Capturing Fall: The Other Side

All you really need to know is that Tara sent me gorgeous Seattle leaves in the mail. 

Ok, I could tell you a little more. Like how once, in college, I boy I liked very much and who I had liked very much for a very long time brought me a whole bag of autumn leaves that he had collected. It sounds really romantic, right? Nothing else happened. 

Or,  how the day that I got the leaves was Sunday, not a weekday because we had been in LA for Thanksgiving with Sean's mom who is very, very sick. 

And on Sunday when we got home I was bustling around trying to make the house warm and cozy, and I must have gotten a bit too zealous because I slipped in the kitchen (new boots, wet floor) and fell and hit my head hard on the counter. And I didn't cry because it was one of those days that if I cried I would really cry (like, buckets and buckets of tears). And Sean thought this was very weird, so he left me there on the floor, in the kitchen, and just said, "Take it easy, ok?" as if he really didn't know what to do with me at all. 

So a bit later, while fingering the large tender lump on the side of my head, I decided to open my mail. There was a big stack of it: catalogues, bills, a few belated birthday gifts, and a small package from an address in Seattle I couldn't quite place. 

Tara had said she was going to send me leaves. And it sounded charming but I didn't quite believe it. I've only met her once, in a bookstore, in Seattle when I was promoting my book. It was a great conversation, but hardly the stuff that inspires such thoughtful gift giving. 

But here they were. Tara sent me gorgeous Seattle leaves in the mail, and they arrived on an afternoon when what I needed most was color and warmth and friendship. 

The leaves maintain their natural hues because they've been carefully dipped in wax, a process you can read more about here. And what's great about this is that means I can save them, packing them carefully  in the box they arrived in and squirreling them away till next autumn. 

It's just the kind of reassurance I need right now. 


***
P.S. And because this got a little (ok, a lot) deep and you might be feeling a bit mournful, I thought I'd pass along a recipe for pie! Pumpkin pie with pecan brown butter strusel! This was my favorite dessert on the Thanksgiving table and quite possibly my most favorite pumpkin pie ever. Make it. Feel better. The End. 

Colored Leaves

Yesterday, as we were driving home to San Francisco from Southern Oregon I must've driven Sean crazy with my ongoing lists of things I loved about autumn: Colored leaves. Red leaves. Yellow leaves. Pumpkins, orange pumpkins, albino pumpkins, fires, fireplaces, candles. The smell of smoke in the air, blankets, boots, scarves, mittens, hats, steaming cups of coffee, apple cider. Picnics, poetry, crisp air, cold nights, fog. Leaves, leaves. leaves. 

In heaven it is always autumn. In heaven it is always autumn. In heaven it is always autumn. 

{Thanks to John Donne for the refrain and to Oregon for the inspiration.} xx

Late Summer, In Photos

Just over a month ago as August was bearing down on me, I wrote a summer do list filled with things I wanted to accomplish before the air got thin, it began to get light earlier, and the crisp evening air demanded that the bedroom window be shut. So, how'd I do? 

I didn't eat an It's-It in the back yard on a sunny afternoon, go to the Coppola Pool, make another batch of jam, or bake with blackberries. But I did can two batches of pickles (a first!), freeze loads of Marcella Hazan tomato sauce, and make a killer Italian Plum Cake no less than three times. 

There still may be time for the things I didn't get to do. After all, summer in San Francisco often starts right about Labor Day. And if not, there's always next summer. 

Did you make a Summer Do list? If so, did you accomplish what was on it? Do you have an Autumn Do List? (Eeep!)

One last note. I've become recently obsessed with Instagram, and all of the above photos were shared there first. You can follow me at "poeticappetite" for photographic bits and pieces of our world. xx

Untitled

All I have for you tonight is a few photos. Photos from our vacation that I meant to post and write about immediately (and beautifully!) as part of an effort to be more committed to writing and to this blog. And then, I got busy. Except I wasn't busy, I was just avoiding.

For those who have been vacationing in a New York Times free zone, or who reached their limit on free articles like I did this month, you might not know that busyness, and the anxiety that is produced when we worry we aren't doing enough, has been a hot topic lately.

