Favorites 12.3.13

Pistachio butter: It's a nut butter. For me that's enough to at least spoon it onto a corner of investigatory toast. But should I also mention that it's delicately sweet and the most peculiar hue of harlequin green?

Wood stoves: Unlike other forms of heat (forced air, electric, et cetera), the fireplace delivers a nice even-keeled warmth. The flickering light and crackling embers are just a bonus mild sedative for anyone within reach.

Portuguese wine: I'm no wine connoisseur. Nor do jetset to the Iberian peninsula often. But a friend gave me a nothing-special bottle that she'd procured in Lisbon, and when I took a sip it tasted like … like the dew that collects at dawn or something.

Impromptu road trips: Yes, yes, there are times when you want a definite plan detailing things like what you're gonna do and where you're gonna stay. But sometimes it's good to just get in the car and go somewhere else. Walk the glittery nighttime streets of a different city, eat pizza from a joint you've never been, encounter old friends who stash you away on an air mattress in their spare room. Maybe the next day you'd sleep in impossibly late, eat an impossibly huge breakfast, and walk into the impossibly wild wind coming off the water along Alki Beach—the bay filled with whitecaps and freighters before you, the skyscrapers spreading out beyond that like rows of teeth.