CARDAMOM BUCKWHEAT LOAF

April 1, 2019 Posie Brien

It’s a brighter day than yesterday—my mood is sunnier, but not light. Sometimes I’m struck by this particular sensation: Of being calm and content but having a gentle, insistent feeling of so many little anxieties hovering at the edges of your mind. They whisper quietly now and again, and aren’t loud enough that you can’t hush them, but they’re there.

Other days those shadows aren’t there; you’re unfettered in your happiness. Or you’re mired in a crisis—work stress or a fight with your sister or nerves over an impending trip—and that’s all you feel.

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

March 31, 2019 Posie Brien

Yesterday was one of those golden spring days. You know, one of the first really warm ones? Where you don’t have to wear a jacket, and it seems like everyone in the entire world is outside? The city feels like a spring-themed I Spy book—everywhere I turn I see things I’d missed all winter: frisbees whizzing through the air in Washington Square Park, a Mister Softee truck rounding the corner ahead of me on Chambers Street, guys jogging in shorts and t-shirts down the West Side Highway.

CHOCOLATE TEFF MUFFINS

March 27, 2019 Posie Brien

My first memory of envy is vivid; I can conjure up the feeling with a blazing ferocity. I’m in first grade, and it’s lunchtime (I know, I know! Capable of such intense emotions at such a tender young age, but what can I say, I peaked early).

Anyway, there I am, calmly unpacking my yellow canvas lunch bag. And what do we have? There is a little bag of baby carrots. A PB&J on homemade whole wheat sandwich bread. And of course, the pièce de résistance: a container of ripe whole strawberries with a teeny container of confectioners’ sugar for dipping. That was the height of decadence for our lunches: strawberries (with straight sugar, to be fair).

BEST CHOCOLATE BABKA

March 26, 2019 Posie Brien

I was reading a great interview with Maria Popova (the author of the Brain Pickings blog), within which she remarked:

“Those ideas, the best of them came to me at the gym or on my bike or in the shower. And I used to have these elaborate theories that maybe there was something about the movement of the body and the water that magically sparked a deeper consciousness. But I’ve really come to realize the kind of obvious thing which is that these are simply the most unburdened spaces in my life, the moments in which I have the greatest uninterrupted intimacy with my own mind, with my own experience. And there’s nothing magical, at least not in the mystical sense, about that. It’s just a kind of ordinary magic that’s available to each of us just by default if only we made that deliberate choice to make room for it and to invite it in.”

ROASTED SWEET POTATOES + CHICKPEAS

March 22, 2019 Posie Brien

I imagine many people consider California the dream. Are you one of them? Would living in perpetual sunshine feel like you were on an endless vacation? Perhaps it’s the proximity to the beach that you’d love or the idea of having a citrus tree in your background (okay, actually that sounds pretty nice to me as well).

Eating and adventuring.

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Eating and Adventuring