First, Tim Kreider wrote a piece called The 'Busy' Trap. Next, the chorus weighed in with odes to summertime, to hammock swinging, to long afternoons trapped by an all consuming book. {For the record, this wasn't supposed to be another voice in that clamoring chorus. I hope I'm at least successful in this.}

So the thing is, at first I really was too busy to write. Sean and I spent two blissful weeks in Pt. Reyes, where my daily schedule went something like this: Wake, make coffee, move to recliner chair. Work (a bit), think, write. Lunch. Write, think. Long hike. Shower, wine, read till the sun drops away. Dinner. Friday Night Lights. Repeat. Repeat.

Notice there's nothing in there about blogging or pinning or tweeting. And nary a facebook post came out of those 14 days.  It was amazing. I felt more me than I've felt in a long time and spent many hours thinking about how and why.

We drove back into the city on our first wedding anniversary, and I spent the entire next week (yes, week) trying to get over my post-vacation malaise while simultaneously trying to figure out how to incorporate my vacation spirit into my real life. My friend Megan was right, however. It doesn't really work.

Then, of course, after all that, after nearly three weeks of vacations and bottles of wine and mid-week holidays and work avoidance it really did get busy. And yet -- when I look at my calendar I actually have no idea what I did. I just felt busy. Not just busy, stressed. Disconnected. 

But why? I felt busy, and just as Kreider guessed, that busyness was a mask for anxiety. I'm sure it's because there's so much happening that can't be written about and posted next to a neat stack of chocolate brownies. These are serious things. Sean's mom went into the hospital, came out, and today went back in. Last week, during a family meeting, she asked me to blog about her death. It seems like that sentence should be attached to some sort of funny quip but it isn't. Not at all.

Normally, when I take some time away, I jump back in with lots of explanations and most of them involve the world 'travel' and 'busy' (and we all know that travel is busy, much of the time). But thanks to recent thoughts, that busy label seems much less authentic. Because, as I've just mentioned, it's so much more than that.

New York in Bloom

 As I look at the pink trees I start to bloom:

P.S. The other night I made a riff on this recipe from DIY Delicious. Our "real food" bowls were stuffed with quinoa, kale, avocado and pistachio and topped with leftover chicken and tahini dressing. It was the perfect chocolate egg recovery meal.
P.P.S. I borrowed the name of this post from one of my favorite blogs. You must take a peek at LA in Bloom

Eating Alone

Sean's been in Los Angeles with his mom for ten days and in that week-and-a-half, I've learned something: My views on eating alone have completely changed.

Is it because I'm lonely, you wonder? No -- even though I am, a little. It's because before, when I was single, eating alone was The Norm. I lived alone, I ate alone. I cooked only things I liked, planned for leftovers, and went out a few times a week simply to be sure I wouldn't shrivel. 

Then for awhile I lived with someone, only he traveled for work all the time. Most weekdays I was alone in our house perched near the top of one of San Francisco's big hills. I'd watch the fog roll in and feel the chill begin to seep through the cracks. I hardly ever went out during this time. I was finishing the book, and I was poor and tired. Most days, an intense yoga class and a bowl of soup sounded better than fighting for a solo spot at a restaurant in the Mission.

Now, I am married. I live in a different house, near the bottom of a different hill, but I can still watch the fog roll in. And when that starts to happen, I know it's time to get up from my desk and make dinner.

I cook five nights a week, at least. Always something different, only a little repetition, and the meals are hearty. All of a sudden I cook like my mother: Meat, a side salad, maybe some bread. Ideally there's something else in there too -- A rice, quinoa, or lentil salad, roasted potatoes or brussels sprouts. Sometimes Sean eyes the dinner plate and then -- before he ever even sits down -- pulls a cheese or two from the fridge so they can soften while we eat. This means he's really hungry (a long run) or that my "substantial" meal of beans and greens isn't quite substantial enough.

Now that he's gone more, I've completely stopped cooking. I stretch my leftovers beyond what most people would consider reasonable, and eat lots of my usual lunches for dinner. This often means slabs of Acme bread with hummus, avocado, and cheese, or scrambled eggs and steamed greens dribbled with olive oil. One night I ate cheez-its and a side salad. This was the night that got me thinking.

I knew lots of girls that ate like this all the time when they were single: Bags of Trader Joe's edamame tossed with salt. Bowls of granola. Cheese and crackers. Waffles. But I was never that girl. I always cooked meals. I always took care of myself. What happened?

I think (hope) that this has less to do with slovenly behavior or a total abandonment of my self than it does with an acknowledgement of my own needs -- as separate from Sean's needs and different from our needs as a couple.

