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morning off
Frequently on Saturdays I have to take two or three hours to pause and jump free, as a swimmer would into a pool, for a clean kicky dive with the bubbles rushing past. There have been book cuddles and hugs and kisses and infant fingers grasping my hair and trailing across my chest. Every time I do a downward dog, Lux clambers below my arched abdomen and shouts “tent tent!” Every time I stretch out my arms in child’s pose, she climbs onto my back and joyfully shouts, “I’m riding you like a horsey!”
I’m not a runner anymore but I will be someday soon. I spent a number of years pounding the pavement at all hours of the day, running miles upon miles in the hot and cold weather, in the dark on cold mornings or in the late afternoons as the bugs gathered near the trees. I imagine I’ll take it up again. Perhaps in my thirties, as I like to say. I’m not sure how much I’ll manage to do in my thirties but the list is rapidly lengthening. I’m a better long distance runner, meaning I pass more people if you give me more time. I’m good at the long game and good at coming up from behind.
But back to the children. A run would do it, but for me in the city, it’s very nice to drift away for a few hours and flip quickly down the sidewalk with both arms swinging freely at my sides and the sun in my eyes and a place to go in mind. It’s nice to slip narrowly through an opened shop door and weld your way delicately between display tables, no stroller wheels to mind, no chattering to acquiesce your mental space to.
Here’s a dreamy itinerary: take the train to Central Square. Stop by Piccante for a horchata. Walk down Inman Street, get a chill at the overgrown homes and the old fashioned Cambridge living happening before your eyes, and take a left to go to Dwelltime. Order a cappuccino that must take at least ten minutes to make by their standards, and a few of the delectable macaroons. If they are pink, it’s from the rosewater, or the strawberries. Stop in at the fabric store Gather Here, and think about women owning small businesses and how wonderful they make them. Continue on your walk to the Cambridge Public Library. Take a right inside and pick out every magazine you’ve wanted to read for the past month to page through. Find a seat in front of the enormous glass windows that frame the even larger sprawling lawn. Leaf through beauty tips to your heart’s content. Walk to Harvard Square. Stop for a tranquil moment at Oona’s and debate becoming a lady who only wears jackets from the ’20s, with heels. Stop at Follow the Honey and taste, in succession, several of the best honeys you’ve ever had. Get a text that the girls are up, and hop on the T, homeward bound. The funny amazing thing is that it takes me so little time to reset. I think that’s why parents talk about looking at photos of their kids when they are asleep. They already miss them, though it’s been just an hour or two.
This one is for the narrowest time slot: nestle into the open corner table at a coffee shop. I have four shops within walking distance so I can leave the apartment while the girls nap and still come back refreshed in time for the family to do something together. The coffee shops downtown have a speedy jive to them—so many people are passing through in a rush. When I take a table, with a book to read and mug in hand, I feel the envious eyes narrowing. Such simple thing, but you would think I’d set up a hammock with a side of strawberry daiquiri for the looks people rushing through give me. Get with the program and hurry on, they urge. No no, not me, I say. I’m doing something else here.
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Soon Spoon
Last week, alongside six bloggers and a rather hip Twitter up n comer, I attended a Popup dinner for the launch of Soon Spoon. A new startup, they discover last-minute reservations at fine dining restaurants in Boston and tweet, email or text them to you. These are restaurants which would often need at least a week’s notice to get you a table. A super helpful service to locals, and for tourists who only have a few days to eat at Boston’s best spots.
People who book frequently with Soon Spoon are rewarded with invitations to popup dinners catered by local chefs. A twist on your typical promotion, it’s a communal local foodie idea that I love.
Our dinner was six courses, with wine pairings. Hello. Lucky ducks we were.
Soon Spoon introduced us to our chefs for the night: two guys getting PhDs in Immunology from Harvard Medical School start a side catering project. PhaDe Food Labs. They can only cook like this two or three times a month, but when they do, they brainstorm the menu for days, tweak endlessly, and throw in a few last minute dishes based on what they saw at the grocer the day before. It was my first real encounter with what I think of as “Modernist Cuisine” style cooking–foams, dried powders, and using the sous-vide method to cook one of the meats. It was fantastic. Everything was just a little bit quirky but delicious and satisfying.
