puffin

April 21, 2019 in family, holiday

in fourth grade i had a little bunny named puffin. he had this super soft, fluffy, long hair that i would brush with a special metal comb to get the tangles out. i kept all of the fur that came out in the comb, intending to sew a little pillow and stuff it with puffin’s hair (strange?) he never seemed to mind these grooming sessions… he just sat still in my lap while i styled him, like he was at sally hershberger’s. unlike a lot of bunnies, he wasn’t afraid of people and enjoyed being held and snuggled up. he never “said” as much (he was pretty quiet), but i could FEEL how much he loved me… we were that connected, like eliot and E.T.

passover moon cake

April 20, 2019 in family, holiday

we were still in amsterdam over passover this year, so we had a belated seder dinner this weekend. seders are a big deal to prepare… there’s all of the components of the seder plate, which depending on where you live, can be difficult to come by. in new york, all of the markets suddenly dedicate at least two aisles to passover related groceries in the week leading up to the holiday. in amsterdam, you would never know passover is happening. i had to roast a drumstick our first year living there because i couldn’t make the butcher understand the lamb shank. also, there is no matzo meal, only matzo crackers. in order to make matzo ball soup, i had to first grind up the crackers myself with a rolling pin. it was like little house on the jewish prairie in my amsterdam apartment. horseradish, also, is not easy to find. for that i would have to go to what we referred to as the "expat black market.” it’s a tiny shop on leidesgracht that caters to homesick american and british expats. the prices are outrageous, but it’s often the only place to get a crucial ingredient… a can of libby’s, libby’s, libby’s pumpkin, for example, is typically about ten euros around thanksgiving! so for a shiksa raising my children jewish (the faith of their father), seders can be a challenge, especially when we were living in the netherlands.

banana bread

March 12, 2019 in family, recipe

if there is one baked good that epitomized my childhood, it would be banana bread. none of us liked bananas with even the smallest brown dots so my mother made it on the regular, protecting us from the grisly fate of biting into bruised, mushy bananas with long strings of whatever those gross strips are that seem to appear on older bananas. we liked our bananas firm and safely tinged in green. luckily, older bananas make the best bread. we think her original recipe came from sunset magazine, but all the copies i have are in her handwriting, so that has not been confirmed.

WWJD? and i don't mean jesus, i mean jane...

March 05, 2019 in family, travel

the fall before last, two new activities coincided for me… i started dating again and i joined a jane austen book club. the first activity was pretty nerve wracking. i had tried to sign up for the bumble app many months before, but you can only use it on your phone and the writing was so small that i couldn’t see it and i closed it down. i had to get reading glasses a couple of years ago and i am still very upset about it. my entire family has worn glasses for decades and i was a bit vain about my unique 20/20 vision. i used to be able to see everything so clearly, even street signs blocks away - that was really helpful with my directional challenges - until i noticed that my texts were fuzzy in the mornings. i thought it was just because i am always tired (SLEEPING is something else i was really good at until the last few years and i am also pretty upset about that!) until i realized that my texts were fuzzy in the middle of the day too. so i finally went to an eye doctor (a place i had NEVER been before) and got checked. sure enough, i needed readers. i bought my first pair at the doctor’s office and they were expensive, which was a bummer. and they did not last long, as i fall asleep reading most evenings and they got mashed one night when i rolled over on them. now i just get them at the walgreens… between hank sneaking them into the backyard to gnaw on and me smashing them in my sleep (i frequently wake up with a dent in my forehead now, which is annoying when i have an early meeting because it typically takes a few hours to go away) they are pretty temporary possessions.

