I love the idea of collections.
When I was a little girl, I randomly collected spoons (mostly because my dad traveled a lot for work and always brought me a souvenir spoon from wherever he’d been) and little porcelain animals that I stored in a glass-front cabinet. Nowadays, my collections are of the (sliiiightly) more practical sort:
I pick up vintage teacups whenever I find one that’s particularly beautiful.
I tend to immediately own any and all crystal skulls that I happen to stumble upon.
Two months after I moved into my first apartment in West Hollywood, I decided that I’d give hosting Thanksgiving myself a shot. It was just my boyfriend, my parents and me, but I was so excited.
As a housewarming gift my mom had given me a little notebook with hand-written copies of all our favorite family recipes, and I had recently started trying to expand my kitchen repertoire by copying down cool dishes I came across and trying one out whenever I got the chance.
Which means that my cherished “Family Recipe Notebook” actually contains about fifteen things that I actually make…and also lots and lots of weirdly complicated recipes that I thought looked cool when I spotted them in some magazine or another, but never actually tried making (among them: garlic crab risotto, chipotle-honey salmon burgers, and a chilled champagne-ginger-mango soup that sounds extremely fancy but that I am fairly certain would not be my jam).
This salad has been one of my go-tos for years, so much so that I always keep walnuts and dried cherries on hand (so that all I have to pick up are fresh greens and some goat cheese if I want to make it). It's savory, nutty and a little bit sweet, and goes great with pretty much everything (I served it the other day alongside Pork Tenderloin with Gorgonzola Sauce).
In a small bowl, make the dressing by whisking together 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, 1 tsp fresh lemon zest, and a sprinkling of good sea salt.
Brrrr.
OK, so you know how yesterday I was saying how people apparently didn't need closets in 1900? Well, maybe that's because their houses were so freaking cold all of the time that they had to just wander around wearing everything they owned.
Our house has new windows, so it's not especially drafty, but it also, sadly, does not have a fireplace (or central heating). I took a big step towards solving the coziness issue with our pretend fireplace, but still: it's chilly in here, especially first thing in the morning (I try to keep the thermostat turned down at night because (1) I sleep better in the cold and (2) whoa oil is expensive; one of the many Home Ownership Costs that I had no idea about way back when we started this process).
