Up until now, I’ve had a 7-year-old completely empty category for homemade baby food recipes on the blog. If that isn’t indicative of my well-intentioned self, I don’t know what is. I had always planned on posting the homemade baby food recipes that I made for Hal, and I wish I had. Because, with no memory and a mom brain, I basically had to start from scratch with Linnie. (Just know, if I tell you I’ll do something, I probably will. It just might be a year or two later.) In that spirit, I decided to do one huge Homemade Baby Food Recipe post for fear that another won’t happen. So here it is, equipped with all the colors of the rainbow, using minimal tools, and simple methods. Read more
I had scaffolding and plans in place to set myself up to succeed this time. At motherhood and working and life in general. Maybe succeed isn’t the right word. I was just trying not to flail again. Linnie would go to childcare out of the house, and Hallie would be at school and then day camp over the summer. I would work when I was working and be a mom when I wasn’t working instead of trying to do it all, like I did when Hal was a baby. Like I did before I knew myself well enough to know that I don’t work well (or at all) with distractions or multitasking or tiny chunks of broken time. But this time, this time things would be different. (Scroll to the bottom for easy links to the pretty new Noted by Post-it® collection.)
I’m not sure how to be online right now and hold space for everything in the periphery, which is taking up the little, foggy, postpartum brain space I have left, and filling every offline conversation with friends and family. Recipes feel trite and yet we still eat. This 15 minute Lightened Up Pasta al Limone has saved us once or twice lately. My words sound hollow and yet I still jot thoughts in the Notes app and on here, mostly little poems, if you can even call them that. There’s one titled “The Moon Still Hangs and So Does My Empty Stomach,” a hopeful poem written on an early dark New Years’ morning with a headache from only drinking half of a Cosmo. Read more
Hi! Happy New Year. We made it to 2021, which felt a little like making it past Y2K. I made myself a Cosmo, drank half, fell asleep, and woke up with a headache. I officially can’t hang anymore. Sparkling water for life. In other news, Kev gets the first round of his COVID vaccine today. I’m grateful for that. I’m also grateful for this—with The Minimalist Kitchen back on the shelves, the Course is back and now open for registration. Read more
Remember when? When I used to talk about finding ordinary magic in the mundane and beauty in the repetition. I’m eating my words right now (and these Chocolate Cardamom Rye Cut-Out Cookies, too). The mundane is more mundane than I ever imagined, and the ordinary is so repetitive these days, it’s almost lost its meaning. We’re living in a never-ending page out of Olivia, where I make breakfast, pick up Edwin the cat the living room pillows, make lunch, pick up the living room pillows, and make dinner. (Minus the baby snuggles that I could never tire of.) And every time I go to post something, I usually press backspace. Backspace, backspace, backspace. I’ve said that already, I say. My life isn’t that inspiring these days, I think. Maybe the mundane isn’t so magic, especially during a pandemic. Ho ho hum. Read more
There are two types of pie makers—people who make pie and people who don’t. There’s good reason to skip pie-making altogether, as it comes with a whole lot of issues—like shrinking pie crust and uncooked filling and soupy filling and overcooked crust and mushy filling and soggy-bottom-crust-syndrome and no insurance that your hard work will be worth it. I made this pie for the people who don’t make pie. I also made this Doable and Delicious Almond Apple Pie for the people who need a little extra pie insurance, like me.
The beauty of pressing publish on a creative endeavor before getting interru… “Mom!” “Hey, Mel.” “Muh, muh,” says the littlest one, which we’re pretty sure is her effort at saying “more” not “mom.” …Is such a luxury these days. As is the ability to archive the perseverating thoughts that come with chasing down an idea, even an idea as simple as a recipe for Browned Butter Pumpkin Muffins.
I never know where to begin these days with a blog post. I’m still digging out of the hole from taking time off, sacred time, to welcome Linnie into the family, which has left a lot of little piles everywhere, both the literal and figurative kind. (Thus, I’ve titled this stage of life: Little Piles Everywhere. If only it were snow.) Today I’m picking up a pile from April, when I found out my cookbook, The Minimalist Kitchen, had finally been reprinted after selling out a year prior (!!!). And then I’ll tell you about this Creamy Dairy-Free Butternut Pasta recipe, an adaptation from the book. Read more
