I'm sitting on the front stoop of my house, my feet resting on the third brick step and my back leaning against the glass-paned front door, which is slightly ajar. On either side of the door are two oversized slate pots filled with basil plants: an unconventional choice over flowers but a welcome scent to come home to. A woman passes slowly on her bike, stopping a few feet beyond the house and resting one slim Converse-clad foot on the pavement. She's wearing a fitted white t-shirt with a French phrase (one I can't translate) across the front in a pretty block font, and crispy navy Bermuda shorts. Her graying hair is beautifully layered and brushed behind her ears. She waves and calls out tentatively, asking if this is the baby she hears often from her back porch.
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.
Read moreBASIL MAYO + A SUMMER SANDWICH
You, reading this. I don’t know who you are, or where you are. I don’t know if you’re just starting your day, padding in socked feet into the kitchen to boil water for the French press, pulling out eggs and cream as you toast an English muffin. I don’t know if you’re still half-asleep, rolling over in a tangle of white cotton sheets to fumble for your phone on the bedside table and read a few blogs to wake up, assiduously avoiding the news for now.
Read moreZUCCHINI AND CARAMELIZED ONION PIZZA
Pizza. What a pleasure, right? Discussing something so fundamentally good seems like the right way to start the week. Bonus points are awarded for also being incredibly practical, if you’re faced with the (sometimes Sisyphean) task of getting dinner on the table night after night.
My mom makes pizza almost daily now, as she’s suddenly been thrust back into the business of feeding a slew of small hungry mouths nightly, something she hasn’t regularly done since the four of us were very young. (How’s that for reverse time travel?) And pizza—as she has discovered—is a big-batch workhouse of a meal.
Read moreSUMMER STEAK SALAD WITH ROMESCO SAUCE
I wear natural deodorant, but I used to swear by Old Spice Red Zone (for exercising) and Secret Platinum (for every day). In fact, a younger me would have pulled a face at the very thought of using a brand you could find in a Vermont co-op that “takes two weeks to start working”. Once I moved to New York after college, I started treating myself to twice-annual trips to the luxuriously quiet spa on the fifth floor of Henri Bendel for haircuts. I assumed I’d continue as such for years.
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