Like a lizard

(A day trip with mesquite granola, with polenta and coconut and all kinds of good things.) If you were to visit California at any time of year, my friends, this should be it. The air is warmer, the nights are still cool, greenery is shooting up at a rapid pace. Road trips are riddled with ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaahhh’ pointing at one tree or another awash in spring... Read More

Black [tea] and white [fir] cake

Today marks the shortest day of the year, where the sun, our source of warmth and light, is furthest from us. Living in a city, in the modern world, with electricity and lights and all kinds of noises blocking out the silence, it’s easy to forget that we still live in bodies that have cycles, on a planet that has cycles. Years ago, before all of that stuff existed, as the... Read More

Eggnog. In a mug.

(on the warming magic & merits of cinnamon) For a week we experimented with keeping the heating on all the time. It was nearing 40 degrees in Los Angeles and living in Southern California for any length of time does something to your temperature tolerance. That is, it destroys it. But having the heating on all the time didn’t work. Not one bit. We’d both wake up... Read More

Winter warmers

I remember when I was young, a friend asked me if I’d rather live somewhere that was too  hot, or too cold. I thought about it long and hard, and finally decided “Too cold.” “Why,” she asked me (we lived in Scotland– nobody in their right mind would choose cold over hot). “Because you can always add more clothes, but you can’t take... Read More