I kinda lost my kitchen mojo there for a while. Maybe not “lost,” exactly, but I guess it got buried under new interests and enthusiasms and deadlines and research, and before you know it, we’re eating random cans of beans for dinner because I just can’t be fussed to cook. (Exaggerated for effect, of course; I am a Taurus, I would never eat an unseasoned can of beans.)
Anyhow, in the last few weeks, I’ve felt a shift and suddenly Kitchen Sarah (who is a fun-loving, free-wheeling fuckup, unlike Everything Else-Sarah, who is a rigid, neurotic rule-follower) is back! Last Friday, I made falafel from scratch and some Roman chicken dish and gluten-free peanut butter cookies (which were close to the best cookies I have ever had!!), and this week I have been doing what I love most: using up bits and bobs and scraggles and scraps, no recipes, just vibes, and conjuring delicious meals out of next-to-nothing.
Pictured here is a sort of breakfast okonomiyaki made with sourdough discard (why did I never think to do this before?) It was really good.
[EDIT] I know I said there was no recipe for this, but I posted the same photo with the same caption on social media, and, of course, someone asked: “…Could you post the recipe, please, or link to it?” (Sigh…insert something something about the literacy crisis.)
But I’m a good sport, so here’s what I roughly did…
Mix together: one shredded carrot, one cup shredded cabbage, a dozen small green onions, chopped green part only, 3/4 cup sourdough discard, dashi powder, baking powder, and one egg. Fry in a pan 2-3-4 minutes per side. Serve with okonomiyaki accouterments and a fried egg on top, if you like. That’s a very loosey goosey approximation of what I did! If you want to make traditional okonomiyaki, there are tons of recipes, and they are all pretty much the same. There are even kits that you can buy, like this one.
There is no featured image for this post, although I do implore you to conjure forth in your mind’s eye the following…
My sisters call it a “Sarah special” – a bowl of Doritos, Cheetos, and Funyuns combined into what can only be described as a glorious trinity of processed corn product. It’s probably the last thing someone with borderline hypertension should be eating, which makes it both more delicious and more absurd. The tragedy lies in craving a combination of snacks that’s essentially a salt delivery system when your doctor has just finished explaining the DASH diet to you with the kind of patience reserved for tiny, willful toddlers.
It was a pleasure too private to share, too personal to expose to the judgment of others. The Sarah special lived as a family legend, passed between sisters who understood that sometimes comfort and camdaderie comes in a poorly balanced meal of neon-colored snacks eaten straight from an enormous Pyrex bowl at midnight while binging season 5 of BtVS.
I wrote about weight loss on this blog in 2014 and 2015. The posts still make me wince when I stumble across them in my archives. I called the series “weight loss for weirdos,” as if giving it a quirky name could mask what it really was: another chapter in a lifetime of trying to shrink myself to be worthy. Another echo of my mother’s voice, telling me from age five that my body needed fixing. No matter what size I was – and I’ve been many sizes – I never felt good enough, pretty enough, worthy enough.
I shared honestly, vulnerably, and some readers found comfort in that shared struggle. But I wonder how many others came to this corner of the internet looking for stories about art or perfume or death cafes, only to find yet another thin-seeking narrative. How many thought, “ugh, not this shit again, I thought this was a safe space!” The truth is, I was documenting my reality at that moment, but of all the stories I could have told about my body – about how it moves through the world, how it creates, how it loves – I chose to write about making it smaller. And quite honestly, I hate that for me.
Reading those posts now, I find myself wondering why I found my body’s measurements worthy of documenting at all. I spent precious words – hundreds of them – tracking numbers on a scale, as if that was a story that needed telling. As if the size of my body was somehow more compelling than all the other stories I could have been writing. I don’t want to shame that version of myself who thought these posts mattered – she was doing her best with the narratives she had inherited. But my body’s size was always the least interesting thing about me, even when I couldn’t see that.
Now my doctor tells me I need to lose 25 pounds and follow the DASH diet, and I find myself thinking about the sarah special. It was never a regular indulgence – more like a twice-yearly ritual when I had the house to myself. A ceremonial combining of three specific snacks that only happened in moments of perfect solitude. I never kept the ingredients on hand; buying all three required a deliberate choice, a specific journey to the store for the express purpose of eating them alone, unseen, triumphant in my orchestrated excess.
But of course, after my doctor’s visit and over the past few days, I’ve become obsessed with tracking milligrams of sodium – reading labels, measuring everything. The bizarre plot twist is that in trying to stick to low-sodium, unprocessed foods, I can barely consume enough calories to function. Each label I read is another door closing: this soup has how much sodium? This bread contains what percentage of my daily allowance? My favorite Marie Calendar’s blue cheese dressing may as well be pointing a gun right at my chest. These numbers reshape my relationship with my kitchen, with hunger itself.
How’s this for growth? Me, the eldest child, the TAURUS… I enlisted help. The thing about carrying all this shame for a lifetime is that it gets tiresome. But I’m in my “fuck this shit in particular” era. Years ago, this news from my doctor would have been a secret I’d carry alone, something too shameful to share even with my partner. But I told Yvan first thing, and his immediate response was to talk about how we would address it – facts and numbers and plans. His approach was devoid of the emotional weight I might feel, because he’s far enough removed from my baggage and history to face it dispassionately, but also compassionately because he loves me and wants to help. There’s something freeing in having someone who can hold the problem lightly while still taking it seriously.
