It feels good to have my own space again. My belongings are finally unpacked (well, most of them, anyway) and put away in closets, cabinets and atop shelves—a sure sign of permanence in a housing situation.

There’s a supreme comfort in having your possessions accessible to you, isn’t there? As soon as I unpacked my cookbooks, which had remained sealed in storage since Virginia, I couldn’t stop tearing them from the bookshelves and rifling through their photos and recipes. I was ravenous not for the food, but for the return of a sense of ownership. Even if I wasn’t planning on making anything—and for awhile, the fridge and pantry were too barren to raid—it was still nice to know that Ina Garten’s Tuscan Lemon Chicken was there, just in case my eyes (or my soul) got hungry.

(more…)

There’s a lot that changes when you move from one part of the country to another: geographical features, regional chain stores, and your neighbors’ accents (though we haven’t run into any of Bill Swerski’s Superfans quite yet). One thing I didn’t expect to change so drastically? The contents of the grocery stores.

Recently, over tea and Girl Scout cookies with a friend, I mentioned that I had been surprised to learn—at age eighteen—that Jews make up less than 2% of the U.S. population. Growing up next to Skokie, Illinois, which held the highest percentage of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, I always assumed that at least half of America was Jewish. The same proportion of my middle-school classmates had thrown bar or bat mitzvahs, after all. He just laughed at me, but after stepping foot in the Skokie Jewel-Osco last weekend, it was obvious why I’d made that assumption. Huge posters hung from the ceiling near the entrance, wishing shoppers a happy Passover. An entire corner of the store had been set aside for Passover foods, and a permanent section held a kosher deli, bakery and dairy case. Growing up on the North Shore, it seemed as normal to anticipate Chanukah as it was Christmas.

It was a far cry from the grocery stores in the D.C. suburbs, which catered to a Salvadorean population; there was no type of dried chile you couldn’t find there. And there was no short supply of neighborhood Vietnamese markets, either. (On a related note, here’s a little public service announcement: if you’re into pho and you’ve never been to the Eden Center, you haven’t lived.)

(more…)

In my last post, when I asked you about a time when your home was in control of you, you responded with a wealth of different answers. Dana talked about the breakdown and renovation of her new house, and Stephanie, Shanna, and Jacqui talked about the stress of homes invaded by clutter (whether good clutter, like wedding gifts, or bad clutter, as seen in Hoarders…eek). Both of which are very different from my unfortunate, pest-related experience of home invasion, but it was clear to me that there was a thread tying all those experiences together: when we are forced to take care of our homes, rather than our homes taking care of us, some crucial balance is thrown off.

(more…)

Somehow, enough time has crept up on me that I’ve been able to establish two fall traditions as a resident of Virginia. They include, for one, a pre-Halloween trip with Ted’s family to a haunted forest, one that’s about an hour outside of Richmond and squarely in the middle of nowhere. After sunset, we take back roads to a huge cornfield framed by dark forest and, probably, serial killers. We board a hayride bound for the middle of that cornfield, where we’re dropped off and left to fend for ourselves. Stumbling our way through a corn maze, we pass a roaring bonfire that marks the entrance to the haunted forest.

It’s a setup that poises you to react like a high-strung Thoroughbred before a big race, ready to shy away at the drop of a feather. So we trot and high-step our way through barely-lit abadoned houses, accompanied by soft but pulse-quickening horror-movie music, accosted and pursued by entirely too many deranged-looking men with chainsaws. Both years, Ted’s family has laughed at me for screaming so loudly. And that’s all I have to say about that.

(more…)

I suppose it’s strange to be talking about tomatoes in late October, right? But then again, it’s strange to still be seeing tomatoes in late October. And not, mind you, the ones usually airlifted to Virginia in December from exotic lands, but rather the locally-grown kind, laid out in neat rows on farmers’ market tables. It’s just been that kind of summer, bleeding into that kind of fall: where the warmth doesn’t want to stop hanging in the air at night, and every coat-appropriate day is matched with a sunny, borderline humid one.

And that’s okay by me. That means more blissful trips to Shenandoah National Park, drifting among the fiery leaves without the burden of gloves or a scarf. It means more Sunday nights in October dedicated to after-dinner strolls, some of which lead you to the swinging screen doors of hipster-run pie shops in newly-gentrified parts of your city. And, of course, it means fresh tomato sauce for a whole entire month longer than you’d reckoned to be blessed with.

(more…)

I have had the good fortune to not be afflicted by too many dire ailments in my life. Yes, there was one bout of walking pneumonia when I was eight that left me hacking up a lung for a while. And during college, I fell ill with the flu and couldn’t summon the energy to lift my head in the direction of the Season 3 DVDs of Grey’s Anatomy I was screening, despite being intensely curious about the fate of Derek and Meredith‘s relationship. So clearly the situation was a bit alarming. I do, however, contend that the illness wouldn’t have dragged out for as long as it did if I hadn’t run the Marine Corps Marathon three weeks later.

