Listen up, y’all. I have something important to say. Just because it’s Sunday and you’re all alone, that doesn’t mean you can’t make yourself a Sunday night feast. And just because it’s 90 degrees and brutal outside, that doesn’t mean your feast can’t include a roast chicken. I won’t let any of that stop me. No way, no how. Either way I’m roasting a chicken. (You can expect this to be the title of my first memoir.)
Back in mid-May, I made what very well may be the last meal I cook in my home of 16 years. My parents are selling our house. Just like baking chocolate or revenge, it’s bittersweet. After living in five different states all while under the age of 10, we finally landed in New Jersey, where I did most of my growing up and where I learned how great bagels really are. In that house, we’ve said goodbye to dear pets and we’ve welcomed new ones. On our street, I learned how to drive in a car that was recently, after 17 years, traded in for a pick-up truck. (I’m still laughing about how my dad parks his new truck behind his cream-colored Mini-Cooper with racing stripes.) Through the years, I’ve left our pretty, grey house for multiple adventures to Europe and across the U.S. Over almost two years in Brooklyn, I’ve gone back often to spend quiet weekends in the suburbs with my parents and my pets. And, in our home’s kitchen, I’ve learned how to cook.
I’ve gotten non-stop comments on the blue gingham button up and white jeans I’m wearing today. “You look like a walking picnic,” and “I like color on you,” and “Well, you’re just jumping into spring, aren’t you?!” You know what, y’all? Yes, yes I am.
I’ve been in a funk lately. Maybe it’s the transition from two and half weeks off to a full week at the office. Maybe it’s the uncomfortably low temperatures that January brings. Or maybe it’s the fact that everything I’ve tried to blog in the past week has been unsatisfactory. Who knows? All I know is that 2015 has been off to a weird, cold start and I needed something to snap me out of it. That something came in the form of a luscious, creamy Vermont Cheddar Soup.
Two days ago I had one of those panicked moments that we all have around the holidays when I realized that Christmas is in twenty days. That’s twenty days filled with work, chores, baking, cooking, parties, travel, and in many cases, break downs. I don’t know when I became such a busy grown up but geez, here I am trying to juggle work and play like a real person. And ya know what? I like it. It makes you feel like a productive and useful member of society. Oddly enough, it took talking to my mother, who is prone to these panicked moments herself, to calm me down. So Thursday night, I went home, separated my laundry and started heating the oil for these rich chocolate doughnut holes. Or munchkins, if you will. It’s all about the multitasking y’all!
A Pinch of This 