Among Other Things

"Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn't ours for long." — John Daniel, "A Prayer Among Friends"

On Moonrise Kingdom

I may be the last person on earth to do so, but I saw Moonrise Kingdom last night. Love you, Wes!

I defy you to find a better representation of how kids are little beings with adult-sized emotions and no idea how to deal with them. And how many (most) adults are big beings with life-sized emotions and no idea how to deal with them. Plus, Bill Murray, because he's a tragi-comedy genius. Plus, Bruce Willis, because he nails the lovable loser thing. Plus, Francis McDormand, because she's great.

Anyhoo, Jamie and I stopped at the Observatory for a drinksie beforehand, and it's possible that I was tipsy, but the entirety of the movie's 90s minutes floored me. And I left the theater all full of want. I wanted blue eyeshadow, STAT. I wanted a canoe. I wanted a peter-pan-collar dress for me and funky glasses for Lance and I wanted the two of us to escape to a solitary beach where I'd read aloud to him in front of the fire and we'd know that everything we cared about in the world was right THERE.

Something Different

I have no love for my lawn, but this is the driest, most colorless and dust-clogged box of tinder it has ever been. I am ready for a change. Let's wake up to rain rattling the gutter. Let's put our old winter jackets on and find a fiver in the pocket from the last time we wore them.

On Dog Mountain, With Dogs

Hiking's weird. What is it? Just walking. But it's nice. Especially when done alone, on a sun-blasted week day when everyone else is shackled to desks.

So I walked up the side of Dog Mountain yesterday out in the Gorge. Step after step, through the scrub oak, through the silent pines shading me like a canopy, through the scorched fields. The trail was very steep, and when we got to the top, we (me and the dogs) stood there gasping for air and staring east towards Idaho where smoke clung to the valleys and hid them.

Today, I can barely walk. I wonder if the dogs are sore?

An Everlasting Meal

I'm down for cooking, and I'm definitely down for food … but I have a short attention span. If I’m interested in a recipe, I’ll start scanning the list of ingredients—my interest waning as the amount of items I don’t already have or can’t easily procure grows. Sadly, anything past 7 ingredients total usually loses me altogether. I like to keep it simple—which is why I was excited to read An Everlasting Meal (thank you Kirsten Blair!).

“Cooking is both simpler and more necessary than we imagine,” writes Tamar Adler. “We don’t need to shop like chefs or cook like chefs; we need to shop and cook like people learning to cook, like what we are—people who are hungry.”

I love this. I love making simple meals from stuff I have laying around. It’s both a challenge and a way of living within my means (I.E. not dropping $50 at Whole Foods on ingredients for one meal—which is WAY too effin easy).

An Everlasting Meal is kind of a cookbook, and kind of not. It’s a collection of essays about the act of cooking in your home and why this is and should be important to all of us—with simple, delicious, intuitive recipes sprinkled throughout.

For instance, why can’t a salad just be a single vegetable raw or cooked with a drizzle of vinegar and olive oil?

It can—and it often is in places like Italy.

Why can’t a chunk of good bread be the centerpiece of your meal?

It definitely should be, and there are unlimited things you can put on it:

“In autumn, roast a whole butternut squash. Smash it in a bowl with good olive oil, a little freshly grated Parmesan, and a lot of freshly cracked black pepper. Spread the squash thickly on the toast, drizzle it with more olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice, and sprinkle it with roughly chopped toasted almonds.”

And so on and so forth.

Also, Adler touches on—not gluttony—but why we should be moved by what we eat: because it connects us to moments and memories and fills up our souls.

“Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once, squeezing them with lemons as you walked on a boardwalk. Let it reach your deeper interest. When you smell the sea, and remember the basket of hot fried clams, and the sound of skee-balls knocking against each other, let it help you love what food can do, which is to tie this moment to that one.”

It’s nice, right?