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childhood creativity
We spent childhood summers in Spain where our aunt lives, first shooting on disposable cameras. We were hell-bent on capturing the rainbow glean of a pigeon’s feathers, cataloging funny-shaped dog poop, stalking stray kittens for portraits and reveling at lipstick-stained cigarettes stubbed in odd locations…
-I love to read this type of fostering-creativity memories from artists. This one is from the Weaver House, two sister photographers interviewed at VSCO.
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this week
cuddles, stretches, cries
yogurt, honey, peaches. repeat.
quail eggs to mix up Lux’s favorite snack of hardboiled eggs.
the cutest abandoned baby cardi, a quilt from kacia, blocks from more & co
a pretty bookplate and my favorite line from A Baby Sister for Frances:
“Oh yes, said Mother, ‘you may be sure that there will always be plenty of chocolate cake around here.'”
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Rockport
We’re going up to Rockport for the holiday weekend. Lots of people in one house. Once you’re the one bringing noisy kids, you don’t mind this type of arrangement. In fact, it will probably be remarkably less work for me altogether! AND: I think there’s going to be a hammock. Sold.
Anyway, I know you all must have favorites up there…do tell! I’m a little clueless and haven’t had time to troll Yelp yet. So far I’ve just looked at Anna’s pretty photos a lot (that’s one of her’s up top). I mean, Bear Skin Neck? That’s an obvious first step.
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my kitchen wants…
Ruth Reichl posted about how much she loves her 15″ cast iron skillet, and now I really want one. Ruth drives me a little crazy on Twitter (sample tweet: So still. Clouds stretch across the valley like a soft white ribbon. One red bird flies past. Fragrant black beans. Fierce salsa. Tortilla.) and yet, I still follow her! But her blog is the wisdom and writing that you’d expect from the former Gourmet editor in chief, especially if you’ve read any of her books.
I have the same hesitation she did—too much space and too heavy! But then whenever I have a big steak or want to make lots of pancakes, the thing I really find myself needing is big heavy hot pan. It seems like the kind of thing where once you buy it, it’s your daily staple. Right now I have just one petite cast iron pan. Maybe it’s time to go big or close-up shop altogether.
Photo from West Elm.
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Tippin’ Local
Two wonderful local drinks, pictured here for identification out in the field.
I picked up this growler of cold brewed coffee at Dwelltime in Cambridge after contemplating buying every pastry option on the shelves. Their pastries are unbelievable. And so unpredictable. There seems to be something new and avant-garde and just quality every time I visit.
Dwelltime brews Barismo coffee which is considered Boston’s most elite coffee. The owner does direct trade with the grower’s for their beans and often prints the growers name on the label. Quite unparalleled, quite delicious. I’m no expert but I feel that they specialize in lightly roasted floral flavors. I love the idea of a cold growler of coffee–what a tasteful hostess gift for a weekend away. And even better for a mom sneaking a half glass here and there throughout the week. I left the milk out and there was no acidity whatsoever–just light and toasty.
32 oz for $12, $10 for a refill.
I mentioned this amazing cider in my pizza post. Fortunately you can also find it at select stores (see Bantam Ciders site here for listings). Buy this if you see it on shelves. Here’s the important thing to say: IT’S NOT TOO SWEET. I know you’re thinking it’s going to be sappy and apple juicy. It’s seriously light and dry and tastes like honey and apples jumped on a raft and floated down the river together.
22 oz bottles for $8.25
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in the weeds
In which our young heroine finds she was given a real baby, a waker-baby. None of this magic sleeper-baby stuff, like always falling asleep while nursing (Lux) or sleeping 5+ hours by one month (Lux) or never ever spitting up (Lux). No, this time it’s a real baby who wakes up every three hours to the dot, and would like to be held all the time extra please, who hasn’t the faintest idea how to fall asleep and gets rather upset about it, who detects a whiff of caffeine in my breastmilk and can not abide it.
