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a jar full of sunshine

When I was in college one of my best friends, Dan, came up to visit me several times a year. One of those years, on one of those visits, we embarked on what is to this day the greatest grocery shopping trip I have ever been on in my life.


I can't really explain why, only that it's one of those seemingly unremarkable days, those everyday-days in which nothing really happens, and yet you'll always, always cherish it. A little slice of memory that perfectly sums up your friendship.


We spent hours (yeah) in the store, wandering up and down the aisles, throwing completely random things into our cart on a whim because we liked the packaging (a tiny jug of apple juice!) or similarly superfluous reasons. But the BEST thing about that trip is that Dan and I discovered lime curd.

Lime curd, in a little jar on the shelf at a grocery store in Ithaca, was somehow the most bizarre and hilarious thing Dan and I had ever witnessed. We shrieked and laughed in that aisle until we couldn't breathe. Because, really, what the hell was curd, anyway? We had no idea, but it sounded horrifying and hysterical. It instantaneously became an inside joke we've tossed back and forth ever since.


(The photo on the right is of me and Dan, loosely around the time the infamous grocery trip took place)


But last year, I finally found out exactly what curd is: DELICIOUS.


Now, I've never made (or tasted) lime curd. I just can't bring myself to do that without Dan. It would be blasphemous. But I have become rather well aquainted with lemon curd, and I've got to tell you that stuff is stunningly tasty.


You can eat it right out of the jar. Off a spoon, your finger, whatever. Put it on toast. Put it on cake. Put it on anything and everything. Just please enjoy that tangy-sweet, sunshiney bit of heaven.

Or, you could really go all out and make a strawberry galette. A galette is a "rustic" tart. In other words: you don't have to bother with making the crust look all beautiful and professional because we're just going to lazily throw the whole thing together and say it's homemade and charming. Fantastic!

Strawberry Galette with Thyme Crust and Meyer Lemon Curd

(Meyer Lemon curd and Strawberry Galette adapted from Dishing Up Delights)

Ingredients

• 1 pint of strawberries, sliced
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water
• several tablespoons of lemon curd (although you can buy it in a store, it's super easy to make your own, which I did here. I can post the recipe if anyone's interested)
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
• 1 stick butter, chilled and cubed
• 2-4 tablespoons ice water

Directions

Mix the flour, salt, and thyme. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender (or do the whole thing in a food processor. It's a tart, not a pie, so I won't be picky). Add the ice water a tablespoon at a time until dough is just combined. Gather into a ball, cover in saran wrap, and chill in the fridge for at LEAST an hour (the longer the better).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Mix the strawberries, cornstarch, honey, and lemon juice in a bowl and set aside.

After properly chilled, roll out the dough in a circle a 1/4 inch thick. Top with a few tables spoons of lemon curd, spreading the curd into an even layer over the dough, but leaving a one inch border around the edge. Top with the strawberry mixture, and fold the edges of the dough over the top. 

Brush with the egg wash mixture, and bake for 20-25 minutes, until crust is golden and filling is bubbly. Let cool before serving. If feeling truly decadent, top with homemade whipped cream. Swoon.

yeah, you make me merry--make me very, very happy

Every January I make the same resolution: "I shall learn to make button holes, and attend to my parts of speech." A few among you may recognize that heroic declaration as belonging to Miss Amy March and appearing in chapter eleven of LITTLE WOMEN (one of my all-time favorite re-reads). My parts of speech are rather well attended, in my opinion (although it's true that I don't know how to make button holes), but I like having this little bon mot ready whenever someone inevitably asks what my resolutions will be on any given year.

I don't like to make proper resolutions. They always seem trite and insurmountable. But of course there are things that I'd like to change or accomplish within the next year or more.

There are the obvious things, such as being financially stable and landing a full-time job that I enjoy. I'd of course like to be healthier and use my time wisely and take ballroom dance classes like I've sworn I would since 2005.

But mostly, it's the little things I truly want to master in 2010. I want to learn to accept compliments with grace. To let go of that which truly does not matter. To be sure that the people in my life know how much I love and appreciate them. To be kinder to myself. To embrace new challenges sincerely and openly. To lift the restrictions I place upon myself and to become an active, courageous participant in the story of my own life.

I want to take steps toward becoming my best self with each passing year.

2009 is the year I left behind an established career that I loved, the city that forced me to grow up, and my best friends and family, and moved to the middle of nowhere (sorry, but it's true) for the love of my life and our future together. And that was just the tail end of the year!

