At my first job out of college, a guy on my team used to eat the exact same lunch every single day. (Okay technically it was my second job—but the real first lasted a whopping 5 days that flew by in a whirl of tailored pencil skirts with stilettos, mergers & acquisitions trainings, mind-numbing Excel spreadsheet manipulation, Seamless-ordered dinners with beers enjoyed in an airless cubicle, and deeply existential misery as to my life’s path: a story for another time!)
Read moreDOUBLE GINGER MOLASSES COOKIES
One bit of constancy to the world (especially these days, with less to reliably ground us) is that things can change in an instant. One minute you’re having a rather nice day, reading a new novel on the dock after a quick and refreshing swim or walking on your favorite trail in the woods, the ground dappled with late afternoon sunlight, and the next minute you hear the ping of an incoming text message.
Looking back, you watch yourself reach for the phone, still feeling relaxed and loose, not realizing that scary news sits there like a spring, tightly wound inside a string of words, ready to unfurl rapidly and blaze hotly like a comet across your day.
Read moreSAVORY BLACK SESAME + CHEESE BABKA
There’s a particular, specific delight in finding pleasure in unexpected places. When I was 13, I spent a month in Europe with my grandparents and my little sister, who was 11 and wretchedly homesick at the time. The evenings were the hardest for her, as they tend to be (isn’t it always when dusk falls when we feel the most woebegone when we’re sick or sad or down?).
Read moreHERBED PULL-APART BREAD
Okay, it is Friday, so we might as well take a moment to be moved by something, don’t you think? Here, then. Read this poem by Barbara Ras. It’s long but…soldier on, I believe in you.
Read moreMISO BUTTER BISCUITS
This week has been pretty excellent in the “spontaneous cooking” realm. I’ve gotten into a good groove these past months of balancing planning and impulse—I plan ahead just enough to have rough outlines of what to cook and eat, and then I fill in the rest in the moment.
For example, I’ve been making lots of big lunch salads with cooked black lentils, but every day it’s a little different. Maybe I’ll have cold lentils over arugula with minty yogurt and warm sautéed zucchini, or I’ll have warm lentils stirred into carrot ginger soup. Yesterday I piled lots of greens into a bowl, then warmed cooked lentils in a skillet with cubes of roasted sweet potato, some olive oil, and a dollop of miso paste. I spooned that over the greens, then in the still-hot pan, I poured more olive oil and added a few handfuls of breadcrumbs, toasting them for a minute while shaking the pan. I poured that over the salad and voila. Lunch.
Read more