And they were game to discuss their technique on just about anything, going into tangents about chemicals and taste, and explaining the tools they used. So, basically my dream come true in a cook: knowledgable nerds who love food and discussion.
The dinner was held at a lovely and warm South End brownstone. Each dish was paired with an equally spectacular wine, all of them selected by Jonathan Fenelon from Clio. Based on what we drank, evidently Clio’s wine list is dynamite.
I loved this “dish”–a puree made from the first fava beans of the season, underscored with pickled ramps from last seasons, finished with a salty crunch and a pretty flower. Fresh, tart and green–it tasted simply like Spring.
But, this dish was my favorite! Nantucket bay scallops wrapped in black pasta, a smear of uni, and what they termed “sea and sand”: froth made from clam broth (see the foam?) enriched with a little kombu for an extra seaweed kick, and brown butter powder which had the slightest sand texture to it. Yup, brown butter powder as the sand. It was delicious, and clever to boot.
⌃⌃Here are the cooks leaning out of the tiny apartment kitchen, mid-pro-con delicious debate.⌃⌃
At the very least I recommend that you follow Soon Spoon on Twitter to keep up (+ they retweet a lot of food Boston news). You can book PHaDe for a private event in your home using Kitchensurfing right here, and follow them on Twitter. Soon Spoon, call me again, anytime.
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winter endings
I was out to a nice dinner with a bunch of girls the other day. Several of them are lawyers, though none of them bring it up every other minute, as I would for sure, if in their position. One of the girls works in the junior courts as an advocate, meaning if a five year old expresses an interest in returning to his mother, who everyone is aware is a drug addict, her job is to represent that wish in a convincing way to the court. This was received with some shock around the table, “really, a five year old gets to decide?”
This was NO news to me because I’m already delegating half our planning to Lux, with mixed results. The polls aren’t fully in, but I think it’s crimping our style. It seems to be a citywide epidemic among her peers to not want to go outside if asked, but once you get them outside, to steadfastly announce, “I don’t want to go home.”
“What are we doing? Not going home, right?” Lux quizzes me when we switch directions mid-walk through the park. It’s nice to know her geography skills will rapidly develop under the duress of trying to determine whether we’re headed home or not. “Oh, just walking in this direction now,” I murmur. Thus it is that we end up not going to the gym because it’s been deemed “too crazy” that morning, or put off a library trip until it’s too late. “Oh Baby Joan says she wants to go outside!!” Lux declares at the last minute, when I announce it’s nap time. Sorry kiddo.
But anyway, the list of nice things we like to do instead is steadily growing: books on tape with a book to page along with, painting, cookie baking, long bubble baths, a solid forty minutes of reading out loud with Lux loyally working to keep the books from Joan’s drooly grasp as we read. During Joan’s morning nap, Lux and I have begun a habit of spending fifteen minutes on my computer typing out words, with the typeface size set to 48. The words seem to always include “Lux Lou, Daddy, Bunny” but also sometimes “chickadee” or “cucumber.” Then we print out those pages and she can color them in.
Maybe I write all this so cheerfully because I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just looked up to see that carousel on the Common will open April 11th, which is so soon! That’s the day before the grand Easter Egg Hunt at our neighborhood playground, and two days before Palm Sunday which is heralded at our church with a march outside around the church. The fun things will be happening outside, and that’s a good good sign.
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why blogging is probably the best habit ever
Tomorrow, with work, maybe I’ll be a better writer, I hope. God, I hope. Tomorrow, maybe you’ll be a better writer. Or you’ll be a better photographer. Or you’ll make a better recipe. The key is in the act itself, in the fact of showing up and doing today’s work.
What my blog does is force me to show up. That’s huge. A lot of writers and creative people have said things along the lines of, ‘Showing up is 90% of the work,’ and that’s certainly true for me. Sometimes, the last thing I want to do is sit down and write. But if I show up, time and time again, it’s worth it. Even if I think I don’t have anything to say, chances are, if I show up, and if I really put on a good show and act like I have something to say, I will. (My friend George is a poet, and he has a sweatshirt that he wears every single time he sits down to write. It’s his way of acting the part, until he feels the part.) Some of my favorite pieces of writing have come out of days when I thought I had nothing to write. There is no ideal condition for producing creative work. I have to remind myself of that every day. You make the conditions ideal by showing up, period. Blogs help us show up, and that’s priceless.
