City Living

Phew! It feels like ages since I sat down to write. I arrived back home on Monday and the weekend in New York was really wonderful. I thought I'd type out some of the trip's highlights...

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The food. We ate some delicious food. Zucchini fritters with tzatziki sauce from a favorite Greek place. The best donut I've ever eaten--a light, and fluffy vanilla bean glazed exterior with a tart, homemade blackberry jam filling. Mussels and frites and haricots verts from my beloved French restaurant in my old neighborhood. Slices of plain cheese pizza from the best pizzeria in NYC. Grilled polenta with mushrooms from my sister-in-law's favorite restaurant in the West Village. A decadent treat I used to sometimes get back in my city days--Hungarian coffee (coffee with almond extract, whipped cream, and cinnamon) from the Hungarian Pastry Shop.

Everything was so yummy.

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My brother and I went to one of the most awe-inspiring art exhibits I've ever seen. It's hard to explain really. Hanging from the ceiling of St. John the Divine Cathedral are two, 100-foot long sculptures made from debris the artist found at construction sites. One is a male phoenix and the other is a female phoenix and they are breathtakingly beautiful. This is modern art done extremely well and it would be worth a trip to NYC to see them before the exhibit is taken down.

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Meeting my brother's girlfriend was very fun. We all had a lovely meal together and it was great to finally meet her after hearing lots of bits and pieces about her from my brother. She's so sweet!

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Lots of gabbing and girl talk with my sister-in-law. I'm so thankful for her! She truly is the sister I never had and our conversations about life and love and family are so good for my soul.

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I got to go to Redeemer with my brother! Sadly, Tim Keller preached at the early service so we didn't get to hear him, but the service was very moving and rewarding all the same. The music was especially beautiful and whenever I go to Redeemer I always feel such sincerity and liveliness among the congregation. It's a very special church and we left refreshed.

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On Friday afternoon I had a total urge to play frisbee (college campuses on cool, fall days will do that to me) so we hunted around for awhile until we found one in a tiny, packed-to-the-gills hardware store near Columbia. It was actually really funny. The shopkeeper didn't know what a "frisbee" was so we described it as "a flying disc"...."you play catch with it?" He knowingly smiled and said "ahh" before climbing up on a ladder to reach a very, very high shelf, from which he pulled down a dusty, orange frisbee wrapped in cellophane. We payed $5 for it and walked to Morningside Park, as if this were a perfectly normal way to acquire a frisbee. It was all very weird and satisfying.



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The best part was time spent with two of my favorite people. I loved being back in "my" city, I loved smelling the familiar smells and getting around on the subway and ordering pricey coffee from cute cafes. But mostly it was so wonderful to see my brother and my sister-in-law in their home environments. I feel terrifically happy to be living on the East Coast again and nearer to the people I love!

My Favorite City

In a week from today I'm jumping on a train and heading up to...New York!!!

I'll be there for about four days visiting both my brother, who goes to school there, and my sister-in-law (two of my favorite people in the world!). I'm so very excited.

After college I lived in New York for two and a half years. I know that isn't a very long time but in those few years this city made such an imprint on my heart. I love New York. By the time I left I was ready, and of course there were crazy things about my life there (the great lengths you must go to for groceries!) that I wouldn't want to have to deal with again.

Both Functional And Beautiful

I've been thinking so much about kitchens lately--specifically that, of all of the rooms in a home, it's the one that must be equal parts function and beauty. When you love to cook you begin to learn how to move around a kitchen, how to store things, what to keep within reach, what makes for a good design. A functional kitchen is such a big part of feeling comfortable cooking night in and night out. Interestingly, I ended up loving my dainty (a euphemism for minuscule) NYC kitchen because everything was so handy and close by. I could stand at the sink and take a tiny step right to reach the fridge, a tiny step left to get to the stove, reach straight up for spices and olive oil and all of my dishes. Having a shoebox of a kitchen was so much more efficient than you would think. It surprised me in the best possible way! 

My current kitchen isn't horribly un-functional but it isn't terrific. A lot of the material choices--white countertops, weird pinkish tile flooring, flat paint on the walls--are really hard to keep looking clean, which is a big part of function. Even if I scrub and scrub it's a difficult kitchen to make spotless. But I'm glad I've had this experience because it's taught me a lot about what I don't want my someday-kitchen to be like.

So, a functional kitchen is important. But beauty, at least for me, has just as big a role to play. A kitchen must feel good to be in. Pretty things should be displayed, and good natural light is a huge bonus. Art should hang in the kitchen, a soft, colorful rug should be on the floor. You should love your dishes and maybe have a few open shelves for showing off your favorite ones. 

I've slowly been growing my collection of what I think of as "beautiful kitchen things." A lot of them were wedding gifts, which we still don't have here with us but they're being moved out of storage very soon and we'll be reunited with everything when we relocate.* A lot of my own additions were found at thrift shops, or they were DIY projects, or hand-me-downs. (Examples: my vintage wire basket, DIY Cook's Illustrated art, these yellow and ivory dessert plates.) It makes me happy to fill my kitchen with eclectic, vintage, pretty things!