Nowadays I find that when friends post about their weight loss journeys on Facebook now, something in me breaks. Each time I press “mute” (or, more often than not, “unfollow”), I’m trying to silence more than just updates about calories and measurements. I’m trying to silence forty-three years of being told my body needs fixing, from my mother’s early diets to my doctor’s current concerns. But mostly, I’m trying to silence the voice that still whispers every time someone celebrates getting skinny: you are still fat.
Every transformation photo, every triumphant weigh-in sends me back to my own posts from 2014 and 2015, makes me want to delete every word I wrote about making my body smaller – but I can’t delete the shame that made me think those posts were worth writing. Each one betrays my body, which has carried me through every joy and grief. It betrays everyone else’s body, too, each one stubbornly existing in a world that has no interest in their strength or their struggle, only in whether they’ve managed to shrink themselves smaller. I want to be happy for my friends, but truthfully, I am just sad and hurt for all of us– especially those of us approaching 50 who can’t eat a bag of Funyuns anymore because it may literally kill them.
I may not be able to eat the snacks anymore, but I can still devour your stories. Tell me about your secret food rituals – the combinations that only make sense to you, the things you eat when no one is watching. Not because they’re shameful, but because they’re your own kind of special. Your sisters might even have a name for them.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Last week on my blog, I wrote about “challenging the monkey’s face.” If you’re familiar with my annual sharing of Bashō’s New Year haiku, you probably know what I mean. If not, the piece is worth a read. It’s about questioning whether the traits we think are fixed – our monkey’s face – are really unchangeable, or if they’re just comfortable patterns we’ve never thought to challenge.
These waffles, for instance. Whenever Ývan suggests using some of my massive quantities of sourdough discard for waffles, I’m quick with my usual “nah man I don’t eat that shit” because I don’t do sweet breakfast. But I always forget about savory waffles! This morning: cheddar-chive-scallion waffles with fried eggs (using techniques from J. Kenji López-Alt’s recent video). Bonus: extra waffles for the freezer. I used this recipe, subbed buttermilk for regular milk, skipped the sugar, and added about 3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar, and a tbsp or so each fresh, chopped chives and scallions.
(Speaking of challenging kitchen habits – I’m also working on cooking from my pantry more. I recently discovered an entire bag of quinoa hiding in there, unopened for who knows how long! It’s made me realize how quick I am to dismiss ingredients I think I don’t like, without really giving them a fair chance. Last year, I discovered I actually do like cilantro and that freshly grated nutmeg is amazing. So maybe quinoa deserves the same open-minded exploration? I’m trying different recipes and preparations, figuring either I’ll find a way I enjoy it, or I can eventually say, “I’ve tried this a dozen different ways, and now I know for sure it’s not for me.”)
And puzzles? There’s a monkey’s face I’ve worn for 48 years. I don’t do puzzles because they make me feel like an idiot. Not just jigsaw puzzles, but word puzzles, number puzzles, riddles – all of it. I really hate sitting with that feeling of being dumb or ignorant. But here’s a ridiculously simple realization I’ve finally reached: if I don’t want to feel that way, maybe I should work at getting better at these things? (When you actively avoid thinking about something, you don’t reach many conclusions.) So last week I downloaded the NYT puzzle app, and now I’m trying to start each morning with it.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I know I said I was done with the navel-gazing for the year, but I was obviously mistaken. This may be the final installment in what has admittedly been a rather self-indulgent series of origin stories – explorations of the fascinations and fixations that have shaped who I am, from my love of horror to my magpie attraction to shiny things. And it seems fitting to write about my love of the kitchen and culinary experimentation as the year draws to a close; with the chilly weather and the dark nights, it’s really the coziest time of the year to be thinking about it… and aside from that, it was someone’s question about where my love of cooking came from that sparked and shaped this whole series to begin with!
Thanks to that curious commenter’s question, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to examining these threads of identity over the past year, these passions that make me uniquely me. Perhaps it’s the looming approach of my fiftieth year that spurs this relentless self-documentation, this need to understand and chronicle the specific alchemy that created this particular human consciousness. Or …perhaps I’m just really self-absorbed?
I spend a lot of time thinking about how incredibly narcissistic it is to write so extensively about oneself. To document every quirk and peculiarity, to chart the etymology of personal obsessions, to treat one’s own development like some fascinating case study worthy of extensive analysis. It’s the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night sometimes – this constant need to examine, to understand, to put into words the how and why of becoming myself. The very existence of this blog, really, is an exercise in sustained narcissism. Who am I to think my thoughts about perfume or jewelry or cooking are worth preserving? What hubris leads me to believe my personal evolution merits documentation? And yet here I am, year after year, continuing to write these missives into the void.
