New Year, New (Home Cooking) Rituals
Plus, a bit of housekeeping news
Welcome to Home Cooking Diary, a newsletter on my journey as a home cook—the successes and failures alike. Cooking log, photo diary, and recipe recommender. This post contains housekeeping notes (paid subscriptions!) and my thoughts and intentions for the New Year and this moment—when the slate is still clean.
Happy New Year to everyone out there reading this. I continue to be stunned each time I receive a subscription notice. The idea that anyone reads this, and that you seem to enjoy it, has been incredibly affirming for me. It’s provided a much-needed boost of confidence and energy throughout the fragile stage that is postpartum (I started Home Cooking Diary when my son was exactly 6 months old—almost to the day, it turns out). But also it’s been affirming post-corporate job/post-any job. I was worried when I quit that I would lose myself a little bit—my identity having been wrapped up in my job for well over a decade. Looking back, I know that I was OK partly because of this space to explore my loves of cooking and writing. And I guess my love of sharing. First there was the blogspot, the tumblr, the instagram (oh boy, still, the Instagram) and then there was the substack. I’ve always had some sort of “blog” on and off. Honestly, I’m thrilled that blogs are so very BACK, even if we call them newsletters now.
This is a very long-winded way of announcing that after much internal debate, and after receiving some generous, unsolicited pledges, I’ve decided to activate paid subscriptions. Home Cooking Diary will continue to be free for the most part, but I am planning new, recurring essays for paid subscribers, including a monthly letter about my go-to recipes and routines, and a recurring series called My Kitchen, wherein I discuss things like pantry staples, grocery lists, and other equipment and ingredients I’m enjoying. There will be a monthly paid post (probably a recipe, sometimes something else). But for the most part, the content you are accustomed to will remain free. All subscribers can expect to see more cultural and material recommendations, as well as regular updates on what I’m reading, both published and forthcoming. Now that I’m a bookseller, I’m reading a lot more for work, and I’m excited to share. I greatly appreciate your support, in whatever form. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing this space with me.
Now on to new routines. We’re all familiar with the idea of the New Year reset—whether it be motivated by resolutions or whatever—I think it’s in our nature to think of this time as a fresh start, and I’m no exception. My approach to January is with an eye toward routine and ritual, to make my new schedule work for me and my family.
This month we added a day to Tycho’s daycare schedule because I’ve found that the bookstore is too demanding when our doors are open, for the administrative work required—and frankly, the house work required by the home too. So I now have a “day off.” It’s a cooking day but also a Golden Hour inventory/brainstorming/emailing/big ideas day, and occasionally maybe an I’ll just do nothing today kind of day.
Since we opened, my cooking has been a little off the rails, and this year I’m getting a bit more strategic about the time I have for it—game-planning my labor in the kitchen so that when I do cook it goes the distance. On Mondays I try to always make at least a soup—this week it was Alison Roman’s Winter Squash and Lentil, plus also her Pork and Broccoli Rabe soup with lots of fennel seed and chili flakes, and pasta, which we had for dinner.
On Tuesdays, I put on a pot of beans. As you know, if you’ve been a subscriber for any length of time, I am a proud member of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club. We always have excellent dried beans in the pantry, and they are an MVP in the kitchen. If I prepare the entire 16 ounces that come in one package, that could yield beans for a soup or salad, plus a side dish for braised chicken or roasted Italian sausage (or what have you), and is pretty great to have for Tycho, who is usually down for a meal of beans. As long as I don’t serve them too often (he’ll act like he suddenly hates something if he gets tired of it—common toddler behavior). If it’s a pot of chickpeas some of them could also become hummus, with just a little extra garlic and olive oil in the food processor. Actually any bean makes a great dip! I need to think of that approach more often.
The reason I start with soups and beans as my baseline, is that they are generally easy to get started at those moments when my son is playing independently, or just generally being a chill little dude. Then they can bubble away for 30 minutes or three hours, or however long they need, and I am able to monitor them pretty passively while doing childcare. I call these “For the Fridge (or Freezer)” cooking projects because they can go in the fridge and provide meals all week when I am not able to cook. But also Reed is getting back into cooking which is exciting too. He is actually the better cook of the family I think—but perhaps, enjoys it less than I do.
The second tier is cooking projects that I will try to accomplish when he’s napping if I am not too busy with other things (or not too tired to do more than lay on the couch). This is where the baking comes in. I generally refuse to make New Year’s resolutions but if I had one it would be to bake once a week. My goal is to try to add a loaf or Bundt cake to the mix once a week, which I used to accomplish and is pretty invaluable to Reed, my partner. He wakes up at 4am in order to get to work in the city on time. Reed is a bit of a polymath—he’s had so many different careers, and is currently working as a carpenter, on restoration projects of Olmsted-era structures in Central Park. He works all the time and gets very little sleep, so having an easy slice of something to take in the car is much-needed. But rarely is on-hand ever since we opened our bookstore. Baking will hopefully be my cooking project on Wednesdays, along with bookstore admin and the writing of this newsletter.