Now when I'm home alone taking care of myself means something different than it did before. Some nights I'd rather take a bath than cook dinner. Others, I'd rather crawl into bed and write or think about bohemian poets. And then there are the nights that all I really want to do is watch TV and bake coconut-cashew-cranberry granola and eat roasted brussels sprouts for dinner. Again.

I'm curious to know what you think about all this. What do you eat when you're alone? If you live with someone -- a roommate or love -- is it different when they're gone?

I don't really have plans to make any big adjustments, mind you. In fact I think that's my point: Sometimes the best way to take care of yourself is to just do the things that make you feel like you.

Isn't It Enough?

Simply Lit

 

Often toward evening,

after another day, after
another year of days,
in the half dark on the way home
I stop at the food store
and waiting in line I begin
to wonder about people—I wonder
if they also wonder about how
strange it is that we
are here on the earth.
And how in order to live
we all must sleep.
And how we have beds for this
(unless we are without)
and entire rooms where we go
at the end of the day to collapse.
And I think how even the most
lively people are desolate
when they are alone
because they too must sleep
and sooner or later die.
We are always looking to acquire
more food for more great meals.
We have to have great meals.
Isn't it enough to be a person buying
a carton of milk? A simple
package of butter and a loaf
of whole wheat bread?
Isn't it enough to stand here
while the sweet middle-aged cashier
rings up the purchases?
I look outside,
but I can't see much out there
because now it is dark except
for a single vermilion neon sign
floating above the gas station
like a miniature temple simply lit
against the night.

Poem by Malena Mörling

Postscript: I'm going away for a few days. If I don't get the chance to tell you, have a lovely and abundant Thanksgiving.

Inspiration

Where do you find yours?

This week I've found inspiration in the changing seasons, new neighborhoods, coffee fueled conversations with friends, afternoons spent drinking rose, long lunches in Marin, the sound of literature being read aloud, and these photos -- taken during an Open Studio visit a few weeks ago.

To me, they're a useful reminder that even though the creative process is important, breaking away from routine can lead to beautiful things.

Paper Love

 

This beauty is one of my favorite souvenirs of the big day. Designed by Andrea LaRue with help from Studio Olivine and Betsy Dunlap, these lovely letterpressed invitations were truly a work of art. 

I never thought I'd be the kind of girl who had a framed copy of her wedding invitation, but I do love the way it looks perched on my bedside table. Thoughts?

Garden of Love

Aren't these the most perfect love stamps ever? Designed by Jose Ortega, and just been released by the Postal Service, these stamps add a festive and amorous touch to every letter sent. They even brighten up the bills!


All thirty-five of my wedding invitations were sent with the King and Queen of Hearts love stamps, which are pretty oh-so-pretty too:

Kind of makes you want to send a letter, doesn't it?

2011: Thousands of Futures

 

There's a lot of buzz right now about the new year: resolutions, house cleaning, and getting fit. For me, it's cacophony. I've been scrambling to get on top (and stay on top) of my world since 2009. It hasn't happened yet. There have been massive to-do lists, endless sorting piles, cleaning frenzies, resolutions and promises. And I still end each day with an overflow pile that leaves me wishing I needed much less sleep. 

And then, I woke up and things felt different. Today the sun is shining, the coffee in the tin is ground. I showered before 9 a.m., which for a work from home writer, is a feat. The piles and boxes in every room of our new house seem to be diminishing. With each trip to the recycling bin comes a small sense of order that is endlessly satisfying. 

Perhaps it's the 90 minute yoga class I attended last night, but I am feeling good. This doesn't mean that I won't spiral back down quickly -- just last Saturday --January 1!-- I was despondent over the book. Would it sell? How to pay the rent?

But today, the world seems bright. And it reminds me of something I posted on January 3, 2010, a passage I love that will continue to carry me (and you?) into another new year:

"Sometimes the days burst open like seedpods and we see thousands of futures, and it's so much that our throats swell and we can't do anything but turn away and forget that gleaming, all that possibility. Who could live into such brightness? Sometimes the days beat their wings slowly so we can take their measure, so we know how lucky we are that we are being given just one moment more."
From The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After, by Melanie Gideon

 

I was in a very different spot last year: broken heart, life full of disorder.  Now things are different. I fell in love again, and finished writing my book. But I still adore Melanie's words, and thought about them a lot as 2010 was spinning into 2011.  

