A New Year

An Instagram app summed up my 2017 pretty accurately. Cats, kids, rainbows, rage.

Why am I not here, enjoying your company? Because I can't tell you what else I'm doing, but I know that it's the strangest mix of franticness and inertia. 

Even now. I wrote those two sentences, and then sat here for a full three minutes. Ben is playing piano in the blue twilight that's bouncing off the snow, and there is a cat sleeping on the library's cookbook that I was reading (Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables, which is stunning), and Birdy is making herself a snack downstairs, probably something involving rice cakes and almond butter. Peaceful.

Not shown: Ben applying to college.

But also I am drowning in desperately frantic, dull busywork (hello, college secretary job!), and I'm nine days into my January thing, and I wouldn't mind looking forward to a big, frosty glass of beer or a nice full jelly glass of dark wine. More closely forward than the end of the month, that is.

Fulfilling bookplate requests was one of the loveliest parts of my holiday! Thank you for asking for them. And for not complaining that they were just cheesily-printed labels with my crap signature on them.

And I'm terrible with the holidays being over (as my psychiatrist friend-running partner Lydia likes to say, "This is not new information.") Oh, but it was a magical time, full of puzzles and games and music and cheese and movies (Coco! Three Billboards!) and favorite houseguests and the kind of bonebiting cold that I love for some reason, that reason mostly being staying indoors all cozy with the leftover ham, binge-watching Stranger Things.

My handsome dad, exuberantly kicking someone's ass at Don't Tip the Waiter. We have totally hacked that game, partially by changing the rules, and mostly by combining it with Animal Stackers. Just email me for more on that. I will try not presume that everybody needs this information.

Big Blitz with the perfect nephews. 

Every Christmas, my parents give us a decadent, stunning puzzle from Liberty Puzzles, and I can hardly describe the multi-sensory beauty of them. If you like puzzles, just check out the website, but imagine that each puzzle piece smells deeply of wood and smoke and also that you will need to refinance your house. When I lend them, they're the only puzzles I ask to get back.

I don't have a new recipe today, and that's partly because the clean stuff I'm doing feels so weird and unapproachable. Cultured cheese made from cashews? A rice cake with almond butter and miso? (Run, don't walk!) But I will see if something shakes out soon that I can share. Something that the kids don't look at smirkingly before saying, "Wow, decadent snack, Mom! Two whole green olives in a little bowl!" Speaking of the kids, have I mentioned my Umpteen column at Motherwell? Please check it out. There's a new one up today.

What else I can offer, on the off-chance you're Whole 30ing or Cleansing or otherwise heinousing up your January, is this list of recipes from years past.
Clean and Delicious Soup for One
Clean Clean Blueberry Pie Smoothie
Clean Green Soup (with bonus ideas)
Crazy (Good) "Latte"
Raspberry-Cardamom Smoothie (with bonus thoughts on curry and sashimi)

It's weird that there's no salad in there, because I'm pretty much a rhinoceros at this point, or some other zoo herbivore, inhaling giant troughs of leaves every second. Here's a fantastic one: greens, shredded raw beets, a tin of Trader Joe's Smoked Trout, and then a hot topping made from slivered almonds fried with capers (blot them on paper towels first) and garlic in lots of olive oil. Then a big squeeze of lemon juice. It's the best.

Sending love out to you! Stay safe and warm and well and angry. xo