Pink of Perfection

There are few feelings that compare with going about your life and in one sudden, happy moment — maybe you are on a sunny park bench or sharing a glass of wine with someone who delights you or falling asleep on a beach towel — you realize you are exactly where you want to be, living exactly as you always hoped.

This happened to me twice in the past two days: once, sharing a scoop of vanilla ice cream with someone I love and laughing our way down the street while the breeze blew hair into my eyes. The second time it happened, more mundanely, while walking up and down the aisles at Trader Joe’s, deciding between Spanish and Italian olive oils, a bouquet of cheap yellow flowers already in my basket. And then again, riding the bus home and staring out the window at the brewing rain clouds, the day and my movements in it seemed right. I wasn’t hosting a party, I wasn’t wearing a pretty dress. I was simply on the way back from the doctor in jeans, and bursting through the bus’s rear doors, onto the sidewalk and into pre-thunderstorm sunshine.

Is it a matter of eating well? Have all these good vibes in my brain come from all the good food in my life lately? Is it that the weather has finally turned hot and sunny here and that there is something delightfully miserable about the heavy, humid air and dewy skin? Is it having a nip of wine with lunch now and then, or that I have been seeing lots of the women in my life who make me think hard and laugh harder?

Continue reading “One Sudden, Happy Moment” »

I very seldom bother to attempt what the best cooks can do — wander down the aisles of the store, feel inspired, and bring something marvelous together, first in the brain and then on the plate. For me, that kind of grocery store adventure usually results is some overly-creative concoction involving anchovy paste and jam (true story). I will say, though, that this salad is the result of such an exercise. Who can pass up pea shoots when she sees them for $1.99, and I feel I haven’t nearly enough smoked trout in my life. We happened to — also serendipitously — have a bottle of Loire Valley Muscadet that our downstairs neighbor, a wine rep, had given us. Together, this was a most sublime lunch for a hot afternoon. Dessert was a plum. Would that everything always came together in such an easy and delightful way…

Continue reading “Potato, Pea Shoot and Smoked Trout Salad” »

image via kc reflections

There’s something slippery about summer. And that’s the beauty of it: a season so moody and brilliant, so frivolously sensual and bold that it eludes your every effort to contain it. Instead, it wraps you in abundance, in swaths of sunlight and long, lazy hours–none of which is ever really yours to keep. Therein lies the lesson: While fall inspires nostalgia and winter a longing for warmth, summer has an endless amount to give, if only we can stand still and receive it. This season, resist the urge to control every last vestige of time. Instead, practice letting life spin around you in bright, concentric circles, filling your attention with light. –Terri Trespicio, Body + Soul

Are you a sweet or savory breakfast person? My default setting is definitely savory, and I’m much more apt to order a farmer’s omelet than the French toast. But sometimes, after weeks of diurnal eggs, I get a hankering for something with a taste of sugar.

These healthy muffins have the tenderest crumb, which I think is the doing of the buckwheat, and the slices of soft strawberry tucked here and there are an explosion of juicy, wholesome sweetness in your mouth. I brought two to a friend in the coffee shop this morning and stowed a bunch in the freezer to be pulled out for a quick breakfast in the hot summer mornings to come.

Continue reading “Strawberry Buckwheat Muffins” »

Feeding people graciously and lovingly is one of life’s simplest pleasures: a most basic way of making life better for someone, at least for awhile. –Anna Thomas

On a sunny Saturday, on our way to the farmer’s market, we popped into Paper Love, a sweet shop, perfectly edited, walls lined with charming letterpress cards, notebooks, and other paper delights. I immediately fell in love with these miniature books from Brookfield. The size of a deck of cards — but infinitely more delightful — each letterpress book is filled with quotes and tiny illustrations on a given topic: “Cheerful Thoughts,” “House and Home,” “Incomplete Book of Dog Names.” I picture a pretty bowl on the coffee table, home to a stack of loose photographs, crowned with this gem. Also, what great hostess presents!