blizzard

February 26, 2019 in family

normally, i am all for a big snow blizzard that forces me and mine to stay inside, snuggle up and make a pan of lasagne or a beef stew. i am really good at reading and watching movies and spending time on the sofa. but this winter there have been so MANY blizzards that they are starting to disrupt my life (not to mention my floors, which i seem to be mopping continuously. i LOVE to vacuum, but mopping makes me feel like cinderella before she married prince charming.) during the week of my dining room leak and repair, there were THREE blizzards that made it very difficult for the ceiling man to come and work. two weeks ago i had to abandon all of my errands in denver because it started snowing so hard i instinctively drove right back to boulder like a homing pigeon. and this past weekend, i was meant to take my son to california to celebrate a friend’s bar mitzvah when it started snowing in the late afternoon. it seemed like it was just going to be a dusting and even though we got a couple of messages that our flight was delayed, we weren’t flapped and headed out for DIA. usually it takes about forty minutes to get to the airport, but on friday we were in the car for TWO HOURS. the closer we got, the slower we went and the harder the snow fell. we felt like the donner party, except we were in an SUV with “snow mode” and we weren’t eating each other… but still, it was stressful. by the time we parked, our flight wasn’t leaving until 10:30 pm (a four hour delay) and by the time we got through security, our flight wasn’t supposed to take off until 1:25 am. of course, it is bananas to depart at that hour so we tried to rebook for early the next morning. nothing was available. since all of the airport hotels were full, we were forced to make our way back in the driving snow… our useless misadventure had taken up FIVE hours.

brand loyalty

February 19, 2019 in family

when i moved to new york in my early twenties, one of the first things i did was head to the market to stock my cupboards. i didn’t imagine making big meals in my holly hobbie sized kitchen, but i always need to be able to bake. i began at the closest d’agostino’s with my rolling granny cart and started shopping. to my great frustration, they did not have C&H sugar, only dominos. i am very brand loyal so i did not buy brown or white sugar that day. over the next few weeks, i went to nearly every d’ag and gristedes on the island of manhattan in search of my sugar. i even tried the fancy balducci’s and citarellas. finally, someone explained to me that there was no california & hawaii sugar in new york and if i wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, i was going to have to work with dominos. i was crushed. it is generally not easy for me to change course… when i like something, i stick with it. i have been using the same deodorant (secret, powder fresh), brushing with the same toothpaste (crest with the sparkles, not the stripes) and moisturizing with the same lotion (eucerin intensive care) for decades. (PLEASE do not tell me if any of these brands are building up weird electrodes or minerals in me - i have had enough changes lately!)

surefire roast chicken

February 12, 2019 in family, recipe

i am not a natural cook. my mother can look in the fridge, pull out a few things and create something yummy with what’s there, but i have to follow a recipe. i can only go a little rogue after i’ve made something about a bazillion times… which is what happened with the barefoot contessa’s perfect roast chicken. i started making this chicken around fifteen years ago when we were living in san francisco. it felt pretty grown up to me to pull a chicken out of the oven, rather than out of a whole foods plastic container when throwing a dinner party. and it makes your house smell cozy and amazing as well. i never did manage to learn the gravy part of the recipe - the only one in my family who can make a proper gravy is my GG - the rest of us have to cheat with packets or gravy kits when she’s not around. in reviewing barefoot’s recipe, i realize that i’ve changed it quite a bit… i switched out the thyme for rosemary and added carrots and green beans and potatoes to the onions so you end up with a whole pan of roasted vegetables and a truly one pan meal. but whether you follow barefoot exactly or try it my way, this chicken is surefire and what i always make when i have someone new coming to dinner and don’t want to mess up.