 

This wasn't supposed to be a mushy, reflective musing. It was supposed to be a bit about the kick-ass coconut cilantro rice I've cooked two times in 2011. But I guess that's the point  -- isn't it? Sometimes plans go awry, and when they do, it's best to pick yourself up and keep going. We've got a thousand different futures, after all, each of them gleaming and full of good fortune.

Happy New Year. 

 

P.S. If you want to take some concrete steps to a better 2011, check here. If you want to be more mindful and look a little more carefully at your environment, check here. And if you want to simply focus on the good, try this. xo

Last Minute Gift: Remedy Quarterly

My favorite gift that I am giving this year also happens to be the one I wish I was GETTING: A subscription to the independent food magazine Remedy Quarterly.

Let this be a lesson to me: usually if I purchase a great gift for someone else, I get one for me. Some people call this selfish. But it's how I have acquired half of my coolest things.

This is the Holiday Volume I Gift Subscription to RQ. You get the first three volumes of the magazine, plus the fourth volume, which is coming soon in 2011, and includes one of my essays.

Kelly, of Eat Make Read, helped start Remedy Quarterly. She sent the gift to me all tied up with bakers twine and with an adorable gift tag. I love love love it, but really don't want to give it away.

I'm planning on stealing this from Mom on Christmas afternoon and reading through every issue, piece by lovely piece. Is that selfish?

Late Summer Peach Jam

It is nearly the middle of September, but it seems that summer has finally decided to come to San Francisco. After months (months!) of grey and gloom, the sun is out. Today for lunch, I ate very thin crust pizza, watermelon salad, and arugula with white beans and fresh corn tossed in a cumin vinaigrette. There was a crisp white wine to drink. There were tank tops and summer skirts and sunglasses involved. It's about time.

Somehow, it seems just like San Francisco to pull this fashionably-late-to-the summer-season move. I would be annoyed, but it feels so good to finally have the sun on my arms, my toes in the Yerba Buena fountain, and Blue Bottle iced coffee to thirst for, that I really don't care.

The weather also explains the peaches. While everyone else is thinking about sweaters, and boots, and crisp apples, I've got peaches on the brain. I was given seven pounds of over-ripe, organic, saffron colored beauties the other night by a farmer with a bumper crop. "Take 'em," he told me. "And use 'em tonight."

So I went home, and amazingly had just enough jars, and sugar, and lemons around to make jam, which was what I wanted far more than a crisp or a pie. I set to work, cutting around brown spots and rotting cores.

The work reminded me of how sometimes, life is about taking time to enjoy the pleasures of living, and sometimes, it's about getting things done. I'm in the midst of my final book edits right now, which means everything that is not writing (eating, cooking, exercise, fun) is done as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

I was shocked at how quickly the jam came together, and even more amazed at how pretty it looked sitting in the kitchen the next morning. It's exactly what I hope will happen with the book. Rewriting is mind bogglingly hard and complicated at times, but I have this odd feeling that if I just work, sentence by sentence, it will all be beautiful at the end.

In the meantime, I've got peach jam for my toast, (did you know I eat toast every single day, sometimes more than once?) and am far less vitamin d deprived than I was a few weeks ago. I'm too tired to think about what to fix for dinner most nights, but I still have the sense that it is going to be ok.


*There's no recipe here. If you find yourself with a bushel of peaches, you'll figure it out. I did.

The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Around

Truth be told, I am finding that I am not very good at this locating recipes, gathering ingredients, making and then taking photos before eating, thing. I like to eat too much to stop to take a photo just when things are getting good. But it's also, perhaps, that my style of cooking has changed in the past year.

Last July I don't think I was cooking much at all, and if I was, I was cooking to impress. It didn't work; I had lots of pretty photos of food, but I was almost always hungry. Now I am full, so full.

Dinnertime comes and I dash around the kitchen and somehow, I make something out of nothing. Last week it was pan roasted chicken thighs from the freezer with a sauce made from dried mushrooms soaked in warm water and wine. I added the mushrooms to the frying pan along with chopped shallots, butter, olive oil, and at the very end, a handful of peas.

It was pretty and tasty, but there was no recipe. I made it up, and it was good. We ate it with a big salad, and large chunks of bread to soak up the soupy bits and we drank a white wine from the Jura region of France called Arbois. I think the meal ended with a bite or two of cheese. It was perfect. It was a Wednesday night.