It will never be this overwhelming, I said to myself last Monday morning after Joe had left and Lux was begging to go to the playground and Joan was fussing. This is it. The pinnacle of overwhelmingness has been reached. The next time I have a baby, I’ll have a four year old and she will make lunch for all us. Right?
I see normal, I see the glimmer of it, though I think it might still be two months away.
I hate repetitive conversational pleasantries. I’ve probably heard some variation of “zero to one is the toughest” or “one to two is the hardest” one hundred thousand times. THE POINT IS PEOPLE, I would like to interrupt, IT’S A NEWBORN. I remember how I felt with Lux. I remember feeling overwhelmed. THIS is the pinnacle, I imagine I probably said.
There are times in the day I have to say to myself, quit it. She is a newborn. She doesn’t have to shape up. She doesn’t have to get with the program. She can do whatever she wants. I think I perhaps see her worst, through a glass darkly, at 6pm. I’m not seeing her, I’m just seeing all the stuff I haven’t gotten done. The absolute rumpus Lux has piled around me and throughout the entire apartment. The lack of dinner plans. The two emails (just two!) I was hoping to respond to.
But I see her best at 6am. She wakes up to the sunlight. She coos and stretches next to me and I wake up too. It’s quiet and everyone else is still asleep and we’ve made it through the darkness to this very second. I love that moment, a moment when I manage to open my eyes to the present instead of chasing something else in my mind, when I can watch her facial expressions and notice that her eyelashes flit out like a Disney chipmunk’s. When I wonder who she is right now and who she will be.
My mom once told me that she took up sewing when we were young so she could point to something and say “here’s what I accomplished today.” That’s probably why I find myself in the kitchen, baking something that doesn’t need to be baked by hand, dancing a very fine line where Lux is engaged and Joan is briefly asleep but perhaps soon to wake, but will it be after the dough is safely pressed into pans, or before? Last week I found an index card I had scrawled on years and years ago. “Finnish bread” it said at the top, which sounds absurd because it was always “homemade bread” when I was younger. I asked for it weekly from Mrs. B, a Dutch woman who started helping out my mom around the time when there was four of us kids. Before I left for college I finally asked her to walk me through the recipe, and I made scattered notes on this index card. And after I put it in the oven the kitchen smelled exactly as it used to when she made it.
Toast with butter and honey? Who could forget this delicacy? And what about cinnamon sugar toast? My college cafeteria used to keep shakers of cinnamon sugar casually on hand by the salad bar (like, you can have salad, or you can have…cinnamon sugar!). Throughout the semester, on not so good days, I would make a neat stack of white toasted bread with cinnamon sugar and sit down with a cup of coffee for lunch.
When people come visit our apartment, and a rather lot of them have been lately, which is lovely, when they make it up to the 5th floor after the two heavy doors that noisily buzz them access, after the tiny rickety elevator that lifts them four floors, after the small red carpeted flight of stairs from the kitchen they found themselves in after the elevator—they often look around and call it a treehouse. The ceiling is vaulted like an old attic, the windows are mostly enormous, and the tops of trees are visible everywhere. A treehouse that smells like fresh bread.
I think of this as a very easy bread, hard to mess up, leaving you with basic tomato sandwich makings or, of course, steady toast supply. I sometimes abandon the dough for more than two hours, if babies demand. And I particularly like the short baking time–fresh bread so quick!
Makes Two Loaves of Mrs. B’s Homemade Bread1 package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 t from a bulk container)2 cups whole milk (or skim)1 cup whole wheat flour4-5 cups white flour2 tablespoons butter1 tablespoon brown sugar2 teaspoons saltDissolve the yeast into 1/4 cup lukewarm water with your finger and let it sit for a bit. Mix together one cup of the white flour and all other dry ingredients. Microwave the milk for 1.5 minutes and then drop in the butter to melt.Mix the bubbly yeast into the dry ingredients. Mix in the melted butter and milk. Add 4 or 5 cups white flour and mix it with a wooden spoon. Dump the dough out on to the counter and knead it for a bit, adding flour if it’s too sticky.Leave the dough to rise for 20 minutes under a damp towel or a bowl.Split the dough into two sections and drop them into bread pans. Let rise for two hours.Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. -
a volcano seen from an airplane
I had two really amazing pizzas in the last week and I feel they should not go undocumented.