my amazon coat

February 06, 2019 in family, hank

in early december i got an email from my girlfriend in la with the subject line, “have you heard about this coat?” she attached an article from the strategist that detailed the popularity of the orolay amazon coat among moms at pick up on the upper west side. it was sold out, of course, because it is the coziest, most comfortable, best priced coat in the world. i stalked amazon until it came back on offer and it was well worth the wait. i LOVE my amazon coat! it has tons of pockets that are straight up and down so that stuff doesn’t slip out of them AND they all have zippers, just in case you are carrying around something super special. the hood is lined with fuzzy, warm stuff and the inside is a bright, cheery orange. you can get it in black, navy and army green (putty too, but that colorway is not nice.) i was so delighted with my coat that i planned all my christmas travel outfits around it (no dresses, just boots and jeans because the amazon coat is too casual for a party dress.) i had to wear it on the plane because it is too bulky to put in a suitcase, but i pulled that snuggly hood up and had the best airplane nap of all time, despite the fact that i was sitting between my two children. the hood also seems to be noise cancelling. so i thoroughly enjoyed the holidays with my amazon coat and then my life became a series of shit fuck events that snowballed into my nearly falling completely apart… but praise jesus, i had my amazon coat. i just crawled into that coat and added my pizzeria pom pom hat and i have hardly taken them off (even indoors) for the last three weeks. because overlaying all of these horrendous events has been planning my son’s bar mitzvah. i am so PROUD of my son for his dedication and earnest commitment to learning, but planning a bar mitzvah (especially for a shiksa mama) is no small endeavor and despite all of my hyper-organized lists and spreadsheets, i still felt desperately behind three weeks out. following are the events that sent me diving into the safety of my amazon coat:

a christmas miracle

December 18, 2018 in hank, holiday, photography, family

every year, we send out a holiday card featuring the kids smiling and laughing together. they DO laugh and smile together pretty frequently, but hardly ever when we are shooting these photos.

“FEO, FEO” lucy (when she had no teeth) yelled downstairs in alarm a few years ago, “the christmas clothes are out… i fink we have to do the card today!” then a series of loud groans as they commiserated together.

fifty

December 12, 2018 in family, hank

fifty is a BIG fucking number! i kept thinking i’d get used to it… i’ve actually been telling myself and everyone else that i’m fifty for the last four years, just to give myself some lead time (which has also led to a lot of confusion as i would forget how old i actually was.) but the truth is, i am NOT best pleased about being associated with this enormous number and i am NOT used to it. i wanted to be bouldery and think about all the things i’m grateful for - i get emails from oprah and deepak so i know grateful people are happier people … and i AM grateful for a lot (glitter nail polish, the pacific ocean, my beloved hank, my vacuum cleaner, see’s scotchmallows, boulder’s hot pink sunrises, the brique poulet at ten ten, the doctor in san francisco who got me pregnant, first with theo and then with lucy, the doctor in amsterdam who finally got lucy out of me, the surgeons in amsterdam who stopped my hemorrhage and saved my life, jane austen, fog, the whole of paris, dove soap, pom-poms, my first husband, mint chip ice cream, sheepskins, pompadour chocolate shop, the day’s first cup of coffee, audrey hepburn in “funny face,” the frick museum, my writing group, men’s white, ribbed tank tops, the lights lining the bridges of amsterdam, the bar method, good times drive through, flannel pajamas, my GG’s cursive, macklemore, peppermint tea, white walls, the lazy boy movie theater at the flatiron’s mall, my superstar colorist, rain, oatmeal chocolate chip (notice i DIDN’T say “raisin”) cookie dough, red tulips, the “little house” books, the google maps lady, mahjong, cuckoo clocks, the new bay bridge, sparkly gold hairbands, my incomparable parents, my checkered, slip-on vans, my bed, triple cream brie, my wonderful friends, the seat heats in my car, and of course, my dearest, darling children)…just NOT for fifty. i think i’d rather be fifty-two, already immersed in the decade but not anywhere near sixty… which i don’t imagine i will be grateful for either!

fireworks finishing butters

December 04, 2018 in family, garden, recipe

we LOVE butter in our family. a little (or BIG) pat of butter makes everything taste better. some of us REALLY love butter… when lucy was about four, we were baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (notice i DIDN’T say “raisin”) and i turned around and lu was clutching an errant stick, taking bites out it, like it was a banana. so we were beside ourselves when our friend, jessica pratt jacobson, started fireworks finishing butters.

