If the past few months have taught me anything, it’s that I need very little in the way of stuff. I suppose that intellectually I always knew this to be true; I’ve lived at plenty of times over the years out of a backpack or a camp trunk or a suitcase—but those were always brief interludes to normal life. These days, 90% of my belongings are crammed higgledy-piggledy in a storage unit somewhere outside of Baltimore. I think (fingers crossed!) that most of my clothes and books and…well, everything I own…is still there, but for the first time ever, movers packed it up (unsupervised) so I can only hope and cross my fingers and toes.
Read moreCOCONUT LIME SABLES
Where would you live, if money and jobs and real life logistics were no object? Would you pick a flat in London or a pied-à-terre in the Loire Valley, surrounded by vineyards and all the Sancerre you could possibly drink? Maybe you’d want to live in Austin—eating the world’s best breakfast tacos and listening to great live music on the weekends. Or you’d pick a cool apartment in a cool city like Los Angeles or Sydney or Hong Kong, or in a suburb with tidy green lawns just outside Chicago so you could vacation on weekends in picturesque Door County.
Read moreSMOKED SALMON SALAD
I didn’t have much interest in seafood growing up. Occasionally I would eat tuna fish if it was doctored with enough mayonnaise and relish (which, coincidentally, is a preference I still have), but anything else I’d probably have deemed too fishy. I famously eschewed the lobster—prized and highly anticipated by everyone else— at dinner on our annual summer trips to Nantucket in favor of a meal comprised entirely of French fries. Even a generous coating of melted butter couldn’t convince me.
Read moreCHEESY KALE PASTA
Have you read anything lately that you’ve loved? I’ve read some great things, amidst many others that have been inconsequential (e-mails) or uninteresting (e-mails) or anxiety-producing (all of the news?). Like, say, these lines from a poem by Suzanne Frischkorn: “we are in the changing days, crisp mornings and afternoon’s swelter visions that summer is still here. Goldenrod pushes us towards autumn with promises of richness. Something I can’t name blooms alongside it and promises royalty.” Or a novel with some particularly memorable passages, like—“So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn’t matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being.”
Read moreCARROT RIBBON EDAMAME STIR-FRY
I’ve been homesick throughout my life plenty of times. The first that I can distinctly remember was at a sleepover in lower school, probably around first grade; at bedtime, I dissolved into tears and begged to have my parents pick me up. I wasn’t inherently afraid of being away; in fact, I’ve always relished the adventure of being someplace new, even when it meant setting out entirely on my own. But in all the near and far-flung places I went—summers building trails in New Hampshire or teaching environmental education on Block Island, two months of camp on the shores of Lake Morey in Vermont, a semester studying in South Africa, a string of weeks traipsing around Barcelona and northern Spain, field hockey camps and lacrosse camps and weekends away and even college itself—I’ve always missed home to varying degrees, regardless of how wildly good of a time I was having.
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