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Holiday Notes
I’m very pleased with this olive wreath. Krissy from Boston Pollen did a DIY event at Anthroplogie and showed us how to simply wrap branches around floral wire and it turned out and dried like so. I hope to keep it up for several months.
Our friend Birgit held what is turning into an annual party–a blind wine tasting potluck. It was so snowy that night, but instead of dealing with the T trains, we snuggled Lux into the stroller and I carried Joan for the twenty minute walk. The city is a wonderful place when you’re walking in quiet snowfall.
And I’ll be damned but a blend won again! Take note–if invited to one these–blends appear to stand out. All of these were delicious, and most priced around $12. Last year, Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw took 2nd place. It was outrageous.
Birgit’s tablescape and the Guinness gingerbread cake that she made. I can’t wait to make that one for myself to eat again, any time of the year!
This stacked crepe cake with whipped cream layers appeared. You can imagine what Lux spent most of the night eating. It reminds me of this recipe by the Beekman Boys that my aunt Anne sent me.
The votes all tallied up at the end of the night..there were so many wines to keep straight as we drank, and obviously, as we grew tipsier. Next year we resolved to make tasting note cards to carry us through.
As I type this, the city is enveloped in snow-fog again! It was supposed to be caroling night with our church, but I wonder if anyone will show up. We head to Chicago this Friday to begin our holiday traveling sprints. We’ll go to the Field Museum to show Lux the awfully complete Tyrannouseous Rex skeleton. I hope she loves it, but I wonder if it will make her stop telling me she is a T-rex. That would be a pity.
We’re only there for 24 hours but I’ve already begun my Foursquare list for easy referencing!
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Le Creuset interview
I love this little interview with Boston foodie dream team Ana Sorten and Chris Kurth. Ana is the chef behind Sofra, Oleana, and Sarma (new! Somerville!) and Chris runs the Siena Farms farm stand, CSA, and South End shop.
It’s particularly fun to hear about a lunch in Turkey that was a turning point for Ana…
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November
I made nutmeg muffins the other day that called for an entire grated nut. They were spicy to the point of gingery and the toddlers didn’t like them, which was fine by me because I found them astounding. I put four on a plate and brought them down to our neighbors on the floor below us. “Happy November!” the note read, but what I really meant was “Sorry about all that stomping and jumping and ball thumping.”
They’re probably the best downstairs neighbors I could ask for. They wake up before us typically and get home close to Lux’s bedtime in the evening, and thus I don’t think we’re the worst neighbors in the city limits, but definitely in the running if polled on the wrong Saturday morning.
Four days later she returned the plate to me with fresh baked blueberry muffins. It was 11pm and the smell of the muffins had been wafting up the stairs from their kitchen for the last hour. I think she meant for me to find the plate in the morning, but I ate one immediately after I heard the faint chink of the plate being slide onto the shelf outside our door.
I hope this is the winter of muffins. It will be the winter of sugar, I can say that. We are the eastern reach of the east coast time band. Our sun is deeply set by 5pm. I went the whole summer mostly craving fruit and vegetables but now it’s sugar cream butter sugar.
I’ve already bought hot coco mix and put it on a prominent shelf, next to the coffee. I look forward to a winter of bribing Lux to walk up the hill without delay. Luring her with the promise of hot chocolate shared, once we’re home.
Speaking of chocolate, my friend Laura tipped me off to the Mast Brothers visiting Central Bottle this Tuesday. Is Central Bottle God’s gift to Cambridge, or what. I can’t think of a better product to stock up on for pleasing-to-all-gifting this Christmas than their gorgeous chocolate. See you there?
Image from the Mast Brothers goofy Cookbook preview
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consignment
Joe’s bike was stolen last week. Emailing the renter’s insurance rep about it, trying to estimate the value from afar…It got me thinking about possessions. Loved, lost, cast aside, and in between. Will I always remember the sweatshirt I lost on Mackinaw Island, amidst the fudge and the horse-drawn carts? And how my mom told me I lost it because someone else was meant to find it. I hated that she said that, and yet it is still how I comfort myself over lost items to this day.
