They say good things come in three, and that’s certainly true for language. Consider some wonderful trios of words: I love you is the obvious one. But also it’s snowing outside, come December, or a package arrived or let’s get ice cream. Oh wait. That’s four words.
Read morePECAN PIE BROWNIES
I biked to the beach this morning, getting there early enough to be the only one in sight. The day was still brand new, existing in that tenuous and delicate state of creating itself anew, before it has declared what it will be: sunny and hot or warm and breezy or cloudy and persistently gray. This beach—my beach—is rocky and wide, stretching for miles in both directions before twisting and turning to hide itself behind the far-off sandy cliffs of Orient Point.
Read moreESPRESSO CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE
These past weeks of quarantine have triggered a real stripping down of life. A good analogy is my physical belongings: we left our apartment in New York City just as the virus started to really take hold. I didn’t know—or even stop to think—about when we’d be back. The question of “will we be back?” didn’t enter my mind at all, and it would have seemed laughable if it had. But here we are—two months later—with an ever-increasing likelihood that we won’t return.
Read moreEARL GREY TEA CAKE
My mother drinks tea every morning. She steeps a bag of English breakfast or PG Tips in a tall, narrow Mason jar of boiling water. One shelf of the walk-in pantry is lined with smaller Mason jars, each full of cloudy amber-colored honey collected from the bees on our farm. Into her tea goes a large spoonful of that honey, then a generous glug of half-and-half, which swirls elegantly into the dark liquid, unspooling in curls and ribbons and turning the tea the antique-y white of heirloom bone china.
Read morePEAR, PROSCIUTTO + ARUGULA SALAD
I’m sitting on the couch—or rather, reclining somewhere in between lying and sitting up at some mysteriously perfect angle that puts a newborn baby right to sleep—and the skies are gray and blustery outside. The aforementioned newborn is curled up resting against my chest; there’s a specific and particular comfort to the sweet, heavy weight of a baby pressing against your skin. I lean down every so often to brush my lips against the top of his head, where his skin is soft and scented with the clean cotton smell of the Johnson’s baby lotion I rub over him after a tub.
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