As I edge closer to that half-century mark, I find myself thinking often about all the humans who have existed before me and all those who will come after. We share so many commonalities, so many universal experiences and emotions – and yet each of us is uniquely ourselves in ways that will never be replicated. One day, I will cease to exist. Will anyone remember that I was here? Will it matter that I spent countless hours pondering perfume and cooking and horror stories? Perhaps not. And yet something in me insists that it does matter, that leaving some record of this particular consciousness, this specific combination of passions and proclivities, serves some purpose I can’t quite articulate but feel deeply in my bones.
For someone who spends their leisure time consuming ghost stories, fictional horror podcasts, and gruesome Reddit /no sleep threads, who decorates their home with oddities and memento mori, who gravitates toward the darkest corners of imagined experience – it might seem strange that my greatest joy comes from making the coziest, most life-affirming things. Warm loaves of bread fresh from the oven, bubbling pots of soup that steam up the windows, crocks of tangy homemade pickles lined up on shelves. But perhaps it’s not so strange after all. The same anxiety that draws me to horror – that need to process fear through stories – dissolves completely in the kitchen. I’m still the person who approaches most of life with the hesitant caution of a medieval food taster at a suspicious monarch’s table. But put me in front of a stove and suddenly I have the unearned confidence of a mediocre white man explaining your own profession to you.
mawga & little sarah
This pocket of fearlessness started in my grandmother’s kitchen. Mawga never set out to teach me anything formally – there were no stern lectures about technique, no rigid rules about measuring, no scolding over messes or mistakes. Instead, I was just allowed to exist in her space while she cooked. I’d hover by her elbow as she stirred pots of chicken and dumplings, breathing in the steam and warmth, or sit cross-legged on the linoleum while she rolled out pie crusts, the air heavy with flour and possibility. Sometimes I’d help, sometimes I’d just watch, but always I was absorbing the rhythms of how she moved through her kitchen, calm and sure.
Those lessons in confidence followed me into my twenties, even when everything else felt uncertain. In high school, with my mother’s specific brand of alcohol and mental illness-fueled chaos, everything was tumultuous and fraught. I comforted myself with a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. In my early twenties, I shared an apartment with a flaky musician while trying to navigate community college (it took me ten years to get my associate degree; classrooms make me very anxious.) Money was tight – my fast food job barely kept the lights on – but I became surprisingly good at transforming leftovers from family dinners at my grandparents’ into completely different meals, and an impressive number of hamburgers and fries would mysteriously make their way home from my shifts, becoming the foundation for whatever inspiration struck. When you’ve successfully turned three-day-old fast food into something not only edible but actually satisfying, you start to trust your instincts in the kitchen.
any old focaccia recipe
My thirties brought a different kind of solitude. Living away from family, trapped in a toxic relationship with someone who was rarely there, the kitchen became both my refuge and my laboratory. My then-boyfriend’s picky palate and nasty temper could have made me timid, could have crushed that confidence I’d developed. Instead, in the long hours alone, I threw myself into increasingly ambitious projects. I made butter from scratch just to see if I could. I spent days perfecting homemade udon noodles, testing and adjusting until the texture was just right. Each successful experiment was a quiet rebellion, an unshackling from the cage I’d found myself in, a reminder that in the kitchen, at least, I answered to no one but myself.
Now, I find myself in a kitchen filled with laughter and appreciation, sharing my culinary adventures with someone who approaches each experimental dish with genuine enthusiasm. Yvan compliments everything I make, even my failures. He’s allowed me to edge him out of the kitchen for the most part, but he has actually taken over Christmas cookie duty – not because my cookies aren’t good, but because baking demands a precision that I can’t seem to submit to. I simply can’t be confined by exact measurements. Don’t stifle me, recipe! This works beautifully for soups and sauces, less so for baked goods and pastries that rely on proper chemistry.
The contrast kind of amazes me sometimes. The same person who lies awake rehearsing minor social interactions, who needs to gather courage just to make a phone call, who has a panic attack at the mere thought of making a left-hand turn – that person will confidently modify treasured family recipes without a second thought. For big family dinners, I’ll attempt entirely new dishes for the first time. I’ll cheerfully ignore precise measurements in baking recipes, because come on–I know what’s best, I do!
This kitchen confidence has become such a fundamental part of who I am that I sometimes forget how remarkable it is – this one space where anxiety’s grip loosens, where uncertainty doesn’t feel threatening. It’s a gift from Mawga, really, though she never explicitly set out to give it to me. By creating a space where I could simply be, where mistakes were just part of the process, and perfection wasn’t the goal, she helped shape a part of me that knows how to move through the world without fear.
As I write this final piece for the year, I have two loaves of sourdough doing their slow rise in the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell you exactly how they will turn out. They’ll do whatever they want to do, and it will be okay. I trust that whatever emerges from the oven will be, if not perfect, at least interesting. And really, isn’t that the best way to end a year? Not with rigid expectations but with the courage to try something new, the confidence to accept whatever results, and the comfort of knowing that in your own kitchen, you are exactly who you need to be.
And perhaps understanding exactly who you are and how you came to be that person sometimes requires writing neurotically detailed 5,000-word blog posts examining your curio cabinet of compulsions and preoccupations! Look forward to more of those in 2025!