I also baked bread for the first time in 2009, which quickly became a habit. I joined yet another writers group and still didn't get any closer to finishing my novel. I had a gym membership and actually, you know, went to the gym. Some of the time, anyway. I visited Chicago and Minnesota, attended the wedding of one of my dearest friends, purchased and wore rain boots, discovered a favorite cocktail, paid forward all the good will (and couch surfing) that was given to me upon my arrival in New York so many years ago, ate Ethiopian food for the first time, saw my first real shooting star, ate at the 21 Club, and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

I can only hope that each coming year is better than the last. And with the way things are going, it looks like 2010 will be.

I love and miss you all! I wish you health and happiness in 2010!

xoxo

the more things change...

Last night David and I were getting into bed for the night and talking about what a hellish, emotional, but incredibly exciting week we've had thus far, and David summed up the entire ordeal in one vivid little quip that describes things far better than I ever could.

"Just when we're starting to panic and get really worried all of this good stuff just, like, barfs all over our lives and destroys the precious little stability we've managed to secure for ourselves."

People. Good stuff has barfed all over my life.

I've been meaning to blog a lot in the last week, but I just haven't been able to get my act together.

David and I celebrated our two year anniversary last week, just before Thanksgiving. Then there was the holiday itself. Oh, and David and I both got jobs, by the way. He's working a temporary project-based job for the state government, and I've got a seasonal part-time gig at the Ronald McDonald Charity House doing some general admin work and taking inventory of food donations. (Thanks to Meredith and Neil respectively for the connections that led to our employment!) Our commute is just a tiny bit ungodly, but it's nice to be working again. We start apartment hunting this weekend.

And really, I've been having an incredibly difficult time with these transitions. Thanksgiving marked the first time since moving out here that I really became homesick. Like, almost inconsolably homesick. I burst into tears in front of my oven early Thanksgiving morning--superficially because my pie crust would not roll out properly, and mostly because it was one of the first major holidays I'd spent away from my family and it was in that moment, sobbing in front of my oven when the sun had barely risen, tears making tracks through the sugar and flour on my face that it really hit me that I live here now. That this isn't a vacation, or playing house, or anything. That this is where I live now, and where I will be living for the rest of my life. And a lot of the people I love are not here with me.

See, I knew these things. David and I spoke about these things extensively when we made the decision to come out here. But I realize now that perhaps he better understood the depth of what that would mean for me than I did. Because it was a very different thing to know something intellectually and to feel it erupt inside you all at once because of a stupid pie crust.

And although I pulled it together with David's help ("Honey, you are not allowed to bake anymore if it's going to make you this upset!"***) and had a lovely holiday with his family, I've had a lot of trouble finding my balance again after that. Things have been coming at us--or, barfing on us--so fast over the last handful of days. I just wasn't prepared for the onslaught of EVENTS.

And the thing is, it's all really good stuff. Jobs! Apartment! Independence!

It's just so much at once, and I was not prepared.

But the thing that I have realized as I've struggled through this week, getting up at 5:00 am and sitting alone in a coffee shop for hours to kill time before work, getting home late and so exhausted that the dishes never get done and the bed never gets made and all I want to do is curl up and sleep--the thing I've learned, or rather, come to appreciate on an even deeper level, is that this really is where I want to be.

It's hard. And I'm overwhelmed. And I miss my family and friends so very, very much.

But there are good things waiting for me here. And (ok, about to get mushy, here) with every day that I spend with him I find that I love David more and more. He is such a supportive, understanding partner, and I am so, so excited about the life that we're building here together. I am so thankful.

I will always be homesick, I imagine. I will always miss my family and friends. And although this week has been incredibly difficult for me, I'm coming out the other end of it feeling so much more secure about  the reasons I came here, and the reasons I'm staying. I'm ready for pretty much whatever gets thrown at me next.

*** The last time we were in Massachusetts, my father told a story about when I was young and first started performing on stage. I would get so nervous before performing that I would actually make myself sick. My father couldn't watch me work myself by decreeing "You are not allowed to perform anymore it's going to make you this upset!" That put an abrupt end to my stage fright.

the girl with the pearl earring

With two exceptions, all of the jewelry I own is total junk. Like, bought it at Claire's for under $6 junk. One exception is the claddagh ring my mother brought back from Ireland for me. It's silver with an emerald stone and a few small diamonds framing the setting. I absolutely adore it. Probably moreso than anyone should ever love a bauble. But in addition to being the first truly nice piece of jewelry I owned in my adulthood, it's coincidentally also the same ring my best friend, Julie, also got in Ireland, which only makes me love it more. The other nice piece of jewelry I own is a string of pearls that my dear friend Bex far too generously brought back from China for me. They're stunning and absolutely my go-to accessory in the Publishing World.

