All posts filed under: Something Else

Adiós, Aliment!

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Well, not really. I’m just heading over to my website, hosted on Squarespace. In my third year of college, I studied abroad in Buenos Aires. It was a completely liberating/transformative experience and the person who I am today is largely because of that year of complete freedom and exploration. It was also the year when my hunger for telling stories through words and my hunger for dining out (on an advantageous exchange rate) started to intertwine. I had a little blog, hosted on WordPress, (it was pink) where I would write about what I ate, and who I ate it with, and where I went. Pretty straightforward. When I started a master’s program in food culture and communication, I figured that I should step up my game. Again, I landed on WordPress, though I felt my images weren’t very strong (I’m always telling myself someday, someday, I’ll learn how to use that DSLR that’s sitting in a drawer in my living room) to stand up to my text, which is really where I was putting …

Wow

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I’m trying something new today. I’m going to use the 10 Minute Egg writing prompts to get me going for the day while I sip my coffee, instead of just browsing the interwebs reading food news for those same 10 minutes. WOW. This fog! This summer fog! I thought Karl didn’t live here. Maybe this is Karl’s cousin, Carl. I allow myself to be baffled by Carl, even though I should know better, layering on my heavy sweaters that I regret a few minutes later zooming through town on my recently acquired bicycle, known to some as bumble bee. I still haven’t quite mastered the gears, so I cruise a few blocks until I struggle to regain my momentum after engaging in what they call a “California stop” at the few stop signs there are in town. (See, I knew I would get to bicycles eventually!) WOW. By the time I get to my warehouse-y (not an adjective used lightly) office, I’m just glad I’ve made it, even though I have to struggle through the door …

Cycles

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about cycles. About how things repeat, but also don’t quite ever remain the same. About how energy flows. How emotions wax and wane. (I’m also thinking about bicycles, but that’s more of a witty aside.) I’m a person who likes structure. I write to do lists. I cross things off. I write more to do lists. I cross more things off. Repeat, adapt, repeat, adapt. But another side of me is enjoying this *very* unique (for me), non-INTJ cycle (summer light-induced, no doubt) right now where I feel free and open and mobile and friendly. This is a good cycle. No, this is a GREAT fucking cycle. Because I can think back to a not-so-distant past where I felt the opposite of all of these things. It was a no bueno cycle. Maybe cycles are more like ruts. Because I’m also in a cycle of “not writing.” I feel so many things about this! Embarrassed. Ashamed. Guilty. Like maybe because I haven’t been doing what I love doing for …

Open Books, Open Minds, Open Hearts

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As we prepare for a heatwave here in Healdsburg (you would think it was the end of the world the way people start talking about it days beforehand), I’m actually quite enjoying the unusually warm evenings, spent reading on my porch. “Porch sitting” is a hobby that I cultivated during my year in Bra. Well, I say porch, but really I had some surface area blocked in by planter boxes where I would keep my bicycle and sit, attracting the gaze and curiosity of my Italian neighbors as I plowed through book after book from the amazing UNISG library. No surprise, my coffee table pile is filled with plenty of food-related books, including: Salad for President Anyone who knows me well knows that I love everything and anything about this whole concept. I love the button I got at Food Book Fair, I love the chapter titles (such as “Salad in Sweatpants: Casual Meals for People Who Already Love You), you name it. Do I have plans to actually make any of the salads inside? …

Love is Everywhere

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At work lately, we’ve started each month of online communication with a newsletter that we affectionately call a “mood blast,” sharing inspiration from inside our studio in Healdsburg. It’s a way for us to sell product, sure, but also write about these items in a thoughtful (and sometimes whimsical!) way. One of the images that we featured in early February was the print “Love is Everywhere: Look for It” from the artist Susan O’Malley. She passed away in 2015, but her bio suggests her legacy will live on through her work, “Ultimately O’Malley’s projects aspire to inspire hope, optimism and a sense of interconnectedness in our lives.” Hope? Optimism? Interconnectedness? I could hardly think of a better time to reinforce and practice those values than this day, in this year, and in this political climate. At the end of last year, I found my emotional, physical, and spiritual selves utterly depleted. The afterburners just weren’t firing anymore. For several months I felt myself completely disengaged with my surroundings, in a black hole of sorts, as I …

