If you’ve read my newsletter, you’ve heard me talk about Jenny Rosenstrach, she of Dinner: A Love Story fame and creator of my beloved granola recipe. (Her Three Things newsletter helped save my sanity during the first two years of the pandemic.) She’s wise, witty and practical, three things (heh) I admire in a cook and a human being. And her seven-minute egg trick is saving my life these days.
Jenny’s been saying for years that an egg makes it dinner: to wit, that topping many things with a seven-minute egg (i.e., hard-boiled with a jammy center) turns them from a side dish into protein-enough-to-satisfy. After several months of experimenting, I am here to report that it is true, and also to say: I’ve been rather delighting in the odd little variations of said eggs.
Once or twice a week, I fill a pot halfway with water, bring it to a boil and lower in two eggs with a slotted spoon. (I’ve learned that dropping them in, however gently, causes at least one hairline crack, which makes for odd ruffly trails of egg in the water – though they’re still edible.)
Jenny insists that seven minutes – not a second more or less – is the perfect time, but I usually set my timer for 6:50, to account for a few seconds on either end. She recommends an ice bath, which I’ve learned is important (to help them set afterward; they peel much more easily after two or three minutes in cold water). I crack the eggs, peel the shells into the compost bin and plop the eggs on top of a bowl of quinoa and veggies (usually spinach, but I like bell peppers for this, too).
I’m amazed, over and over, by two things: how reliably delicious this is, and the minute variations depending on when I take the eggs out, how long I leave them in the ice bath, maybe even the ambient temperature that day. Sometimes they’re jammy, sometimes runny, sometimes properly hard-boiled. It’s like a tiny science experiment in my kitchen, and it is – thank goodness – a new reliable dinner staple.
What else would you top with an egg to make it dinner? And have you tried Jenny’s 7-minute trick?
There you are this cold day boiling the water on the stove pouring the herbs into the pot hawthorn, rose; buying the tulips & looking at them, holding your heart in your hands at the table saying please, please to nobody else here in the kitchen with you. How hard, how heavy this all is. How beautiful, these things you do, in case they help, these things you do which, although you haven’t said it yet, say that you want to live.
My friend Roxani – who finds the best poems – shared this one on Twitter recently.
Tomorrow kicks off National Poetry Month, and I’ll be sharing poetry on Fridays here, as I do each year.
I love the quiet daily-ness of this poem, and that last line is tremendous. I hope you enjoy.
In this case the simplest answer is also the truest: because it’s something I can do.
I went downtown the other day to donate blood at the hospital, which I’ve been doing every couple of months, give or take, since the start of the pandemic. I was stuck at home, like a lot of folks, in those days, but took part in a local blood drive at the cider house down the hill.
I’ve made a semi-consistent habit of it since then, because I know that blood is always needed, and it costs me very little: just an hour or so of my time, counting travel there and back. (And they give you snacks afterward.)
If you are healthy, and you meet a few other requirements, you are eligible to donate blood in your area. For many of us, it’s a simple way to help our communities, and it’s always needed and appreciated.
I’m just posting this in case someone needs a nudge, or a reminder, that the small, simple daily actions are worthwhile after all, and they do help. They really do.
This morning, on the way to work, I walked down clear sidewalks: some recent rain and mild temperatures had washed them nearly clean of last week’s snow and sleet. I’ve been snapping photos of crocuses and snowdrops, stepping around the occasional clump of hardened snow. There’s rain and wintry mix in the forecast for next week: although we’re technically in meteorological spring, March is still winter in Boston. And this winter has been a strange one.
During the decade I’ve lived in New England, we’ve set records for snow totals in both directions: the notorious winter of 2014-15, when it would not stop snowing, remains the high mark for snow in Boston at around 110 inches. Until recently, this winter (which also boasted the cloudiest January on record) was the least snowy winter in Boston’s history. We’ve had at least one record-breaking cold snap, but many more oddly mild(ish), dry days.
Of course, it’s not over yet, and as we all know, “averages” are made up of both dramatic extremes and quieter middles. But it’s been a season of fits and starts: temps in the 60s over Presidents’ Day weekend, after lows that dipped below zero earlier in the month. A few storms that have dumped several inches of snow and sent everyone scrambling to dig out their shovels and ice scrapers, interspersed with days of cold rain or lowering skies. We’ve had very few of the bright blue days I love, where I inhale the cold, crisp air as I run along the harbor under the morning sun. It hasn’t felt quite normal–though “normal,” as we all know, is highly variable.