But all of my other jewelry? Junk.

Because I am relentlessly classy, I often pair my breathtakingly gorgeous pearl necklace with a pair of totally-faux pearl earrings that I got in a set of three for under $6 from, yes, Claire's. I'm sorry, but it's true. This was the medium pair in the set, and my favorite. The others are both far too small and way too large for my liking.

I have a pouch on my dresser that is currently serving as a catchall for my junk jewelry (I do actually take care of my two nice pieces. Shocker!) but the other night after brushing my teeth and washing my face to get ready for bed, I took off my cheap, cheap, cheap plastic pearl earrings and set them on the side of the sink.

You already know where this is going, don't you?

I was exhausted, and so David had to sort of wake me up when he came to bed after brushing his teeth.

"S'matter?" I slurred.

"I am so sorry," he said.

"Mmmhuh?"

"I dropped one of your earrings down the sink. I'm so, so sorry. I feel terrible."

I reassured him that the earrings were in no way real pearls and that there was nothing to feel terrible about. "I don't care," I mumbled as I rolled over and almost immediately fell back to sleep. "It's fine, honey. Don't worry about it."

But David did worry about it.

In fact, he surprised me the next evening when he came home with this great score (under $6!) from Target. (Ok, so it's not Claire's but I'm not picky).

Is my guy a sweetheart or what? Now I don't have to stress about which earrings to wear with my pearls when I finally get a job. Or, you know, while I'm folding laundry around the house tomorrow. Whichever.

apartment tour

A hill is a house for an ant, an ant.

A hive is a house for a bee.
A hole is a house for a mole or a mouse
And a house is a house for me!

-A HOUSE IS A HOUSE FOR ME by Mary Ann Hoberman

A HOUSE IS A HOUSE FOR ME is one of the picture books I remember vividly from my childhood. Even now I can recite impressive chunks of it from memory and some of the illustrations are preserved perfectly in my mind.

For some time now I've been planning to show you my house. Or at least, the one I'm living in at the moment. But, you know, taking a lot of pictures of a basement apartment requires good light (you'll see I compromised a bit on this one, but a gifted photographer I am not!) and a lot of time and energy. And getting all of those things at once can be tricky!

I knew, though, that when I did get around to making this post I'd want to quote Mary Ann Hoberman's book. In fact, I've had that quote typed up and sitting in an otherwise empty blogger draft for weeks now.

Would you like to see where we live?

This is Aunt Katie and Tim's house. They are generous enough to let us live in their basement apartment while we get on our feet!

They built this incredible fire pit. It's so awesome to sit out by the fire at night.

This is the view from our front door.

Inside, the front door leads to our kitchen!

This is where the magic happens, baby!

Sometimes, I look out the window when I do dishes, and I see cows.

Really. Cows. See?

If you come over for dinner (and you know you want to) this is where you'll be sitting.

Hello, lover.

We're in the frozen tundra, here, so we have a lot of sweatshirts and coats and jackets at our fingertips.

Because I am a lucky, lucky girl I get to wear David's old hockey jacket when my own hoodies just won't do the trick.

The livingroom is where we spend most of our time.

I LOVE this little stove. At night when it's cold---even under an afghan--we light a little fire while we read and listen to music. Blissful!

And we're always reading. (Catch a glimpse of PW's cookbook? More on that in the future!)

I approve of David's bookmark!

This is the livingroom window.

The view can be really breathtaking.

Oooooh!

Hi guys!

On to the bedroom!

We even have a guest room!

Here's some pictures of the surrounding area. These views are pretty everyday for me. I see them on my way to job interviews, on my way to the farmers' market, on my way to :::cringe::: Walmart...

Stunning scenery!

And that's where we live! Definitely a big change from New York City. A big change from the suburbs of Massachusetts, even. We're so lucky to have family out here helping us out and giving us an amazing place to stay! We'll never be able to thank you enough. Truly!

(I've got to admit though, that I still miss the ocean something fierce).