Ahem.

But there is one chronic condition I suffer from that has the power to bring me to my knees. It’s called Jalapeño Eye. That’s a technical term, and I’m pretty sure it has its own WebMD entry. It usually arises after a well-meaning attempt at adding heat to an otherwise non-threatening dish like chana punjabi. Without thinking twice, you slice open the tiny, bright pepper you procured at the market, scrape out its heat-packed seeds and ribs with your fingernail, and generally proceed to spread spice molecules all over your hands without a care in the world. You will then scrub your hands vigorously with dish soap and hot water, thinking you’ve gotten them really, virtuously clean.

(more…)

My friend Emily throws the very best theme parties. In college, she dreamed up ideas and organized them miraculously into being, such as when her urge to throw a Chanukah-themed golf party led us to making latkes for twenty. Always a stick in the mud, I groused about how annoying all that damn potato-grating would be, but Emily saw the big picture: that after nine rounds of holiday drinks at nine different campus locations (including Jello shots at the library—oh, college!) nobody, not even yours truly, would care that the apartment would smell like hot oil for weeks. And you know what? I didn’t.

In fact, it’s times like those that I look back on fondly, especially now that Emily’s packed her boxes and moved to a tiny New York City apartment. Right up until her departure this summer, she was planning get-togethers for everybody still in town, always with a creative twist. Case in point: to commemorate the arrival of Top Chef in D.C., she invited us over for a series of potlucks, with the stipulation that our contributions would be (in true Top Chef fashion) part of a challenge. The first night, we made foods that somehow represented our home cities; I explained my salted butter caramel ice cream as being a dessert-ified version of the classic Chicago caramel corn from Garrett’s. At the height of World Cup fever, we brought over dishes inspired by the countries that made it to the final four. I chose Germany.

(more…)

Hello, my name is Maddie, and I haven’t been on a vacation in two. years.

It all started so innocently, with the wrapping-up of two delicious weeks in Hawaii in 2008, where I devoured tuna steaks and soaked in the ocean air like it was my job. But the next May brought with it a supposedly wonderful thing called “college graduation,” in which you leave the all-expenses-deferred student lifestyle only to stumble upon a rude awakening called “student loan payments.” Hello, full-time job. Hello, entire post-graduate summer spent running through the D.C. humidity in a pantsuit trying to secure said full-time job.

And now we are here, two years later. Recession be damned, I secured that full-time job, and the ten precious, precious vacation days it offered. I also secured a rather alarming amount of real life-induced, vacation-starved burnout along the way. So starting tomorrow, I’ll be using half of my vacation days (and my entire tax refund) to fly to Croatia, sun myself on its beaches, and gorge myself on its seafood risotto. I will stay in a cozy little apartment, and take day trips to Bosnia, offshore islands, and national parks. The whole time, I will also be cursing myself for not living in Europe, where giving someone only ten vacation days would probably be considered a criminal offense.

(more…)

There’s a trap I fall into sometimes, and it’s called “life is so perfect for everybody else.” As in, nobody else’s hair frizzes into an ‘fro when August rolls around, or struggles to stay in shape, or gets obsessed with celebrity gossip in lieu of keeping up with their perusal of Nabokov short stories. Nobody at work sits at their desk cursing their job responsibilities, and nobody overdraws on their bank accounts or screws up their first attempt at home haircolor. Right? It’s so easy to romanticize, even when your good sense chides you for playing such a ridiculous mental game.

And then I discovered the food blogosphere, which is like being James Stewart in Rear Window. Except it’s a million little windows into the lives of others, and these people know they’re being watched. There’s an intimidating polish and structure to the whole thing. It’s not a complaint, really—I’ve found honest, sincere friends and incalculable inspiration here, after all—but it’s rare for someone to chat about a spectacular flop in the kitchen, or the mind-numbingly boring sandwich they eat everyday at noon.

(more…)

My fingernails and cuticles may be safe from worried biting, but I do have nervous habits like anyone else—and my listmaking compulsion is an especially stubborn one. Deadlines, accomplishments, ideas? Bullet-point them! Write them down! We may be talking about something ridiculously trivial or seriously important, looming or faraway, but if it crosses my mind, it usually gets transcribed on a Post-It. What can I say? I like to organize my thoughts.

Until recently, I’ve been engaging in some public list-making as I shared my weekly CSA recap with you kind souls. This summer brought my first encounter with a farmshare program, and the recap was a vehicle for all sorts of things: exchanging veggie-centric ideas, asking questions, complaining, and doing a little dance whenever an experimental recipe worked out. Most of all, I detailed my CSA adventures to convince myself that I could rise to the challenge. For someone who used to come home from the office too tired to toast bread, the prospect of extensive weeknight cooking was daunting.

(more…)