Despite the fitful weather and the lack of snow, some signs of the season are showing up right on time. Those snowdrops have been popping up for weeks now, recently joined by crocuses and early daffodils. The maple buds are turning red; the magnolia branches look fuzzier, or maybe that’s just me anticipating the time when they’ll burst open into pink and white. And the light–this I know for sure–is lingering just a bit longer every day.
It’s been a strange, fitful life season, too: a reentry from a pandemic that isn’t quite over, no matter how weary we are of anything COVID-related. Some of us are still relearning how to be in society, after nearly two years spent isolating whenever possible. I’ve written before about needing more time to recover after trips and activities, no matter how much I enjoy them. And of course there are the usual existential questions about life and career and relationships, magnified by the last three profoundly strange years: Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I doing the work that’s meant for me, and am I loving my people well? How do I know?
How do I know, indeed?
We’re so addicted to forward motion, as a culture: linear progress, productivity, the checking off of tasks on the to-do list. I count up the number of pages I write, tally the runs and yoga classes I get to in a week, make and remake lists in my planner. I long to find some momentum on a longer writing project: a book of essays, maybe, or a memoir in vignettes. I want to accomplish, to check off, to have the sense that all this effort, all these quietly lived days, are counting for something.
As we approach the third anniversary of the pandemic, that strange, disorienting Friday when the world shut down, I’m wondering: what if linear isn’t the thing at all? What if progress is just a name we slap onto weeks of fits and starts, the shiny veneer we paste over a winding path, the story we tell ourselves because we’ve come to believe that cyclical or slower growth doesn’t matter?
I think about those crocuses: quietly gathering their strength underground for months before peeking their heads above the ground, seeking the light. I think about the seasons, how the angle of the sun shifts gradually each day, despite our labels of equinox and solstice. I think about my own growth, how I can attempt a yoga pose or wrestle a knotty emotional problem for days or weeks –and then suddenly, in a split-second epiphany or a quieter moment, understanding can dawn, seemingly out of nowhere.
Along with the crocuses, I am trying (always trying) to open myself up to the beauty that is right here, rather than forcing my own expectations onto reality. It’s hard sometimes: I’d rather have a plan and a list and a road map for how to get there. But it’s worthwhile and life-giving work: to slow down a bit, to notice what’s really here, and to delight in it – even if it’s not what I expected.
Hello, friends. It’s technically the halfway point of winter, though we in the Northeast know we still have weeks to go before spring really comes. No matter what the groundhog says, we can expect biting winds and freezing temps for a while yet.
January was unusually grey – the cloudiest in decades, according to my favorite weather guy. I struggle with short days and bitter nights , and have been feeling a bit uninspired at work and in my own creative practice. So I needed the push, more than usual, to really look at what’s saving my life these days.
Here’s my list – I’d love to hear yours, if you’d like to share:
Clementines. These little bursts of sunshine are my favorite winter fruit. Their sweet-tart zing is just the best, and I love the way the scent lingers on my hands.
If you read my recent newsletter, you know: the first week of January here was dreary and grey, with mornings shrouded in mist and afternoons that looked just like the mornings. It wasn’t particularly cold (at least, for New England), but it was gloomy as a Yorkshire moor, and not in the romantic way. By Thursday I was mopey, and by Friday I was downright cranky. And on Saturday morning, I nearly squealed – or wept, I couldn’t decide which – when I woke to bright sunshine.
There’s a sharpness to the light this time of year, a sudden urgency, as though the daylight itself is trying to make the most of its limited hours. The sun’s low angle bounces off the harbor and arrows straight into my kitchen window, nearly blinding me, but its golden warmth is welcome.
My houseplants stretch toward the light, and so do I – making sure to bundle up and get out for walks as often as I can. If it’s too cold or I’ve just come back inside, sometimes I stand in the kitchen window and let the sunlight flood my cells, my shadow stretching long on the floorboards behind me, lighting up the ordinary objects that crowd my shelves. Even my silverware drawer looks ethereal, bathed in that kind of light.
For the grey days, I still have my happy lamp and vitamin D pills – and you can bet I’m outside every day, whether walking or running or simply commuting the few blocks to my office. The fresh air helps, no matter what color the skies are. But the sunlight – blazing or shy, intense or elusive – is its own particular gift. Especially on these short, dark days, I’m making the effort to soak it up as much as I can. (I’m also thinking of dipping back into Horatio Clare’s lovely memoir, aptly titled The Light in the Dark.)