All photos in this post are by me, of food I have made.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Here’s something different – today I’m reviewing a teapot. I know, I know. Usually, I’m here talking about perfumes that smell like goth California Raisins, or books about apocalyptic viruses, or art that makes me want to climb into the canvas and run away from civilization to spend my days floating on lily pads or whatever, but life is weird sometimes.
A few weeks ago, Umi Tea Sets reached out after seeing the YouTube Amazon Haul video I did last year (the one with a glass teapot in it, among other things), and they asked if they’d send me one of their fancy teapots, would I share my thoughts about it? While quite unexpected because, frankly, I don’t get a lot of brands reaching out to me to give me stuff, it was great timing because I had just broken the other teapot!
So I said sure, why not? But when it arrived, I realized I had no idea how to review a teapot. Books and perfumes? I can do that all day. But teapots? That took some contemplation.
There’s something deeply satisfying about a well-crafted vessel for daily rituals. This Thickened Glass Wooden Handle Teapot, with its clear borosilicate glass (I had to look that up! It’s basically extra-strong glass that won’t crack under temperature changes) and black walnut accents, has found its place in the small pockets of peace I’ve carved out of my workday. My mornings begin in the pre-dawn quiet, curled up on the sofa with a book and soft light. During lunch, I steal away for quick visits with the bumblebees in our garden. But it’s the 3 o’clock tea break that’s become something of an art form.
The practical stuff: it doesn’t drip when you pour (crucial), the handle stays cool even when the tea is scalding (also crucial), and it has these little filter grooves that catch all the tea bits so you’re not drinking leaves (extremely crucial). It can handle ridiculous temperature changes without exploding (apparently from -20°C to 150°C, which seems excessive but good to know).
Working from home means my afternoon tea ritual is sacred – a necessary pause in the day’s momentum where I can reset before diving back into emails and deadlines. Now, it includes watching oolong pearls spiral downward through crystal-clear glass or, on especially contemplative days, seeing a flowering tea ball slowly bloom into an underwater garden. I can already tell this is going to be one of those well-loved objects that collects memories along with daily use.
Every winter for the past few years, I’ve been baking these lovely cookies adapted from a Hildegard von Bingen recipe (if you’re curious, you can find it on Atlas Obscura). There’s something deeply satisfying about pairing a 12th-century mystic’s spelt and honey cookies with tea leaves dancing in contemporary glassware. I like to think Hildegard, who knew a thing or two about rituals, would appreciate how these small ceremonies punctuate our days, even centuries later.
Whether I’m steeping something fancy or just my regular afternoon blend, I appreciate using a tool that’s been thoughtfully designed for this purpose. It’s not about slowing down – I was born at a snail’s pace and have not shown any evidence that I am getting speedier over the years – but about making these stolen moments as beautiful as possible. Even in the middle of a workday, especially in the middle of a workday, we deserve a little everyday magic.
You can find this little teapot and many tea-related items and accessories on the Umi Tea Sets website.
(Full disclosure: The company sent me this teapot for free, but they didn’t tell me what to say about it. These thoughts are my own, fueled by possibly too many cups of hojicha while writing this.)
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
My two favorite comfort spots as a child: tucked in a corner with a book, or in the kitchen at my grandmother’s knee. Both places taught me to love the slow unfolding of stories – whether they came from mixing bowls or printed pages. Maybe that’s why I find myself lingering over scenes of characters eating. A flaky crust or the smell of burnt sugar can transport you more surely than any map. What characters eat, how they eat it, who they share it with – these details tell us everything about their world.
As I grew older, I realized something curious: while other readers might have dog-eared the romantic scenes in novels, I was the one impatiently flipping past them to get back to the detailed descriptions of gathering herbs or preparing meals. Even in the notoriously salacious Clan of the Cave Bear, I cared more about Ayla’s medicinal plants than her spicy cave encounters. Maybe because food scenes revealed something more intimate – not just how characters fed their bodies, but how they nourished their souls and connections to others. Plus, I was a constantly hungry child. My mother had me counting calories from age five. I ate vicariously through these characters, savoring every detailed description of their meals, while secretly stuffing saltines and oyster crackers into my pockets – not always from hunger, but often from spite, claiming these small crunchy acts of rebellion. Even now, I can’t read without something to crunch between pages.
The Boxcar Children showed me first what food could mean beyond hunger. Four siblings with nothing but each other, turning an abandoned train car into home. I envied their freedom to eat what they found, when they found it. Every small victory mattered: a cup cut from a tin can, milk kept cool in a stream, wild blueberries gathered in a fresh bucket. Each meal became an act of love and defiance – we can make this work, we can stay together, we can turn nothing into something.
In Little House on the Prairie, each meal was a triumph I could taste in secret: stewed jackrabbit with white-flour dumplings and gravy, steaming cornbread flavored with bacon fat, and molasses to pour over top. No one counted Laura’s calories. Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins followed the same patient rhythm of survival: abalone pried from rocks, fish caught in tidal pools, roots dug from the earth with improvised tools. These girls ate to live, and lived fully.
