I’ve been homesick throughout my life plenty of times. The first that I can distinctly remember was at a sleepover in lower school, probably around first grade; at bedtime, I dissolved into tears and begged to have my parents pick me up. I wasn’t inherently afraid of being away; in fact, I’ve always relished the adventure of being someplace new, even when it meant setting out entirely on my own. But in all the near and far-flung places I went—summers building trails in New Hampshire or teaching environmental education on Block Island, two months of camp on the shores of Lake Morey in Vermont, a semester studying in South Africa, a string of weeks traipsing around Barcelona and northern Spain, field hockey camps and lacrosse camps and weekends away and even college itself—I’ve always missed home to varying degrees, regardless of how wildly good of a time I was having.
Read moreGRAPE-NUTS PUDDING
In the hottest days of summer, we’d make ice cream. We had an old wooden ice cream machine—the sort that looks like it belongs in a scene out of The Music Man or Meet Me in St. Louis, with a silver hand crank and a spindly metal handle and a red medallion on the front that spelled out the words White Mountain. It held four quarts of ice cream: first you’d make the custard base, then pour it into a narrow metal canister which fit inside the wooden bucket. You’d pack the space between the canister and the bucket walls with ice and rock salt, then fit the crank on top and get to work.
Read moreDOUBLE VANILLA ICEBOX CAKE
In the pantheon of packaged snack food, I consider Nilla wafers woefully under-represented. Or, under-appreciated, more specifically. If you walk down the snack food aisle (ha! remember leisurely doing grocery shopping without anxiety?), Nilla wafers are usually tucked down on a bottom shelf, placed suspiciously close to the organic granola and rolled oats section. They are overlooked in favor of splashier boxes and bags: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos! Cool Ranch Doritos! Pringles! Oreos! Parmesan Goldfish (don’t make that face at me, this is the best flavor and it’s not up for discussion)!
Read moreBASIL MAYO + A SUMMER SANDWICH
You, reading this. I don’t know who you are, or where you are. I don’t know if you’re just starting your day, padding in socked feet into the kitchen to boil water for the French press, pulling out eggs and cream as you toast an English muffin. I don’t know if you’re still half-asleep, rolling over in a tangle of white cotton sheets to fumble for your phone on the bedside table and read a few blogs to wake up, assiduously avoiding the news for now.
Read moreBASIC MUFFINS
I was planning to write about icebox cakes today, but as I sat down outside with my tea to start writing, I couldn’t summon the words. The temperature dropped overnight and there’s a gentle but firm breeze; the sky is overcast and the humidity has abated for now—it feels strangely like fall, or rather, like that brief string of days that teeter between summer and fall, when it’s warm enough for shorts but there’s a definite crispness to the air, as if the promise of sharpened pencils and new notebooks and apple cider and woodsmoke and flannel shirts and Halloween candy is hiding just around the bend.
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