I have always dreamed of cooking like this. My mother used to tell me: "cook enough and you'll just know what to do." But I never did, and for years I was easily intimidated by the idea of standing in the kitchen with and serving dinner to someone who had worked in a professional kitchen. Someone who knew (or it seemed like he knew) everything at all.

Now my days are much more free form. I'm laughing more, writing better, and most days I don't care that 90% of my belongings have been in storage for almost an entire year. Turns out I don't need them.

Except for those cookbooks. Because today I wanted to make my Dad cookies for his birthday. But my cookbooks are still packed. So I googled "best chocolate chip oatmeal cookie" and I randomly found a recipe which looked ok, and I decided to make them.

And guess what? They were really good. The best part was that they were super soft, even with a little bit of wheat flour tossed into the mix. Their softness made them seem pretty damn near perfect to me -- I am not so fond of the overly crisped oatmeal cookie.

Along the way I took some photos. Not fancy photos where I clean the countertops and adjust the light and wish I had better dishes. Just photos of me and the mixing bowl making birthday cookies for Dad.

I'm beginning to think that if I kept cooking the way I have been for the past few months I'd be very content. It turns out cooking (and living) without a recipe is easier, and much more fun, than I ever imagined it could be.

The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Around:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 tbsp half and half

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup wheat flour and 1 cup white flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups oats (rolled or quick, not instant)

2 cups chocolate chips (about 12-oz.)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugars until mixture is light in color. Beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the half and half and the vanilla extract.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Either by hand or with the mixer on low speed, gradually beat the flour in to the sugar mixture until just incorporated.
Stir in the oats and chocolate chips by hand.
Drop 1-inch balls of dough onto the cookie sheet, placing about 1 1/2 inches apart so they have room to spread.
Bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown at the edges and light golden at the center.
Cool on baking sheet for at least 1-2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 4 dozen. 

What Finishing a Book Looks Like

Stacks. Piles. Stacks and piles. Coffee mugs, crumby plates, discarded napkins. Yoga pants, comfy shirts, glasses and stretchy head bands all day long. It's a glamorous life, no?

And now it is almost over, at least this part. The manuscript will be sent off to its new home by the end of the week, and I'll have the entire long weekend to... Relax? Cook? Balance my checkbook? It will be a strange, strange thing.

Last night I left my desk for a few minutes to see Kim Boyce of Good to the Grain fame speak at Omnivore Books. Admittedly, I went mostly to escape the house. But once there I fell head over heels for her philosophy: whole grains, when used properly in baking, can enhance seasonal fruits and vegetables and produce delicious flavor profiles. We're talking rustic rhubarb tarts, olive oil rosemary chocolate chunk cake, and muffins galore. I cannot wait to dig into this book.

Her talk made me feel like baking. I know, I should have gone directly to the store for some spelt or buckwheat flour. But I don't have time for such things this week. So instead, I ran home and pulled out the usual pantry baking staples: butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and chocolate.

I almost never make brownies. I love rich, chocolate desserts but brownies seem so ordinary. When I was a little girl my mom regularly made a small pan after dinner. She somehow managed to put nuts in half, and leave them out of the other half, so that adults and children were happy. We'd eat them warm, ideally with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Perhaps if we were lucky there would also be a drizzle of Hershey's chocolate syrup involved.

Making brownies is so simple: one bowl, one pan, thirty minutes in the oven and you've got something gooey and delicious. I used the recipe on the back of the chocolate tin (Ghiradelli's mix of cocoa and ground chocolate) and didn't think much about it.

It wasn't about the recipe or the method. These brownies didn't have to be the best I'd ever eaten. They just had to be good: warm and comforting and there in my kitchen on the last Monday night before I turn in the manuscript of my first book.

This was about cooking and eating for pleasure. And as I stood in the kitchen, scraping clandestine dark ribbons of brownie batter from the bowl and licking them from the spatula, I was very, very satisfied.

On Not Cooking

Today I was thinking about all the effort I put into not cooking these days. I haven't succumbed to take-out or meals from the freezer or can, rather an endless stream of composed dishes that require very little effort. Salads with a poached egg. Roasted vegetables with toast and a poached egg or cheese. Slabs of good toasted bread with hot cheese, chunks of avocado, or a quickly fried egg. Hummus. Beans. Chocolate, lots of chocolate.