In The Secret Garden, I found a different kind of mirror. While Mary transforms from sallow to vibrant, I was being taught to wish for the opposite. My mother’s voice suggested that thin and pale was preferable to rosy-cheeked and sturdy. Still, I devoured the descriptions: warm milk, homemade cottage bread slathered with raspberry jam, buttered crumpets, currant buns. As the garden comes alive, so do the children who tend it, nourished by Susan Sowerby’s hearty oatcakes and fresh milk brought for picnics among the roses. They eat without anyone watching, measuring, counting.
Harriet’s tomato sammy
On dark and stormy nights in A Wrinkle in Time, the Murray kitchen glows with love and warm milk for cocoa. Charles Wallace, wise beyond his five years, makes liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwiches while his sister Meg gets her one precious tomato with her mother’s blessing. Here was another kind of hunger being fed – not just for midnight snacks, but for unconditional love served up with hot chocolate and understanding. A mother who could say of her last tomato, “To what better use could it be put?” than feeding her child’s happiness. That liverwurst sandwich, by the way, became such an indelible detail that years later, when I was interviewed about the Wrinkle in Time cover art saga, it was the only thing I could recall from the entire story!
The Wind in the Willows packed picnic baskets of pure imagination: a yard of French bread, sausage fragrant with garlic, cheese that “lay down and cried,” and bottled sunshine from Southern slopes. In Heidi’s world, simple meals became feasts: toasted cheese and fresh goat’s milk in her grandfather’s alpine cabin, tasting of freedom and mountain air. In Harriet The Spy, Harriet M. Welsch’s tomato sandwich appeared like clockwork, made the same way every day by her nanny Ole Golly (white bread, ripe tomatoes, mayo, and though I’d add salt and pepper, I doubt Harriet would approve).
When my mother was monitoring every bite, allowing only Weight Watchers-approved foods and endless bowls of undressed salad, I found myself drawn to the strange, exotic foods in books: Edmund’s Turkish Delight in Narnia, the pickled limes Amy March coveted at school. I had no idea what these things actually tasted like, which made them perfect for fantasizing. They existed purely in my imagination, where no one could measure their calories or deem them forbidden. No Weight Watchers points chart in the world could calculate the value of magical sugar covered in snow, or the tart sweetness of pickled citrus traded like contraband between schoolgirls.
And speaking of fantasy feasts, the dwarves raid Bilbo’s pantry with a gleeful abandon I recognized in my own hidden snacking: seed-cakes vanishing, buttered scones disappearing with raspberry jam and apple-tart, followed by mince-pies, cheese, pork-pie and salad. Then more cakes, ale, coffee, eggs, cold chicken and pickles. The Redwall books fed these fantasies – deeper’n’ever pies, greensap milk, meadowcream pudding, hot cornbread studded with hazelnuts and apple. Between crackers crushed in my pockets, I devoured these imaginary feasts.
In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, a plate appears loaded with Southern comfort: fried chicken, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, cornbread, and those titular tomatoes. The chocolatier in Chocolat reads her customers through their cravings. In Like Water for Chocolate, a single chile in walnut sauce captures all possible flavors: sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, hot with pepper, subtle with nuts.
But food can speak of darker things too. The Secret History’s feast spins out of control – soups, lobsters, pâtés, mousses blur together with Tattinger champagne and brandy until the room tilts with excess and abandon. In Castle Dracula, Jonathan Harker’s journal opens not with terror but with dinner – an “excellent roast chicken” served by his gracious host. And in Rebecca, the narrator torments herself remembering teatime at Manderley: dripping crumpets, crisp toast wedges, mysterious sandwiches, that special gingerbread, and angel cake that melted in the mouth. These are meals haunted by what comes after.
I actually started writing this piece seven years ago, just a simple list of meals from books. But, like the best stories about food, it was never really about the food at all. It was about hunger and love and what happens when those things get tangled together, about mothers and daughters and all the ways we learn to feed ourselves when no one else will.
Yet it’s not these haunted meals or desperate hungers I want to carry forward. What I want now is to nourish what was starved. I imagine setting a table for my younger self, covering every inch with the food of these beloved books: warm cottage bread fresh from the oven, slathered with sweet butter and honey, piled with slices of ripe tomatoes and sprinkled with salt. Crumpets dripping with melted butter, currant buns still steaming, seed-cakes and apple tarts and mince pies. A tureen of rabbit stew with dumplings, cornbread flavored with bacon fat, blueberries gathered by small determined hands. Hot oatcakes wrapped in clean napkins, brought by a mother who knew how to feed children’s souls as well as their bodies. I’d tell that hungry, hiding girl that she can eat until she’s satisfied, that there’s no need to count or measure or feel shame, that the crumbs in her pockets were not crimes but survival. And maybe I’d set a place for my mother too, hoping we could both finally taste something sweeter than fear – forgiveness, served in portions large enough to fill all our empty spaces.
Next month marks eleven years since she died. My body remembers before my mind does. It asks for comfort reads and crackers in corners. The old familiar hungers, the slow work of healing.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Yesterday was a weird day. So weird, in fact, that now it’s got me thinking that it’s actually the whole week that’s been weird. But maybe it was just yesterday.
