a list at week's end

A few things to share before holiday hysteria ensues [RECIPE + PLAYLIST]

Like many of you, I have recently been in no mood for niceties, which is hard for me because it’s getting to be the holidays, and there is nothing more that a Cancerian/Enneagram 2 likes than holidays, especially if it’s cold and raw outside. As Katherine May writes in Wintering, Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency, and vanishing from sight.

(I’m with you, Sister.)

It’s been lately feeling a little Truman Show-ish, with all that is going on in the world, to step into Target for a jumbo-size package of paper towels only to be accosted by a glaring and magical land of digitized holiday “music” and sparkly bags of candies, the first three ingredients of which do not exist in nature.

Mine is an interfaith household, and we used to get our Christmas tree every year from our local Sandy Hook fire station, which was in the news back in 2012 when the unthinkable happened in my little New England town. We still get our trees from these people because it’s a fundraiser, and our way of keeping them and all of the Sandy Hook kids, families, and first responders in our hearts, and also because they are absolutely lovely people who I will always support. We used to get our tree around the second week in December, but it’s gotten earlier with every passing year, and now we buy it right after Thanksgiving, which means next weekend. I’m frankly a little concerned about the car crash of emotions that will ensue this year. Music may help, or it may not. Cooking may help, or it may not. We will have a new stocking hanging from the fireplace (Fergus’s; has he ever had one?) and our neighbors in, and at the risk of sounding saccharine, I’ll be, and am, grateful for everything that is here, that we still have, given the insane state of the world.

For the weekend: Here are some things I’d like to share, beginning with the aging, skate-boarding Bolinas hippie I’d like to be when I grow up. Also: a favorite soup recipe for this weather, and a public Spotify playlist that I made for those of similar mindset (and not).

1. From Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks What to Cook This Week newsletter: a short film by Kirsten Dirksen about 89-year-old Bolinas, California super-ager legend Lloyd Kahn, who skateboards, paddleboards (on a racing paddleboard), gardens, and who built his 1970 DIY house in Bolinas from scraps and a dream that he never abandoned. If this is what 89 can look like, there’s hope for all of us.

2. Watch this wonderful video of amazing women-of-a-certain-age who have created a surfing community that I absolutely love. I have only been on a surfboard once, on my 60th birthday, and despite having been a good skier and a better skateboarder, I surfed with all the grace of an elephant in a snowbank. Two years later, I’m hoping to do it again (ideally in Australia or Costa Rica; one can dream).

   

3. Vintage cookware: It’s the time of year when I start tooling around Ebay, Etsy, and my favorite vintage shops for older skillets, saucepans, and pots. For one thing, they are imbued with life, story, and history. There’s no way around this: who used the little 1950s flame Le Creuset saucepan with the wooden handle that I found for a pittance buried in a box at a yard sale? Or the 1960s orange Le Creuset skillet in perfect condition that I unearthed in an antique store in Maine a few years ago? How many years did it take for someone’s — likely a woman’s — right thumb to wear down the walnut handle on the ancient mezzaluna I rescued from a free box in Vermont, and now love? Given the option, I will only very rarely buy new cookware, and when I give the vintage stuff as gifts, people are generally very happy. Don’t limit yourself to pots and pans: French chef knives in good condition, primitive American wooden spoons made from tiger eye maple and as old as the Constitution (remember that ‘ol thing?) — these make very good gifts for friends and family who love to cook. Or for yourself.