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 moreCHEESY HERBED ZUCCHINI WAFFLES
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.
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