I got bitten by an ant early in the morning, which felt like an ill-omen. Sitting at my desk at the start of the day, I felt an extremely unsettling sensation of something crawling at the back of my neck, and then further down my back. I would not usually be so desperate about it, but it just felt so uncommonly strange that I leapt from my chair, violently yanked my dress off, and frantically slapped and scratched every inch of my body, trying to search out the intruder. And there, wriggling furiously on the floor at my feet. I found it: a massive ant, an ant so giant I could almost see how mean and ugly his face was.
The day culminated with my pasta turning out mushy while making dinner (not a big deal, but it doesn’t take much to make one feel like a failure sometimes) and Yvan breaking his foot while doing yard work. And that one actually was a big deal. I had to drive him to the urgent care place, which was nerve-wracking –and I was already freaking out!– because, believe it or not, I have not driven this new car even once since we bought it last October. This concerns me quite a bit; my mother never drove and was totally dependent on other people for transportation, and I swore I would never let that happen to me. I can drive, and I used to drive more frequently, but then we moved to Jacksonville, and if I am being honest, driving around here terrifies me. But this a problem for another, less weird week.
Anyway, I only had to drive about five minutes up the road, and I didn’t crash or explode the car, so it was fine. It turns out Yvan has a very fine fracture, so tiny you really can’t even see it in the x-ray, but a fracture is still a fracture, and here we are. The funny thing (not funny haha) is that my sister Mary broke her foot in May, and our baby sister Melissa broke her foot in April, so I was sure it was my turn! Yvan jumped in and fielded the curse for me, I guess.
I do not deal well with stress, so here is some runway fashion. That’s a terrible transition; I am sorry!
So, fancy couture it is. I thought I’d share some of my recent favorite runway looks with you. A little glamour to brighten our day, inspire our dreams, or maybe just say, “Good grief, what am I even looking at here??”
It’s hard to put into words why certain looks call to me over others. I suspect my love for beads, velvet, and sequins plays a role – these prismatic sparkles capture and transform light into magic. These materials are stardust made tangible, moonbeams woven into fabric. Sequins shimmer like submerged scales in an otherworldly sea, or glitter like the scattered remnants of a shattered disco ball. Beads, in their myriad forms, span from smooth river stones to alien pearls, to childhood marbles, interiors swirling with miniature galaxies. Velvet, with its shifting shadows and highlights, mimics the surface of a midnight lake – deep, mysterious, and ever-changing. These elements play with light and shadow, offering glimpses of realms just beyond our grasp, portals to realms of dark wonder and luminous possibility.
In the more avant-garde creations, I find a gleeful absurdity that challenges reality. The more a piece defies conventional movement, the more it captivates me, becoming a wearable sculpture that transcends mere fashion. And, of course, I am always drawn to collections that conjure up visions of unwritten horror films, hint at celestial influences, or seem to embody some sort of bizarre cosmological philosophy.
So, without further ado (because lord knows I have had enough “ado” this week), here are some looks that have been delighting my eyeballs and making me want to grab a fistful of fabric and rub my face all over it. That form of escapism will probably get me arrested. But maybe these looks will provide a little escape for you, too.
Schiaparelli Fall 2024 Couture
Homolog Fall 2024 Couture
Iris van Herpen Fall 2024 Couture
ArdAzAei Fall 2024 Couture
Elie Saab Fall 2024 Couture
Ashi Studio Fall 2024 Couture
Robert Wun Fall 2024 Couture
Gurav Gupta Fall 2024 Couture
Zuhair Murad Fall 2024 Couture
Charles de Vilmorin Fall 2024 Couture
Thom Browne Fall 2024 Couture
Rahul Mishra Fall 2024 Couture
Viktor & Rolf Fall 2024 Couture
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Well okay then! I have, as of this past week, just sent off the final batch of chapters for the book I am currently working on (The Art of Fantasy!) That means I am KINDA SORTA DONE! I will probably have to make some edits, and then I will have to write a few intros–which are easier to write after I’ve written the thing being introduced, hee hee!–and then start reaching out to artists for permissions to use their works and then get a lot of rejections and then go back to the drawing board and start researching appropriate imagery all over again…so, yeah. I still have a lot more to do, but the hard part is DONE.
It’s been a bit of a struggle, this latter half of the summer. I did not expect to be writing a book while sick with Covid. Nor did expect that I would ever get Covid. I know, I know–that’s a really naive and privileged thing to say. But being vaxxed and boosted to the max and not ever going anywhere, doing anything, or seeing anybody, I guess I thought I could avoid it forever. Not so. Yvan had to attend a week-long corporate team-building exercise thing, and guess what he brought back? UGH. As I’m sure many of you can attest to, this is pretty miserable stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever been so unwell in my life. I tested positive on the 23rd of August and it was really just this week (the week of September 10th) that I am starting to feel normal again.
…and I just deleted a whole bunch of gripes I have about people’s cavalier attitudes about all of this, because you know what? Typing it out was really getting me wound up and upset and furious and that’s not what I wanted to bring here today. I realize it’s my blog and I can write about whatever I want…but all things considered, I don’t actually want to dwell on that. I have a habit of feeling some kind of way and then just stewing in it, really settling into a swampy morass of fury and resentment. It’s not good for me and it’s just a GROSS feeling, and I am not going to do it. I wanted to write a little blog post about how I had just finished something that I was struggling with, how I was feeling better after some “health challenges,” and now I am feeling pretty good again and want to do all the things!
