It’s an odd holiday season, but it’s still a holiday season nonetheless. Twinkly white lights in the shape of ships are strung up above Main Street in town and when I take an evening walk, I can see Christmas trees glowing from within the houses along the water. As soon as the day melts into dusk, I turn the music in the house to either the classical holiday or the Etta James/soul holiday station.
Read moreHOISIN-GLAZED CHICKPEAS
A good day is a two-swim day. A good day has a run, preferably in the most crisp fall-turning-into-winter air, your cheeks flushed and your muscles burning. If the run brings you to the edge of the water where you can watch the ferry gliding over to Shelter Island, the water churning furiously in its wake, so much the better.
These days, a good day is filled with ordinary things. Three cups of tea steeped a shade too long, the liquid turning a dark sepia color before you add just the right amount (read: an irresponsible amount) of honey and milk. The feeling of a baby’s warm body, heavy with sleep, against your chest—his breathing steady and rhythmic, his soft and chubby fingers gently resting on your neck.
Read moreCREAMY PASTA WITH GREENS
Shocking as it may be, I don’t think I’ve ordered delivery pizza in my life—ever. I grew up far enough from any town (or grocery store or coffee shop or anything) that I doubt you could have gotten delivery even if you’d wanted to, although that’s an untested theory. In college, you only ate pizza late at night at at the campus center if you needed to soak up a substantial amount of beer and/or shots of tepid Southern Comfort and/or vodka mixed with cranberry juice, poured into sticky red Solo cups in the common room shared by four sophomore boys, the floor strewn in typical college-boy-fashion with all manner of lacrosse sticks and open bags of Doritos and a Martha’s Vineyard Black Dog sweatshirt and a stack of psychology textbooks and a scientific calculator and a pair of soccer cleats.
Read moreGARLICKY BRAISED ESCAROLE + CHICKPEAS
One of the nicest smells in the world—in my humble opinion—is the scent of bread baking. It’s nice in all seasons, but especially in colder months. To walk into a bakery on a frigid snowy day, pushing open the door and stepping into the warm, yeasty-smelling air, is an extremely pleasurable moment. Other baking smells are enticing too, of course: cinnamon mingled with sugar or chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven or the steam rising when you slice into a loaf of freshly baked banana bread or the spicy kick of ginger and cloves in a square of moist gingerbread cake.
Read moreSOFT EGGPLANT + FENNEL WITH POLENTA
The dock was dusted with a fine icing of frost on Saturday morning—the first of the season. Small fishing boats crowd the harbor in the early mornings, tall rods propped up at the ready. As I paddle out past one, I steer close enough to call out and ask why it’s so busy. “It’s fishing season,” he tells me. “Albies.” I nod knowingly, wanting to appear nonchalant and water-savvy—albies! Totally. Got it.
I know nothing about fishing but at little research teaches me that albie means “false albacore”—also called bonito and little tunny. It’s not a true tuna, species-wise, and more closely related to a mackerel. They’re not huge, like regular tuna: usually only about 10 or 12 pounds.
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