It is actually a nice, albeit simple, way to cook, because it shows me how far I've come. I used to be the kind of person who required a recipe. No recipe meant no dinner, or boring fare: a bowl of pasta with bland red sauce, a quesadilla with canned black beans and salsa from a jar.

I still love to cook from recipes, recipes give me most of my ideas. But I like realizing that I am slowly becoming the kind of person who can make something out of nothing. It makes me feel self-sufficient. The bad part? Nary a recipe in sight, which means there's little to share here.

But as I finish writing the book, this means of simple cooking is highly satisfying. I like shopping for fresh produce at my weekly farmer's market. Instead of planning meals I spend the rest of the week tiredly stumbling into the kitchen, throwing open the fridge, and figuring out something easy to make and eat. 

Take lunch, for instance. The pickings were slim. But I did have some good bread -- I simply can't live without a loaf of Acme Walnut Bread -- and as it toasted I found a small bunch of radishes in the fridge. Out came the good butter and salt, and before long I was slathering the pink jewels with butter, dipping them in salt, and happily watching the sun stream in through the windows. I could almost believe I was in France. Almost.

For the moment, at least, I am finding just as much joy in not cooking as I usually do in picking recipes, shopping, and cooking up a storm. I’m sure soon I’ll want to return to the kitchen, but in the meantime, my radishes and I are happy as can be.

Galette du Rois

I went to the most fabulous party last night that ended, rather triumphantly, with me being crowned Queen for the day.

The fete was truly the last of the holiday season. Yes, the trees and lights are down, but according to the religious calendar there is still something left to celebrate: the arrival of the Three Kings. Epiphany is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first Saturday of the new year and honors the arrival of the three kings at baby Jesus' crib side.

The traditional French King's Cake is buttery golden, flaky and rich, and layered with almond paste. Embedded in one slice is a feve -- a tiny ceramic religious figurine. Whoever finds it is declared King (or Queen) for the day.

But there's more. Traditionally, the youngest child hides under the dining table while an adult cuts the cake. The child calls out who gets the next slice, and after all have a piece of cake, eating and feve finding commences.

But at this party the youngest (4.5 months) was unable to complete the task. So that left me -- me!-- the 32 year old baby of the group to crawl under the table and aid in the delivery of buttery galette slices.

Imagine my surprise when the feve was mine too. The only trouble was that the day was mostly done and this Queen didn't have much to dictate. Still, I'm hoping that the mere presence of my golden crown and my teeny tiny Virgin Mary feve signals hope and riches today and beyond.

Will Eat for Words

This is not meant to be one of those dreamy breakfast shots, the likes of which are posted on one of my favorite morning blogs, Simply Breakfast. This is a down and dirty action shot: granola, milk, frozen blueberries. Black coffee. A post-it that proclaims Chapter 11. Highlighters and pencils and yellow legal pads. The writer's life.... The writer's breakfast.

After a very productive writing week, I got to the end of it woefully under prepared to face the weekend. The fridge boasts some once exciting, now soggy leftovers. There is nothing else in there worth mentioning. And to make matters worse -- there are no recipes that I lovingly hand culled during the week that are just waiting to be made over this two day stretch.

This morning I'll start not with breakfast, but with brunch. I'll flip through a small stack of glossy food magazines and make a list. I'll go to the store, and hopefully soon I'll have next week's leftover's brewing -- a prefect hearty concoction to keep me writing devotedly for the next few days.

3 January 2010

"Sometimes the days burst open like seedpods and we see thousands of futures, and it's so much that our throats swell and we can't do anything but turn away and forget that gleaming, all that possibility. Who could live into such brightness? Sometimes the days beat their wings slowly so we can take their measure, so we know how lucky we are that we are being given just one moment more."
From The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After, by Melanie Gideon

Photo taken this afternoon, Limantour Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore. It was sixty-five degrees. I walked in my tank top and watched kids playing in bathing suits, picnics, kites, and games of catch.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year's Eve!

I'm soaking a big bowl full of black eyed peas for tomorrow's traditional Southern meal, listening to the Black Eyed Peas, and getting ready for New Year's Eve.

The plans for this wild one include a two hour yoga class, followed by tamales, bubbles, chocolate, and conversation.

Tonight is going to be a good night and that this next year can't help but be the best one yet -- right?

Happy New Year's Eve to you, and you, and you.
xo