Thoughts on the Supermoon

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Living in a quiet place with almost no light pollution, I have been introduced to, and come to savor, night walks. Occasionally with the iPhone flashlight guiding my way, but most times not, night walks are a time for learning a thing or two or three about what lies up above from a thoughtful, knowledgeable companion, and an invitation to a walking meditation. I have never kept track of the moon as intently as I have this year. I’ve noticed its position in relation to my home, to the river, to the mountains, to my moving car, to my physical self, to my spiritual self… The blood moon of last fall while I was rushing around and hardly ever breathing in New York was a passing elevator conversation that I hardly recall. The supermoon of the last few nights was not. I just came from a yoga class where the instructor concluded by offering up that the supermoon is associated with feelings of gratitude and abundance. Gratitude for our selves and accepting that we are enough. Gratitude for feeling supported by and supportive of those …

January 2016

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It’s been a while (like, last summer) since I had read enough (besides the daily swoops through sites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) to be able to put together one of these posts. Luckily, hibernation mode is quite conducive to book reading, so I’ve been doing some catching up lately. This issue is just a win-win. Lucky Peach is my favorite magazine and breakfast is my favorite meal. Throw in some kooky illustrations, a story about Mickey Mouse pancakes, and how people from across all the time zones chow down in the A.M, and you’ll be craving a breakfast burrito (or maybe that’s just me). This title piqued my interest because it combined my nerdy, Middlebury-induced interest in Political Science with the food side of things. Unfortunately, this book got really old after a while–I much would have preferred to just read a long newspaper or magazine article. The premise is that for several reasons, Americans waste a lot of food and use too much gasoline. Basically, we think we’re too cool for school. I also …

A Look Back at 2015

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Tortilla espanola, salmorejo, crab and avocado salad from a cooking class in Sevilla with my parents. My 2015 was full of tasty travels. A scroll through my iPhone photos made me a little bit dizzy, so I’ve distilled a few snapshots here to reflect on the past year–where I’ve been (mostly Northern Italy) and what I’ve been eating (pizza, of course). Oh, Gennaro’s pizza, how I miss you. The crust, so perfectly chewy. You would think you couldn’t possibly eat the whole thing in one sitting, and then next thing you know, it’s disappeared. There were a few times when I went three times in a week…  a slippery slope for sure. School lunch doesn’t get much better than this, folks. I have to say, I didn’t have much of a liking for radicchio (among other things) before my year in Bra, but now I sure do. Some of my colleagues developed a habit of dipping the fresh bread into the daily yogurt–I thought that was a bit strange, and just twirled my pasta to my …

At “Home” Out West

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Lookin’ good, ladies. As 2015 winds down and I’m trying to find my restorative niche (hint: mine potentially involves catching up on the breakfast issue of Lucky Peach and a warm cup of soup), I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to call a certain place “home.” Although I lived for almost 10 months in a cozy, little town in Northern Italy, it never really felt like “home.” My parents sold my childhood “home” while I was living there. And throughout my four-ish-month-long adventure in New York, I always felt somewhat adrift and frenzied. There were oodles of exciting endeavors and late afternoon/early evening weekend falafel runs to keep me going, for sure, but…something was just missing. So a few weeks ago, I packed up my overflowing suitcase that is now beginning to fray at the edges and headed to San Francisco, where I hoped I would feel a little less anxious and a little more grounded, despite never really having lived there before. If I could sum up 2015 for me in one word (well, that’s …

August 2015

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This is my “to read” pile. Seriously. I love to read. I really do. Books, magazines, blogs, you name it. But sadly, since moving to NYC three weeks (where has this time gone?!) ago and taking on quite a few projects that I always feel slightly behind on, reading has been the thing that has dropped off my radar. It’s almost hilarious that the apartment I’m staying in has one of the most beautifully curated bookshelves I’ve ever seen. And now I have this monster stack of titles sitting on this coffee table thing at my feet while I write this post. Sigh. Anyways, in a throwback to my days in Bra when I read four books during my weeklong staycation, I wanted to tantalize you with the titles that I have waiting for me. I admit, I’m a booktease. 1. The Almost Nearly Perfect People. Recommended to me by a friend who spent a few weeks in Copenhagen. After being in Denmark and seeing lots of blond, smiling, long legged people on bicycles not weaving through traffic …