What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is the face of patience. Inside the river there is an unfinishable story and you are somewhere in it and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce but take it also to the forest. The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child is singing still. I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four, and the leaf is singing still.
I found Oliver’s collection Swan at the Booksmith this fall, and this first poem stopped me in my tracks, especially the lines about where to take “your busy heart.” As we enter a new year, I am hoping to take my heart to all those places: engaging with the world, noticing and absorbing beauty, and taking time to be in nature and be still.
It seems to start earlier every year: the full-on blitz of evergreens, candy-cane decorations, tinsel and twinkle lights. Red cups at Starbucks, Santa hats all over the place, peppermint-flavored everything…the list goes on.
I’m here for the twinkle lights and the peppermint treats – and y’all know I love Christmas music and movies. But for the last several years, I’ve been edging into the season: tiptoeing, observing tiny rituals, looking for the light. It feels like too much to turn the Christmas-ness up full blast in mid-November, if I want to actually enjoy it. As Father Tim once observed, it feels like “hitting, and holding, high C” for weeks on end. As a singer, I know that is both screechy and impossible.
This year, I am taking the season in small doses: putting up my two trees, both of them festooned with lights, but not rushing to hang the ornaments. I’m taping Christmas cards around my door frame, wearing the tiny raccoon-holding-a-holly-sprig pin that was my mother’s in the ’90s. I’m listening to Christmas music when I feel like it (Sara Groves, Kate Rusby, the Indigo Girls, Vince Guaraldi), and turning it off when I’ve had enough.
I’ve been rehearsing for our annual neighborhood carol service with friends, trying to hear how the phrases should sound, relaxing into the familiarity of “Silent Night” and “The First Noel.” The music is still creaky, but it will come together. We will probably miss a cue or two, stumble over words in an unfamiliar language. And we will also create chords of beauty and longing, both from carols we know and pieces we have only learned this year.
“The light shines in the darkness,” we are told, and we hear it often this time of year. But living in the Northeast reminds me that the darkness is necessary, too. I can savor the fiery sunsets and crisp moonlit nights, while also appreciating the longer evenings. The light and the darkness need one another; neither one can exist alone.
This truth is harder to accept on an emotional level; I’d rather skip over the grief that comes up this time of year, and focus on the joy. But I know I can’t do that. Ignoring the sadness will only make it worse. Naming it, and leaning into the music and rituals that make room for complexity, is vital if I want to live honestly in – and enjoy – this season.
I do miss some of the Advent rituals of my old life: greening the church on a Saturday morning, gathering with friends I don’t see anymore, singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” in a community that is no longer mine. There is brokenness and longing in these memories, and also joy: those rituals nourished me, for a time, and now I have to find new rituals to carry me through.
As is so often the case, there’s a metaphor here. Advent is about what happens when the old ways don’t work anymore. It is a sudden interruption, a dramatic entrance, into a world that is desperate for all things to be made new. It is making sense of the light and the darkness – or, failing that, accepting the presence of both in this world.
How are you savoring the season this year? I’d love to hear.
For bright, bracing miles along the river on Thanksgiving morning, sunlight sparkling on the water and my favorite women of folk in my ears.
For a phone call with my parents, standing on the back porch in the sunshine, talking football and family and the recipes we were all making for the day, two thousand miles apart.
For two racks of ribs with my grandmother’s barbecue sauce, my partner’s legendary mac and cheese, the sweet potato recipe that tastes like Thanksgiving to me. For corn muffins and tabbouleh and a charcuterie board to tide us over while we cooked. For a table positively groaning with food – more, much more, than enough.
For a bike ride with my guy in the sunshine, and the love, respect and genuine affection that sustains us every day.
For the texts rolling in from faraway friends, with Friends gifs and pictures of tables and kitchens and families. For feeling held by the communities I love, scattered though they may be.
For an evening spent washing stacks of dishes and baking dozens of cookies, scrolling through Christmas movie trailers on Netflix and listening to episodes of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
For tricky conversations about the history of the day: I believe gratitude is always worth practicing, but I also, increasingly, believe we’ve got to reckon with the colonial legacy that took so much from Native peoples.
For my job at ZUMIX – community, music and young people – and a fun, diverse group of colleagues who are both hardworking and kind.
For the chance to keep building a life I love, challenges and all.
If you celebrated last week, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
cakes, tea and dreams 