Listen. I don’t claim to know a thing or two about cooking or baking or sauteeing, about chiffonade techniques or a parboil. If you point me in the direction of a culinary kitchen, I will be unable to name approximately 84% of the available trappings. Basting and barding and blanching? Foreign languages. But food placing?
Holiday excitement hit early in these parts. We started our annual Christmas puzzle in October (I know, I know) and have gone through no less than three sacks of flour since. The garden rosemary is dwindling; the cinnamon restocked twice. For two weeks now, I’ve passed the hallway and smiled at the quiet glow of
“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it.” -Marilynne Robinson
I don’t know what came over me exactly. I just know that, somewhere in the nostalgic depths of my mind, there is an image of an aproned mother in pearls and lipstick pulling a loaf of homemade, freshly-risen, flour-dusted bread straight out of the kitchen oven. My mother didn’t bake bread. I don’t even think
If you visit my home for more than a minute, you’ll know kids live here. There are very often random items strewn about the entryway and living spaces — plastic balls, wooden spatulas, tangible exhibits of the toddler’s current, mysterious obsession with cookware. (I cannot tell you how often I have fished my favorite oven
Boone Pickens perhaps said it best: When you are hunting elephants, don’t get distracted chasing rabbits. This week’s rabbit: Stranger Things. I’m not a TV watcher by nature, but every now and then, a show will grip my immediate community so tightly that it becomes a focal point for conversation after conversation, theories and recaps
Bang trims, watercolors, mango slices. Musical reenactments in the sunroom, her stage. She wants to know how to spell Gaston, needs to borrow a tote as a prop, asks me to put ‘Kill the Beast’ on repeat. For a bit, I say, sliding the door shut. She remembers candied pecans and puzzles from last winter,
The baby will wake, often, up and down, eyes popping wide and fading shut, and it will be a running joke in your family that you, the mother, will be physically unable to lull him to sleep. The baby will have figured you out, he will have found the loophole. When he cries out and