Yesterday was the second year in my entire life celebrating Thanksgiving without my family. We’re not the huge, gather-everyone-together, cram-the-tables-in-one-room type of Thanksgiving revelers. I can remember two or three times when we joined with aunts and uncles and grandparents, but most years, it was just the six of us: my parents and my three sisters. As we got older and started branching out to college—and serious significant others—we still kept it to just us. Boyfriend of seven years? No, sorry, not invited to Thanksgiving. Fiance? Nope, not official yet, not invited.
Read moreHOISIN-GLAZED CHICKPEAS
A good day is a two-swim day. A good day has a run, preferably in the most crisp fall-turning-into-winter air, your cheeks flushed and your muscles burning. If the run brings you to the edge of the water where you can watch the ferry gliding over to Shelter Island, the water churning furiously in its wake, so much the better.
These days, a good day is filled with ordinary things. Three cups of tea steeped a shade too long, the liquid turning a dark sepia color before you add just the right amount (read: an irresponsible amount) of honey and milk. The feeling of a baby’s warm body, heavy with sleep, against your chest—his breathing steady and rhythmic, his soft and chubby fingers gently resting on your neck.
Read moreFUNFETTI ROLLS
I can barely hear the music (Brandenburg Concerto No. 3) playing quietly on the kitchen speakers over the sound of the rain on the skylight overhead. Water is streaming in sheets from the eaves of the house next door, drenching the neatly planted beds of flame-colored butterfly milkweed and heart-shaped caladium.
Intermittent periods of hail drum in a steady percussion on the patio table outside. (Sidebar: Did you know that hail only forms during thunderstorms? The storms’ strong updrafts carry raindrops quickly into ultra-cold areas of the atmosphere, where they quickly freeze, becoming heavy enough to begin to fall. As they fall, they merge with regular raindrops, which freeze upon contact, making the hailstones bigger and bigger.)
Read moreCREAMY PASTA WITH GREENS
Shocking as it may be, I don’t think I’ve ordered delivery pizza in my life—ever. I grew up far enough from any town (or grocery store or coffee shop or anything) that I doubt you could have gotten delivery even if you’d wanted to, although that’s an untested theory. In college, you only ate pizza late at night at at the campus center if you needed to soak up a substantial amount of beer and/or shots of tepid Southern Comfort and/or vodka mixed with cranberry juice, poured into sticky red Solo cups in the common room shared by four sophomore boys, the floor strewn in typical college-boy-fashion with all manner of lacrosse sticks and open bags of Doritos and a Martha’s Vineyard Black Dog sweatshirt and a stack of psychology textbooks and a scientific calculator and a pair of soccer cleats.
Read moreWHITE SANDWICH BREAD
I realize it may not be wildly cool to admit this, but I really love white sandwich bread. There is a time and a place for seedy multigrain loaves or soft slices of honeyed whole wheat, but sometimes nothing but classic white bread will do. Take, for example, a BLT. It’s not the same when you start messing about with each component—don’t try and swap pork belly for the bacon or add swanky condiments or use some kind of spelt sourdough. I don’t want it! Some things are sacred.
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