sayulita

November 27, 2018 in family, travel

i booked our holiday to sayulita several months ago and then promptly forgot about it. two days prior to our trip, i looked up our flights and discovered we were meant to depart at seven IN THE MORNING! i must have had a good reason for choosing a flight at an hour that meant we would have to get up in the middle of the night, but i honestly can’t remember it. so at the last minute, we decided to go the night before and stay at the lovely westin at DIA. this hotel, designed by gensler, is in the shape of those little wings they used to give children on flights when i was a kid. the best part is the pool on the top floor in the dip between the wings. we stayed there once before when we got blizzarded in right before christmas and no flights were leaving. the view then was pretty surreal as there is nothing around the denver airport and there was so much snow it felt like we were on the moon. on that trip we spent hours in the restaurant brunching (i still think about this delicious breakfast sandwich we ate with bacon, egg, cheese and avocado that i could never properly replicate), watching movies and swimming. it was a wonderful way to start our vacation. this time was not as relaxing because we still had to get up at 4 am, but we did have room service at 4:30 am… there are not many things better than someone knocking on your door bearing a little trolley of coffee and warm breakfast.

hank's diet

November 22, 2018 in hank, family, holiday, pet

many of you have been asking how hank is doing on his diet. i have to say, it has not been easy. with the big drop in temperature, we tried on his favorite sweater from last winter a few days ago. last december, it was cozy, yet roomy, but this year, it fits him like a crop top a la britney spears, early nineties. i’m wondering if he is going to be one of those dogs whose closet is filled with a range of sizes he dips into depending on how much bacon he has had. will he need enough space to house his “fat jeans” and his “strictly following the paleo” jeans?

iPad

November 19, 2018 in family, travel

last week i went to see my superstar colorist, liz murphy, so she could paint away the pesky “sparklers” that insist on growing out of my head and she was shocked by the big dent next to my eyebrow. “what happened to you?” she asked. “oh, i fell asleep on my glasses last night reading.” liz is a big reader too and understands that changing my bedtime routine is not an option. but i had already been awake for several hours and the mark on my face was still quite prominent and definitely not pretty, so clearly, something had to change. liz, who has the wisdom of yoda, but looks like a bombshell, said, “you need a reading device, like a kindle or an iPad.” of course i have heard of the kindle, but i have not been interested in them because i love holding an actual book. i love the feel of the paper and “personalizing” my books by turning down the pages of passages i like or bending the page corners to remember my place (this doesn’t happen all that often as i usually fall asleep before i manage to do that.) i like arranging my finished books on my bookshelf so i can reference them later or lend them out to friends. and i love looking at the jacket designs and all the color and warmth books add to a room. i just love books.

boulder halloween

October 31, 2018 in family, hank, holiday, pet

halloween in boulder is outrageous. when we stepped out to go trick or treating our first year in colorado, i thought we’d wandered onto a movie set. literally EVERY house in our neighborhood was decorated, and not just with a pumpkin or two but with strings of orange lights, giant spiders and webs stretched across the houses, skeletons and zombies and werewolves emerging from the lawns and ghosts and ghoulies hanging from the trees. and when you ring the bell, the homeowners answer in full costume. sometimes they jump out at you and sometimes they just smile and offer the kids candy and the parents a glass of wine or a beer. yes - if you accept all the libations presented, you will be quite tipsy by the end of your neighborhood rounds. there are even a few famous addresses that do full spook houses… i took lucy to the one on 10th street when she was a little too young and we were both traumatized … i nearly peed my pants when a gazillion enormous spiders dropped on us and she let out a wail that lasted for at least two blocks. we had to retire for the evening after that.

coot lake

October 26, 2018 in family, garden, hank, pet

now that hank is on a diet, we have been trying to step up our exercise routine and we made an amazing discovery… COOT LAKE! coot lake is the perfect kind of nature for us… there is always parking across the street, the paths are flat and well maintained and we can circle the lake in converse or even low boots. there are lots of nice dogs for hank to romp around with (he can go off leash!) and there are benches for me to sit on, as well as little poems posted on signs here and there. and of course, there is the pretty water to look at. one of the hardest things for me about living in boulder is that there is no ocean. i have never lived anywhere before that wasn’t bumped up against a big body of water and sometimes i feel a bit panicky about being landlocked. certainly, a lake isn’t the same thing as an ocean, but it is still blue and has movement and reflection and alleviates the dry, dusty feel of the relentless colorado sun.

