Although I’m here today talking about cake, it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about The State of the World—because of course I am, just like you are, because how could you not? Since this entire %#!*#$! year began (to borrow some lingo from an Archie comic as it were as I am a delicate, ladylike flower and prefer not to let loose a stream of real expletives here) I’ve been constantly recalibrating and readjusting my ability and desire to interface with the world at large.
Read moreBLUEBERRY YOGURT BUNDT CAKE
I spent a summer in college working on a lake in New Hampshire as a backcountry caretaker. My job—organized by Americorps—was a mishmash of tasks from sweeping and maintaining the network of trails that crisscrossed the nearby hills and mountains, building docks, monitoring the growth of invasive water species, and (my favorite of all) overseeing campsites.
The organization for which I worked owned 13 campsites—some tent platforms and some cabins—across three areas: teeny Bowman Island, the slightly bigger Moon Island, and a slice of the Belknap Woods (which leads into the Chamberlain Reynolds National Forest) that abuts the south shore of the lake.
Read moreCOOKIE-FILLED POUND CAKE
I read an article recently about the importance of having things to look forward to. One of the challenges of 2020 is how many ordinary—and out-of-the-ordinary—experiences the pandemic has robbed us of. There are no weddings. No baby showers. No one was packing their trunk for summer camp or their duffel bag for a weekend trip upstate to play tennis and go canoeing. August didn’t bring trips to Target for kids, flip-flops slapping on the hot asphalt of the parking lot before entering the cool store and piling colorful binders and file folders and packages of neon-hued markers in a shopping cart.
Read moreSOUR CREAM BANANA BREAD
Remember small talk with strangers? Cocktail parties and the attendant chit-chat you’d make as you sipped a glass of Chardonnay in someone’s living room, or nursed a too-strong gin and tonic amidst a group of friends at a bar? Dinner parties where you politely conversed with the people on either side, finding out that the man to your left is an accountant who builds wooden canoes in his spare time and that the woman to your right only likes to humble brag about her three children?
Read moreS'MORES CAKE
There’s an intangible but precise shift just before Labor Day—the air takes on a crystalline quality. Overnight, the hazy humidity of August disappears, as if it was absorbed by the ocean or as if a storm swept in and washed it away, like rinsing water on a glass then wiping it away, leaving it perfectly clear.
I love this time of year. It can carry a tinge of melancholy as summer wanes and slips away from you, but it’s such an achingly beautiful few weeks that you can’t help but be glad. The beaches are empty, showcasing their wild rambling loveliness. Waves tip up onto the rock-strewn sand, spilling white foam over the smooth surface of the boulders. Tangles of greenery cover the gently sloping dunes that hug the scalloped curves of the shore for miles. I learn the names slowly: northern bayberry and beach plum and winged sumac and creeping juniper and coastal sweet pepper bush.
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