All of the AT HOME things, that is!
A home in which we have lived for five months now! I get that to some folks, settling into a new place is a really exciting venture, but to someone who craves stability and doesn’t love change, these past five months have been weird and unsettling (ok, maybe a tiny bit exciting too, I am not a total monster.) But coupled with having to head back to the old place every weekend to fix it up for sale–which is a four-hour trip total, but in some instances, we just got a hotel and stayed the whole weekend–and then the frustrations of trying to sell it, well, it’s been a PROCESS. I don’t know if it’s indicative of the market or if our house just wasn’t super appealing, but we put it up for sale in May and we’re finally closing on a sale right now, the second week of September. OOOF. That took a while, but…I think…we are done!
So, this summer I had big plans for ~tending to and treating my inner child~ but I didn’t always have the time and energy to devote to it. I’m putting together a more detailed YouTube video about this, but here are a few things I did in service of little Sarah: we got the Jem and the Holograms rockstar hair we’ve always wanted; we’ve been wearing fantastical clothing all summer long, tops and dresses that make me feel like I’m in some sort of fairy tale or enchanted garden, or napping on top of a treasure chest, helping a dragon guard their loot–this magic sword top above is by Jordan Piandedosi; aaaand I have been doing so much reading! Nearly 30 books in the past three months! I think that definitely gets all the sticker stars on my Book It! pin (IYKYK) and so therefore I most definitely deserved a personal pans pizza. And if you are curious about all of the titles that I read, I hope to be sharing that here on the blog as soon as tomorrow.
Here’s the recipe I used, which I think is extra cool, because the person narrating the voice-over sound pretty young (and bonus-bonus! I think they live in the same town I moved to!) Anyway, if you are interested, it came out PERFECT but be prepared to spend five hours making it and five minutes snarfing it down.
Here is a very crooked photo of what one would see if they were to walk into the front door of our home! Yvan’s mother painted this adorable gnome couple for us as a wedding gift, and we wanted it to greet people as they walked in! The only problem is, no one really ever uses the front door, we all come through the garage, hee hee! At any rate, the underneath of the painting was looking pretty bare and we found this small table at a neighbor’s house. She is getting ready to move and had just sort of…invited the neighborhood to come in and poke around? I felt a little nosy, but I recall more or less doing the same thing when I left NJ. It’s the perfect space to display my sunflower bouquet from the day of the wedding!
Here’s another few pieces that my mother-in-law painted and which are hanging in the kitchen! I hope to have a whole freaking gallery in the next few years. She paints the sort of storybook canvases that I just want to crawl into and wander around in for a while. Maybe dangle my feet in the sea, hang out with the fisherman’s wife who is yelling at her husband to not forget his lunch!
Anyhoodle, it is September 18th and fall is hopefully just around the corner and perhaps next time I check in I will have some more interesting things to share. Or, at least I won’t be so hot and sweaty when I am sharing them!
Just a series of impressions and lists from the last month, which seems like a blurry dream thing that never really happened, and yet here we are…
⌛ I think I finally have my desk the way that I want it. Except for that old fossil of a work phone, which, unfortunately, stays until I am no longer working my day job. Which you know, is what pays the bills, so I kinda need it for now. UGH. I do want to add a little plant propagation station and this adorable mushroom lamp. I am afraid I may be unduly influenced by mushroomparasol’s Instagram account.
⌛Speaking of Instagram, I am finding that place profoundly depressing lately. I hate complaining about likes and views and “engagement” but man oh man. I have almost 12K followers over there. 11.8K, to be exact. I have been hovering at that number for the past year, and I have had that account on Instagram for over a decade now. TikTok, on the other hand, I have about 10K followers there and I only created that account a little over a year ago. So I have gotten nearly the same amount of followers in one tenth of the time? Huh.
And as of the beginning of June, my account seems like a frigging ghost town. And I have to ask myself, is no one seeing what I am sharing, or is it that I am really boring and no one cares? I mean, I get it. You can look at stuff on these platforms but you are under no obligation to like it or comment on it or interact with it at all. So no, just because you’re my friend, or just because you generally enjoy the things I talk about, that doesn’t mean you have to “heart” everything I share. Of course not. BUT man. It’s weird. My earnest posts usually, or at least in the past, get around 100 likes, and my stupid jokes or memes usually get like 500+ (so frustrating when people pay more attention to the thing you only gave half a second’s thought to as opposed to something you spent time on or care about, but whatever.) Anyway. This week? Posts are getting like, 20-40 likes. Even a BOOK post! ALL of my friends love books! I don’t get it! I’ve heard it’s an algorithm thing, and I don’t know exactly how that works, but ugh. This is a bummer. And I am not even trying to make my living off of what I am posting there! I imagine full-time artists and writers and small business owners and people who provide services must really be feeling it. Influencers, too.
But fuck those guys. I don’t give a shit about influencers. So. I don’t know what to do about any of that other than start spending more time elsewhere. So if you are on twitter or TikTok or Facebook (yes, I am still over there) feel free to say hi!