Let’s not turn this into soliloquy but I can tell you that somewhere in my head is a carefully noted legal pad with everything I’ve ever lost unexpectedly. I’m not proud of it, but it gets pulled out every now and then, and added to, and I read it over and think, DAMN IT I LIKED THAT JEAN JACKET.
The zillions of things I’ve purged to goodwill? Not so much.
I’m not sure why consigning things appeals to me. It takes time–you usually have to spiff up your castoff clothes, and call ahead to schedule an appointment. You have to time your purges with the changing seasons so you’re not showing up with flip flops in October. And I do believe in the mission of a goodwill or a Salvation Army, goodness knows I love to shop them when I have an afternoon to myself. Joe and I frequently remark that the drop-off experience at Goodwill needs to be remade by a big name consulting agency. They make you feel furtive and ashamed for showing up and giving them all your stuff. Like, “uh, sure, just dump that here. Thanks, I guess.” Consignment shops, on the other hand, make your stuff feel valued. They say, oh this is lovely, Sure, we’ll take it and sell it for you, someone will love it. Poor Little Rich Girl, my preferred Boston consignment shop, types up a list of all your items with their remarks, like “100% cashmere sweater. So cute and the best color for this season.” And you walk away thinking, yes that was a good buy, it just didn’t work for me at the time!
Do you ever consign your things? Oh, and I really enjoyed Allie’s carefully built wardrobe post–that’s a big SOMEDAY dream for me.
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what’s on your homescreen?
a new series wherein I ask friends what apps they use frequently and why. I’m going first, let me know what you think!
Voice Memo I’ve been using this to record Lux talking to herself and at music class so I can remember the songs for Lux later on.Google Maps Much subtler on the road than the Apple maps app.
Merriam Webster Good old fashioned knowledge.
Simple a new bank that Joe and I are using because their app is designed to help you save.
Google I use their search app because it’s quicker than the Safari browser.
Feedly, Twitter, Instagram Need no explanation, really.
TeuxDeux a to-do app for the daily and the long term. I really love the simplicity of it. In November, they are going to start charging $24-a-year, and I’m up for paying.
Foursquare Better for suggestions of where to eat more than over-saturated Yelp these days.
Notes Compared with TeuxDeux, I use it more for spur of the moment. Great for grocery lists. Intuitively designed not to waste your time when you are just trying to jot things down in the moment.
LevelUp Boston’s preferred pay-with-your-phone app, usually saves me $5-$10 every ten purchases or so.
Petting Zoo Still my favorite kids app, though Lux prefers instagram, especially #puppiesofinstagram.
Kayak for whimsical flight searches, just to satisfy my frequent “how much does it cost to fly to Bali in March?” thoughts.
iQueue it makes zero, ZERO, sense that I have to use a third party app to update my Netflix dvd queue, but there you have it. It works quickly and simply. Recently added: La Vie en Rose, A Nos Amours, Mystic Pizza, Skyfall.
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a new cafe in Brookline
The advantage of visiting a wonderful new spot early in its existence is that you get to sprawl on the couch and walk up to the counter three different times to order three different things and let your daughter trot around the place, and tell yourself the other customers are smiling in reminiscence, not distress, as they watch her circle.
We traveled out to Brookline Village to see Rifrullo cafe, recently opened without so much as a sign over the door outside yet, but with the loveliest interior already established.
As I looked around the thoughtfully crafted room, I said to myself: yup I’ll never be able to come here once word gets out. It’ll be packed. The menu felt like what I would serve if I was cooking my best ideas–healthy, hearty and simple. The owner & chef, Colleen, strode out from the kitchen every now and then to say hello. They sold crunchy kale chips in small wax paper bags and bundles of homemade biscotti at the counter. I tried the loaded tallegio sandwich and ordered a smoothie for Lux. After our sandwiches, we sampled their dense chocolate chip cookies and couldn’t leave without buying a few for the road.
Definitely add this spot to your Brookline list alongside pod, and Angela Liguori’s studio.
Rifrullo Cafe 147 Cypress St Brookline MA 02445