On Saturday after going to Nahant Beach we drove back by way of Cambridge and stopped at Area Four. I thought of Area Four because the restaurant sits on an enormous lawn and has outdoor seating, two very rare accessories in Boston. Rumor among chefs in Boston is that no one has a pizza oven like Area Four. It’s a legit-blazing-stacks-of-firewood type of thing. I think their coffeeshop is pretty slick too, if you’re by yourself and don’t mind listening to hussy startup business talk from the MIT boys who go there and will be forced to sit right next to you by the community-table-style seating.
Joe ordered some murky craft beer and I ordered a Bantam cider that came in a big glass and looked like straight champagne. Made in Cambridge, local apples and honey and fizz and 6% alcohol…delicious. We split one large fennel sausage and pickled banana pepper pizza, $25. I think the tomato sauce might have been composed completely of tomatoes roasted by hand. OR SOMETHING. I kept saying “this sauce…is amazing.” And then there was the housemade sausage. The waiter told us they make 300 lbs of it a week. The most crumbly delicious sausage, doused in fennel seeds. After you’ve had this sausage you just want to never order sausage again until you can eat there. The next day we were sitting on the Common debating whether to go eat there again for lunch. We didn’t, but maybe we will this weekend.
Then on Monday I met some girls with their kiddos over by the North End. We wanted pizza…and fortunately I remembered my friend highly recommending Galleria Umberto (actually I didn’t “remember” but I had saved the place as a bookmark on my Yelp app and looked it up, thank goodness). I’d been wanting to go for awhile but trouble is Galleria Umberto is only open for lunch, only on weekdays, and when they sell out, they close up. Since we were in the sweet spot we called ahead and sent two delegates to bring it back to the park. Now, I am a burned cheese fan. I once put just cheese on a tray, put it in the oven, burned it, and ate it. Clearly these fellows are too because this pizza was like a volcano seen from an airplane. And the dough–almost a sourdough? So proofed and thick that Lux ate it like a sandwich. Perfect for kids because they could trot off holding a square and it didn’t decompose on the way….if you’re wondering if stay at home moms in Boston just eat great food all day, yes, that is the case.
Anyway, two pizzas, one week. Can’t stop thinking about them.
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at Nahant Beach
I was up early with Joan on Saturday and twiddled her toes patiently waiting for Joe and Lux to open their eyes. Then I pounced and declared we were going to the beach. They barely had time to find their swimsuits before we were outside, picking up coffee and egg sandwiches on the way (after a long pause to debate what was the perfect driving-to-the-beach music….Ron Sexsmith and MGMT were chosen).
The weekends are nearly vital to my sanity right now as I wade very slowly through the first month of life with two. I enjoy the time with the four of us together so much. I am accustomed to satisfying one child, and trying to fully satisfy two at all times has been overwhelming. But with Joe around we can relax and take turns with each girl, chasing after bouncing Lux or curling up with cuddly Joan. Many times we flop exhausted on the couch at the end of the day, reliving the funny things that happend, and feeling more like partners in this adventure than ever.
If I just stumbled on these photos, I would think hmm, posed photo? A sling and a bathing suit, really? But it happened, we were at the beach and it was glorious but Joan wasn’t sleeping blissfully in her little beach tent as I planned. So into the sling she went, to fall asleep somewhere between the tumult of the waves and the steady thud of my heart. On second thought, I think her plan was better than mine anyways. The best part was I could flip up the extra sling fabric to cover her as a sunshade while we walked. Nothing goes with polka dots like wild tussah silk, am I right?
This is my penultimate post for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. I’m wearing a luxe wild silk sling in shiitake. My four previous sling diary posts are right here. If you’re thinking about buying a sling, My Corner View has a great introduction to them. And Goodnight Mush wrote up a super helpful fabric comparison too.