An especially rooted kind of thing
(in which I get woo-woo, and eat a lot of potatoes) As I type this, the afternoon winter sunlight is streaming in through the front windows. Cat is, of course, asleep in a patch of it. I sit with one hand clasped around a mug of chai-spiced and chaga-infused lapsang souchang tea, its spicy warmth [...]
Spiced Hawthorn-rose syrup
Two wonderful things happened in the last month, and they both occurred over the same weekend. The first was the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference. I’m sure if you’re up to date with my ramblings on Facebook you got sick of reading about it. A 3-day weekend gathering of Herbalists from all over the country [...]
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, [...]
Polenta
(a trip to San Francisco in which I cook for my brother and his roommates) I drove up to San Francisco last week. I’d never actually been for more than a few hours, passing through, so I was excited to spend some time exploring. And luckily, there’s a Twitter-verse, in which you can do things [...]
Traditions
When I started to write this post, I was sitting in Butter’s kitchen, with the smell of wild plums and sugar infusing the air. I was visiting her as part of a road trip that led me through New Mexico, to the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, then up to Northern Colorado for some mountain [...]
Lonely tower cove
I do not sleep well at anchor. En route to Alicante, we sailed into a little cove- a magic cove really- that Jam has named “cala de torre solamente” (lonely tower cove). He spotted it from a mile out, and insisted we sail in to explore it. Some people would call it luck, but I [...]
Tortilla Espanola
I forgot about how nice some things are at home. Like clean sheets and a comfy bed that is so big you can stretch out in your sleep and still not know there’s someone else there. And like having a bathroom that you don’t share with a hundred other people in the marina. And good [...]
The good ship.
As I write this, big fluffy cumulus clouds are forming on the horizon, and my brother, Alex, is checking the weather reports to make sure we won’t run into a storm later this afternoon. We’re in Spain. Torrevieja, to be exact: a small resort town on the East coast. We’re on a boat. Gatablanca, to [...]
Idli with Coconut chutney
I am standing in my own kitchen. After a month of not having access to a kitchen. Or at Pushpa’s, having a kitchen but absolutely no permission to do anything except watch and/ or chop onions), I am back. A month of bookmarking things that I want to try and jotting down notes. A month [...]
Dosas with tomato chutney
My days here look something like this: Wake up as Lou and Meghan are going to yoga class. Have an Indian coffee (2 spoons of instant, 2 spoons of sugar, top up with milk.). Take a bucket bath (with warm water now!). Skype Jam, write for a wee bit. Then go to yoga. After yoga [...]