This is our life right now—it’s not forever. Reed will hopefully have a more forgiving (and local) work schedule down the road. In the meantime, we’re in a constant state of juggling. Which is maybe most families! Today (I’m writing this Wednesday—my “admin” day) was a bit comical, but in the end I got a lot done. I had to take my car in for a safety inspection so everything revolved around that. After getting us up, dressed, and Shelby walked, and Tycho dropped off, I had a coffee date with a fellow business owner/friend in Newburgh. This was supposed to be followed by a Business Association meeting, which I ended up skipping because I felt like I had too much to do. They go long, and I knew it would be noon by the time I got home. Having skipped that, with more time on my hands, I thought that one thing that has been slipping for our family is some much-needed immunity-boosting practices (stay tuned/next newsletter!), so I hopped over to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I also had to swing by the bookstore and then the post office to ship out online orders that had come in. And then I remembered having to stop by Target for something specific. And then I remembered that I forgot my laptop power cord at the store, so I had to swing back over for that! ARGH. Eventually I got home, unloaded the groceries, picked up Shelby, and got the car over to the service station near the house. By bringing Shelby, I was able to walk her home, thereby taking care of her afternoon walk in the process of getting my car inspected. Nice. I managed to get all of this done by noon—in my head, once it was noon the day was half-over and I would feel demoralized about my to do list. So that felt like a small victory. I still can’t get over living and working somewhere without a commute. My instinct is to rush around, to assume every errand will take up a ton of time, when really virtually everything I need to do is within 5-10 minutes driving distance.
Feeling very happy with my planning, I arrived home only to realize that I left the laptop power cord in the car back at the autobody shop. I assessed my options and decided to forget it and get back to my cooking projects and housework. I had enough to do that would make a meaningful difference. And nothing requiring the laptop was terribly urgent. I did some cooking, and made two vital phone calls, dealt with laundy, trash, etc. I made the right decision, because the car was done by 2—and just like that I was clicking away on my laptop writing this newsletter. Crisis averted! oh and in the middle of all this I did some necessary social media work for the bookstore. I don’t mind this work, but it feels like a full time job and as someone working on being on her phone less for the sake of “modeling” healthy behavior for her toddler, this sudden legitimate need to be on it is only further entrenching my social media habit.
Alright, I promise that I won’t repeat this stream of consciousness narrative of my day ever again. is this relevant to the story? I think so? It was a good day! And not as manic as it seems from my summation. Stick around for a preview of what’s to come and a handful of recs below. Thanks for reading my friends.
xo AV
The next post, for paid subscribers, will be my practices for Immunity Boosting in the Kitchen. ‘Tis the season. Stay tuned for that, if you’re so inclined.
What I’m reading this week / Manjula Martin’s forthcoming memoir The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History (out from Pantheon on Jan 16 in the US). So far I’m pretty stunned by this memoir, which successfully weaves an incredibly informative history of fire in California, with the author’s personal history of medical injury and chronic pain, and her own relationship to her home-state. The catalog copy compares it to Joan Didion’s Where I Was From and that rings so true to me…except this book is riveting (sorry, Joan). I’m only about 1/4 of the way through and I have been suddenly moved to tears twice, and for very different reasons.
Something to listen to / One of my more minor challenges running the bookstore is selecting music—music has never really been my thing—I’d rather keep up with books and movies/tv, but lately I’ve found that Sarah McLachlan Radio on Spotify offers the most pleasing, nostalgic mix of artists—but somehow doesn’t get repetitive in the way that other Spotify Radio does. I’m rediscovering hits from my adolescence, like Jewel’s “Standing Still” (a true banger that I completely forgot about), and Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” (I have a visceral memory of the music video). Just two random examples off the top of my head.
Something to smell / Santa Maria Novella’s Melograno in scented Terracotta is quite possibly the most luxurious and unnecessary thing I’ve ever purchased for myself. I’ve been thinking about it for many many years and finally bought it—I can’t remember how I first learned of it—in some list, maybe into the gloss? It’s a beautiful terracotta pomegranate that slowly releases a scent to perfume your home. I have it sitting on the window of my kitchen, which is perhaps not the best place for it, but the longer it’s there the more it feels right.
Something to consider / OK this is a shameless plug, but I had a lot of fun creating our Most Anticipated Books of 2024 list for the bookstore. Check it out!! My top top top picks are probably Griffin Dunne’s The Friday Afternoon Club (holy moly I cannot wait), the new Sarah Manguso novel, LIARS; Liana Finck’s graphic memoir of motherhood, HOW TO BABY, new Porochista!; and OH the new Taffy Brodesser-Akner, LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE (no art that I can share yet, but the title alone…). Oh and also Kimberly King Parsons’s WE WERE THE UNIVERSE.
Something to make a habit of / while chopping vegetables have a large bowl on the counter next to you so you can plop discards/trash as you go…rather than having them crowd your cutting board. Then walk the bowl over to the trash to dispose of when it’s full. It makes clean up so much easier. I feel much tidier—positively virtuous!
