISCUITS
It is decidedly not warm outside. After a spate of truly frigid weather, we were thrown for a loop with one odd day this week where the temperature nearly reached 60 degrees. The warmth was accompanied by a downpour of rain all day, leaving the city feeling sodden and slightly sticky, everyone wandering about looking a bit disoriented by the whole affair, shaking their damp umbrellas on each other and tracking water all through the shops.
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