⌛ Two things I have watched lately and really enjoyed: Severence, which apparently is nothing like Succession. But I had lumped them together because they had similar sounding coporate-speak names. And which I had no interest in until I realized that Severence is actually a sci-fi tinged psychological thriller. And it is GOOD. (Still don’t know what Succession is, but I also still have no interest.) Also, Shining Vale, a horror comedy starring Courtney Cox and which was a ridiculous delight. If I am being honest I have never given a thought to Courtney Cox (I’m sorry Courtney Cox) but man she was a hoot in this. Also I don’t even know where Warwick Castle is but because I am me I had to find this shirt that she was wearing in a certain scene from a certain episode.
⌛ We’ve gotten most of the wall art hung up in the house! Here are a few peeks…
⌛At long last, we have a proper guest room! With a proper guest bed! And now that William Morris bedding is finally getting some use! I bought it a few years ago and then we promptly went and got a bigger sized bed. Le whoopsie.
⌛I have been looking for the perfect canisters. A sort of vintage situation, enamel, with rosemaling or some sort of Scandinavian floral motif art on them. I found them on a site called Chairish and I am sure I overpaid for them, but that’s okay because they were –exactly–what I was looking for.
⌛I have made some version of this spicy “honey” garlic broccoli and tofu 2-3 times a week for the past two months. I use actually honey because I am not vegan and often swap out the tofu for soy curls, but they’re both good.
⌛ I have been obsessed with the idea of the grinder salad sandwich that’s all over TikTok but then I saw that someone skipped the sandwich part and just turned it into a salad and we have been eating some version of this every single day for lunch.
⌛ I started reading Janelle Monáe’s book, Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computerand I wasn’t far in but I was really enjoying it, but then the library took it back from me. Rude. I look forward to picking it up again.
⌛ I’ve really been excited about getting titles from NetGalley, where you have the opportunity to obtain advanced copies of books that haven’t been published yet, for review purposes. I’ve gotten some really excellent ones that I was really looking forward to and some really incredible things that I never even would have heard of! Well, at least not until after it had been published, and then people got excited about it, maybe. At any rate, MOTHERTHING hadn’t been on my radar but I got it through NetGalley and now it might be my favorite book of all time.
⌛Yvan and I have been walking in the mornings. This is such a lovely neighborhood to walk in, with lots of trees and birds and bats and even some hills (in FL!!!) and a view of the river. We’ve been waking up around 5:30 and making a circuit of two miles or so. Not a lot, but enough to wake us up and sort of give us a feeling of “well, even if we get nothing else done today, we did THAT.” But on the days we do it, we both remark throughout the day how much energy we have, what a good mood we’re in, etc. I know it doesn’t cure all ills, but man. Walking. I love it.
⌛ We’re still working on getting the old house ready for sale, so we haven’t really spent most weekends in the new space. I can’t wait until that’s off our plate. Maybe this new house will finally start feeling like home, like I really live here, when I plan to go nowhere and do nothing and finally have a proper FUCK OFF WORLD! weekend. Fingers crossed!
For some reason, I started thinking about the “soul pizza” moment in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Part Four: The Dream Master. Alice is sitting in a diner and Freddy sidles up to her and begins his gimmicky schtick–I actually love this surreal, schlocky music video of a film but Freddy has become an insufferable cartoon at this point– and there’s this whole thing with a meatball pizza. The meatballs are the screaming faces of Alice’s dead friends, and Freddy spears one of the little shrieking heads with his razor finger, pops it in his mouth, begins to chew, and just goes to town on it while Alice watches in horror.
My sister and I rewatched it last night, but I am afraid that by the time this scene rolls around I might have had a few too many margaritas and I don’t even remember watching it. Which is really dumb, because this 20 seconds was the whole reason I talked her into watching this film with me!
I’m always filing away food and meals from books and movies in my mental recipe folder, and I suppose because I have been thinking about attempting to make a sourdough pizza dough, this particular scene was on my mind. I didn’t want to recreate it, exactly. I mean…it’s pretty gross. And the details of those tiny faces would be complicated to execute.
…Pun intended, always!
So instead, we’ll just say that this very normal pizza that I made is, at best, loosely inspired by that scene? I used Joshua Weissman’s sourdough pizza recipe for the dough and the sauce, and it’s lightly topped with a blend of fresh parmesan and mozzarella, and tiny “meat” balls made from Impossible meat. I seasoned them with onion, garlic, and soy sauce, which is what seasoned the filling in one of Maangchi’s recipes, and I liked it so much, I just use it every time I have to add flavoring to a ground beef-like thing.
It turned out pretty well! We don’t have a pizza stone, so we baked a few versions of this in a large cast-iron skillet. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.
So, I found out that they made a sort of novelty toy version of this pizza, with its own take-out box! I can’t imagine who would have wanted one of these things, but who am I to judge. I also see where, if one was so inclined, one could buy what I believe is the actual pizza prop used in the movie. Again…who would want this? I cannot guess as to those reasons, but suppose I do think it’s an awfully cool thing that it exists.
