• I could barely believe the beauty of Manhattan Beach. Lemon trees and succulents in nearly every front yard, warm and fragrant breezes, my feet in soft sand after a painfully long winter.

• I’d never before attended a wedding held outside in the rain, but now I can heartily recommend it: huge smiles peeking out from under dripping raincoat hoods and umbrellas, steam rising from the pavement, the sound of water all around.

• I made a cake, sewed a colorful bunting and watched a newly minted teenager dive into blue water over a long weekend.

• Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei.

Once a week I make bone broth.

I strip the chicken carcass bare, throw it into the pot, cover it with clean, cold water. Throw in the wing, leg and thigh bones.

The chicken feet are alien and I can’t bear to touch them without wearing thick purple kitchen gloves
(chicken feet with little brown calluses on the bottom, like people feet after a long summer of walking barefoot to the swimming pool)
but they add glucosamine, chondroitin, and minerals to the broth and so I throw them in.

Floppy, forgotten celery from the back of the fridge. Onion peelings, two dried bay leaves and garlic whacked with the side of a kitchen knife. I read that apple cider vinegar helps to extract the minerals, so I splash some into the water and cover the pot with its lid.

The soup pot bubbles for 24 hours. The house smells sweet and meaty, and the windows fog and our sinuses open.

When cooled, the broth is thick with gelatin. I heat up spoonfuls with peas, sauteed cabbage, cooked potato, leftover millet, and chicken meat, and call it soup. This broth will boost the immune system, Italian grandmother-style. This broth will remineralize teeth and soothe aching bellies. This broth will steam from mugs on the cold, dark days of December.

Today is dark, cloudy and brooding. I’m listening to Pandora, making applesauce and enjoying the darkness.

Pizza for 16 was quite a project. I slid pizza on and off of the hot stone for about two and a half hours, red-faced, hair piled high on my head and sweat trickling behind my apron. Lovely image, I know. I sipped on a glass of old vine Zin and chatted with lady friends while working. Children popped in and out of the sweltering kitchen to place their pizza orders and check on status. My pizza was last to come out of the oven. It was delish, if I may say so myself.

I turned the surprise cucumbers into sweet and spicy pickles this weekend. Let me just say, pickling is far easier than fermenting. No vegetal whey taste, no wondering about exactly what kind of microbe I am growing, and the cukes were ready to eat two hours after hitting the vinegar and spice. They are delicious. I am eating them with everything, at every meal, and dreaming about making my next batch as soon as we can locate more vegetables in the jungle out back.

Happy Friday. xxoo

My sous-chef drizzled the maple sugar on the scones with more skill and style than I’ve ever brought to bear. My return to work weighed heavily on my heart and mind all day.

The blue-grey light returned on Boxing Day, along with snow, sleet, rain, cold. I felt like I was back in central New York. I burned Nag Champa and played 80’s music in our warm kitchen. John fried cold slabs of leftover grits in the cast iron skillet, and I ate two of them with butter and my most favorite-est thing ever, Sriracha.

Pre-dawn whispers (I stuffed my head under a pillow and went back to sleep).

Presents opened before the eight o’clock hour.

Hot coffee from the Chemex.

Sweet, soft challah French toast eaten continental style by a bad piggie.

Organic, fresh-pressed juice to cut through the sweet.

Beautiful music streaming through the house.

Gentle, quiet focus on a new art.

For the first time, my girl helped braid the challah, her small fingers gently moving the ropes and curling in ends. We used the knife as a chisel and popped chunks of Callebaut in our mouths while we worked.

The challah baked up quick. We left the hot loaf to cool on a wire rack and drove to church, where I sat on the edge of my seat as our pastor hit all the high notes in O Holy Night. Once home I sat in my bent wood chair under my mother’s cable-knit afghan and stared at the lights on the tree.

Alastair and Jacqui were once “the church sound guy and his worship singer wife” to me, little more than strangers. In fact the first real conversation I had with Alastair went something like […]

Alastair, standing in front of me, a microphone stand between us: “Sing louder.”
Me: “I can’t.”
Alastair: *sigh*

Slowly we became good friends, and now ten years later, Alastair and Jacqui are as close to my heart as family. They invited us over for dinner this past Saturday evening. The meal Alastair cooked[…]

Sauerkraut experiment #1 is underway. I love the deep purple color of the cabbage juice in the jar. I found postcard art by illustrator Phoebe Wahl tucked into Issue 3 of Taproot Magazine, and it now hangs on our kitchen line, reminding us of the colder weather heading our way. I dusted off the kitchen scale and about a thousand other neglected kitchen tools to make a ri-DI-culously good Coconut Layer Cake for a special birthday.

Been spending time in the kitchen, working on my fermentation chops. Haven’t you heard that fermentation is the new canning? Three half-pint jars of whey came from one container of organic yogurt, and now I am sneaking that stuff into all of my kids’ food. I made a batch of Carolina Slaw from the book Real Food Fermentation and it’s sitting quietly on the countertop, changing from one thing to another. The inside of the glass is thick with condensation after only two days.

On Sunday afternoon the kids and I kind of geeked out over the renovated and enlarged bulk foods section of our local Whole Foods. All three of us squealed with glee over the multicolored popcorn, and brought some home to try. The kernels fluffed white in the Dutch oven, the colors turning inside out. We chewed thoughtfully, remarking around mouthfuls that all of the colors seemed to taste the same.

Sprouted buckwheat groats, chopped tomatoes, sliced cucumber tossed with lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped fresh mint and parsley. Recipe by the Gluten Free Hippie. I have begun sprouting grains and learning about lacto-fermentation, and have quit alcohol, caffeine and sugar (sigh), in a bid to prevent a recurrence of my disease. I’ve lost five pounds and so need to find new things to eat and pronto!

It was slippery outside this morning, too slippery to run. I made maple oatmeal scones instead. We sipped coffee and read about dinosaurs, then I retreated to the home office to begin my day.

I use a sharp paring knife to remove a cone from the center of each cooled cake, the last step before filling each one with creamy, delicious, Fluff-based guts. Out of the corner of my eye, I see half-filled moving boxes in the living room, waiting their turn. Then the oven timer rings: the pizza dough is ready to divide and shape. At this rate, by the time this house is packed and ready to go, I may no longer be able to fit into any of my jeans.

Cooler weather brings the smell of green coffee beans roasting out on our back deck. We all wait quietly and listen for first crack. The beans are best the day after roasting. And the coffee is smooth and delicious.

“So, Joss, what do you think about coffee,” I ask her.

“I think I’m going to like coffee when I get older, and I’ll probably drink it,” she says, not looking up from her book.

Good answer.

“So, Noah,” I say, turning to my left to look at my five year-old, “do you have any thoughts about coffee?”

Pause.

“Well,” he says with much gravitas, “I did try a Red Bull once.”

I nod my head slowly and furrow my brow a little, matching his tone. Then I take another sip of coffee and watch the morning traffic pass by the front window, and we all think about coffee.

The Christmas cookie project took us from daylight to darkness. But we could feel those extra few post-solstice moments of light.