For an avid cookie baker, there is no better time of year than Christmas.  When else is it acceptable– desirable– expected, even– to run around town handing out fresh-baked cookies to everyone you meet?  During what other season can you go through an entire pound of butter each week and not feel even slightly guilty about it?  Even before I learned my way around the kitchen, cutting out sugar cookies and frosting them with colorful icing was a highlight of the season; once I discovered that I cared about the baking process, well… things quickly got out of hand.  By which…

Can we all take a moment to reflect on the wonders of winter squash?  It’s one of my favorite things in the whole world, and probably one of the biggest reasons why the end of the year is my favorite time of year.  To be fair, summer squash is also one of my favorite things in the world, but there’s just something about the hefty ones that start showing up in the produce section in October and November that warms my heart a little extra.  That’s partly because of their variety of whimsical shapes; it’s also partly because of their…

Have I mentioned how much I love Autumn?  Oh, right, it’s all I’ve blogged about in October and November for the last three years.  There’s just something about fall that makes me feel hopeful and alive, despite the fact that it’s the prelude to the cold, dark season I so love to complain about.  And this fall has been the best I’ve ever had– of course, that makes sense, given the fact that I had a fairly significant and joyous life event to celebrate about a month ago. But weddings and celebrations aside, this year has delivered the best fall…

Oh, hello, blog!  I feel like we haven’t talked in a while.  I’ve missed you!  How’s things been? It’s hard to believe it’s been three months since my last post, but the truth is that I barely stopped to breathe in all that time.  Alex and I packed up and moved across town in late August, and spent the better part of September settling into our shiny, new pint-sized apartment.  And then, in October, we spent a lovely week and a half in the Deep South visiting nephews and siblings, spending time with parents, relaxing on the beach… and getting…

If it seems like I’ve fallen off the face of the blogging earth lately, that’s because, well, I have.  There are good reasons for this; the old “too hot to turn on the oven” excuse is as valid as ever, and I haven’t done any baking whatsoever since that cake from two posts ago.  There’s also the “I’m planning a wedding” excuse, but let’s be honest– I’ve barely had to lift a finger for that (thank you, Mom!).  And then, there’s the “I’m moving out of my apartment in less than two months and how in the world did I…

                          It’s officially summer in Boston: that magical time of year when the temperature is only marginally cooler indoors than out, you break a sweat just washing dishes, and all clothing that touches the legs or arms gets relegated to the back of the closet until further notice.  In the land of houses that lack both central air and ceiling fans (biggest. oversight. EVER), the only way to stay cool is to down as much cold liquid as possible.  This poses a couple of challenges: 1) this is also…

A few weeks ago, Alex and I took a brief trip to Alabama to work out a few wedding details: food, church arrangements, flowers, that kind of thing.  And when I say brief, I mean that we touched down in Alabama on a Sunday around noon, and didn’t stop moving until we were back on the plane on Tuesday afternoon.  It was a productive and fun trip, but the breakneck pace of it left me feeling tired and homesick and a little sad. That’s the breaks when you live in a city about a thousand miles away from your family;…

I have been thinking about Paris a lot lately.  It’s hard not to; Paris-themed books and food and merchandise lurk around every corner these days.  My local bookstore is currently featuring a book chock full of Parisian photos organized by color (spoiler alert: there are lots of pastels).  Macarons appear to be the new cupcakes (although nothing can come as close to perfection as the cake-to-frosting ratio of a cupcake from my favorite bakery, if you ask me).  My favorite food blogger and podcaster wrote a book about her time in Paris that I can’t stop reading and re-reading.  And…

First, a disclaimer: I love cow’s milk.  (You might have picked up on that from all my recent cheese talk.)  Skim milk was my absolute favorite thing to drink as a kid, all the way up to college.  I had heard horror stories about the “freshman fifteen”– the weight gain most people experience when they are free to eat whatever they feel like for the first time– and sure enough, I gained mine, at least partly because I thought it was ok to drink an entire gallon of milk every week by myself.  (Also because I hadn’t yet figured out…

If you have a normal schedule, like a normal person, then you will probably hate me for what I’m about to say.  But here it goes: I love Mondays. My current work week extends from Tuesday to Saturday, and while it can sometimes be disheartening to spend Saturday hard at work while I watch people flounce down the streets of Beacon Hill without a care in the world, it’s all worth it on Monday morning when I do not have to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn, but can instead wake up at my leisure and spend…

At this point, there’s nothing I can say about the horrible bombings at the Boston Marathon that hasn’t been said already.  Over the last few days, floods of writers have taken to the internet to share their own reflections, and they’ve done so passionately, angrily, and probably more eloquently than I ever could.  I can’t provide an eyewitness account of the carnage, since I spent the entire day safely at home, about three miles away from the finish line.  I can’t speculate on the reason such a terrible thing happened, except to say that no reason could ever be good…

You would think that I’d be sick of cheese by now. For the past three months, I have been sleeping and breathing cheese (and obviously eating it), not only at my cheesemongering job, but also as an intern at a cheese magazine.  When I’m not selling cheese, I’m writing about cheese.  I’ve got cheese on the brain, and increasingly on the hips.  And yet, given an afternoon alone and a kitchen to myself, what do I decide to eat?  More cheese. It’s late March in Boston, but Mother Nature still thinks it’s January.  Springing the clocks forward created the visual…

Academically, I believe that spring is coming.  I sprang my clock forward last night, March equinox is in ten days, and Girl Scouts are hawking their cookies on every corner.  But actually, spring feels as far away as it ever did.  This is my fourth winter in Boston, so I understand– it’s going to snow a lot, and for a lot longer than it feels like it should.  (Twelve inches of snow last Friday + one spectacular slip on the ice on Saturday = I’m sick of snow.) But even if it doesn’t feel like spring, I can still eat…

I think it’s time for me to admit that I am an overachiever.  This isn’t exactly news; my overachieving and its consequences have a long and well-documented history.  Exhibit A: in second grade I decided to write a report about my favorite bird—the blue-footed booby—just for the heck of it, and my teacher rewarded my studiousness by letting me read the report aloud to the class.  Apparently I was the only one in the room who thought “this report is about boobies” was a perfectly legitimate and not at all funny thing to say to a room full of seven-year-olds. …

I have had granola on the brain for the past few weeks.  And, well, if I’m honest, for the past several years.  If I remember correctly, one of Alex’s brothers used to call me “Granola” from time to time– more as a tease than a compliment, but I wore the name proudly.  Granola, after all, is a symbol for all that is good, healthy and earthy.  And I could really use a big dose of healthy in my life. Thanks to my cheese job, I have been consuming a lot– a lot– of dairy products lately.  Last week, one of…