1970's (snow day) casserole

October 17, 2018 in family, recipe, hank

we just had our first blizzard in boulder… in typical colorado fashion we went straight from summer to winter, with only an afternoon of fall. i never get used to the roller coaster weather here. i am never prepared with the right size snow boots for the kids or snow pants that fit properly or matching pairs of mittens. at best, i get a whiff of the cow poo smell (which is a pretty reliable snow predictor - i don’t know why) and i have a few hours to get ready. at worst, i wake up and the yard is all white and i have to scurry around and see how i can outfit the kids in some collection of warm clothes before school starts. we are usually late on this first snow day… i just always expect there will be that third season before the snow comes and even after seven years here, i haven’t learned to check the weather.

hank is on a diet...

October 09, 2018 in family, hank, pet

hank is on a diet. we took him to the vet a few weeks ago because he had a weird boo boo on his lip and the vet told me he should have a waist. he was thirty-two pounds. i WAS wondering how big he ought to be because his dad is only twenty-six pounds. six pounds more on someone the size of a breadbox does seem like a lot, but i HATE diets. the vet asked me how much i was feeding him and i replied, “3/4 cup of kibble with water and a spoonful of wet food twice a day, like the breeder told me to do.” (i didn’t mention all the treats and extras that i gIve him throughout the day… just like when you fill out those forms at the doctor’s and they ask you how frequently and how many glasses of wine you drink…who is ever truly honest then?) “yes,” said the vet, “but that was when he was a puppy. now that he is over a year, he is a regular dog and that’s too much.” i still consider hank a puppy - his first birthday was just in september. also, it doesn’t really make sense to me that as he gets bigger, he should have less food. i feed my kids way more food now that they are eight and twelve, than i did when they were babies… bigger kids, bigger portions. i guess that’s not how it works with dogs. and it never occurred to me to alter how much i feed hank because i am a rule follower. the breeder gave me a big binder with all kinds of instructions about how to take care of hank and i have been following it (mostly) to a tee.

harvest season

September 20, 2018 in family, garden, hank, quilts, recipe

i don’t know what factors came together to produce such an enormous bounty of fruit on my farm (i.e. my backyard) but the output has been tremendous. i decided to have a couple of neighborhood harvest parties so that i could get some help picking all the apples and then the plums that ripened a few weeks later. i thought i could pull off a tom sawyer “painting the fence” caper and make my friends think it would be FUN to harvest with me. i would provide snacks and drinks and my neighbors could do the labor. i was imagining something like the barn raising parties they used to have on little house on the prairie. pa would be out there entertaining everyone on his fiddle (i could play macklemore on my sonos), ma would would lay out cornbread, fresh, grilled deer meat and homemade pies (i made a run to trader joes), the children would be running around (i have a couple of those) and the grown ups would build a barn (the neighbors would pick my apple tree and plum bush clean) so i wouldn’t have to gather up any more rotten fruit or worry about the bears coming into my yard and leaving giant poops or mauling us.

soccer mom

September 04, 2018 in family

“soccer mom” is a term i never wanted applied to me… museum mom or high tea mom or movie mom or banana split mom or snuggle all afternoon on the sofa mom are all ones i can embrace (even though they haven’t really made it into the vernacular.) but the other weekend i found myself schlepping three twelve year old boys and my daughter and my puppy across the state to a tournament to kick off the boys’ fall soccer season. i don’t really know where we were… i just obediently listened to the google maps lady and followed all of her turns… but i do know that we were way past ikea, which is about as far away as i ever drive. and we didn’t even stop there for my customary hotdog and ice cream cone, which was a little disappointing.