Sharing stories of food stories we love.
New York City isn't the sort of place where people just pop over for dessert, or to borrow a cup of sugar, or crash your Wednesday night dinner if they smell brown butter and sautéed mushrooms wafting down the stairwell.
I've lived in all sorts of places where casual near-cohabitation was the norm. Summers in an open tent at camp in Vermont, a few months doubled up in bunk beds in a lakefront house in New Hampshire, and growing up in a sprawling farmhouse with 3 sisters.
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I've been thinking about the gentle ways people in love treat each other: the way they light up quietly when the other walks in the room, or how they remember the other's coffee order.Where does it all go? If it isn't captured in a letter, or a song, or a hastily scribbled note left on the kitchen counter in the morning, it dissipates. You might never know how someone glances sideways at you during dinner or notices how you twist your fingers when you're nervous.
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Growing up with three sisters has many advantages (too many to list here, too many to list anywhere), but one in particular is a three-fold sounding board for remembering excellent things about your childhood. At least one of us can always fill in the blank: a song we used to dance around to in the living room ("I Get Around" by the Beach Boys), the record we'd play on our old vinyl turntable (The Aristocats), which VHS tape had the funny scene of Fred Astaire tap dancing on a sandy floor (Top Hat).
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In July, I spent some time at home on the farm. All my sisters came home so there was a lot of sun, bike riding, card games outside in the grass, and enough laughter to make my stomach hurt.
Of course, there was excellent food: huge salads loaded with last fall's pickled beets and cucumbers, zucchini spaghetti, homemade soft white sandwich bread, and plenty of chocolate biscotti. Best of all, I was gifted a jar of strawberry jam. My little sister lives in Portland, Maine (lucky her!) and she picks strawberries in the summer and makes her own jam.
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There is something infinitely comforting about small towns. The streets appear to be lifted from a children’s book, the orderly sort that teaches you neighborhood words: policeman, schoolhouse, doctor, farmer.
This week, we drove up into the Catskills for an evening by the lake, ending up in Woodstock for dinner. To get to the water, we drive past a tiny white steepled church, next to a wide brook that rushes over smooth gray boulders. A weathered red barn houses a theater where indie bands will play all summer. We drive out of town late at night with the windows down, the air smelling sweetly of cut grass.
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