Anyway, at the estate sale I went to last week, I found a few more pieces to add to my "beautiful kitchen things" collection. 

This miniature copper and brass footed colander stole my heart the moment I saw it (in all of its grimy glory). I knew it just needed a good cleaning to look its best again, and I'm all about a nice aged patina anyway. I can imagine it sitting on a shelf next to bright white dishes and using it to rinse strawberries. It's adorable, right?

And I couldn't resist these pink glasses. I passed them by on my first round but came back because I kept thinking about them. I've been so attracted to colored glass lately. You better believe that come summertime, my first batch of iced tea will be served up in these beauties. I only wish I had four!

I'd love to hear from you--how do you keep your kitchen both functional and beautiful? What does your dream kitchen look like? What sorts of things fill your shelves?

*I hope to share more news on that soon! It's been killing me to keep such exciting news bottled up inside!

I'm A Morning Person, What Are You?

A morning person too? Or a night owl?

Our windowsill capturing the glowy, morning light

I always think this is an interesting topic and maybe I'm wrong, but I think your answer to this question tends to say a lot about who you are.

I am most certainly a morning person. I set my alarm for 6:30 every day (even weekends) and sleeping in always makes me feel a little guilty, like I've shortened my day and wasted the best hours of it, to boot. (Although going back to bed with a cup of tea and a book is just about the greatest guilty pleasure I have.) I love the morning quiet and witnessing light come into the world, watching it change from grey to pink to yellow. The routines of morning are comforting to me. Making tea and grabbing my computer to write, often talking to my mom on the phone, eating a healthy breakfast. Even when my first few waking hours were more hectic--up at 6, out the door by 7 armed with music books, my lunch, a travel mug, and a metro card--I still liked my mornings best. There's such a freshness and energy about the hours before noon.

In college and grad school, I always made a point to do most of my practicing in the early part of the day and was amazed by friends of mine who would stay in the practice rooms until midnight or later. My mind--not to mention my fingers--just weren't up for late-night workouts. And in my opinion, "pulling an all-nighter" (which I've never done) is just about the worst thing anyone could possibly put themselves through. The mere idea of no sleep for 24 hours or more makes me ill. Not only am I a morning person, but I don't do well on little sleep.

It's a good thing I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'm an old soul because, once again, this particular trait of mine pegs me as just that. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that most 25-year-olds are not morning people. And I think most of them are much more fun in the hours after 9 pm than I am, too!

So here's my theory: I think that "night owls," by and large, tend to be energized by interacting with other people and being in an environment that is awake and active, whereas "morning people" seek the quietness of a world that is still a bit sleepy and use this time to recharge.

Is this obvious? Or way off base? Or just a completely boring topic??

I guess this post is stemming from my belief that there's something to be discovered in seemingly mundane human tendencies and preferences--winter or summer? white or red? Apple or PC? milk or dark?--and that we can learn a lot about ourselves by paying attention to even our smallest, simplest quirks and choices.

Psychologist Kate, signing off now.

My Favorite Way To Shop For Food

Lately, I've been getting pangs of nostalgia for the way I used to shop for food when I lived in New York.

No, I don't miss hauling groceries up three flights of stairs, or trekking ten blocks with two cloth bags that were bursting with produce around my shoulders, or plopping my Trader Joe's bags between my feet to steady them on the subway home.

What I miss is the variety of fresh and interesting options, the range of ethnic foods, the little specialty shops where I'd go to get just one or two things.

Image Source / Google Street View

I used to go to a little Italian market in my neighborhood to get big chunks of parmesan cheese that I would grate over just about anything, it was so divine. Then I'd throw the rind into a pot of stew and walk back to Milano's for another chunk, and sometimes I'd treat myself to a batch of freshly-made pasta too.

I used to buy curry at Kalustyan's on Lexington and 28th. I absolutely love curry and theirs was just the best. One time, for a special lamb dish I was making, I also bought the most fragrant cinnamon sticks and some bright green cardamom pods.

I was always trying out new bakeries for bread and bagels. There are too many good ones to be loyal to only one.

Instead of ordering loose tea online like I do now, I took the subway down to Broome Street to replenish my tins. It was fun to sample new varieties, but I always loved going back to my old favorites.

I cheated with olive oil. My parents were about a 4-hour bus ride away and they had a great source for Greek olive oil, so I would bring up my bottle to refill whenever I visited them in Upstate New York.

And I could go on and on. For me, shopping for great food was one of the highlights of living in New York. I didn't even mention the beautiful things I always found at the farmer's markets. Or the Turkish bodega right next to my building where I bought most of my produce and nuts and grains and dried fruit.

My mom is the one who taught me that this is the best way to shop. Growing up, we had a favorite bakery, a Greek imports store where we got the most delicious olives and feta cheese, an amazing German butcher shop. I think there's value in this kind of shopping, which is reminiscent of the way it used to be before supermarkets came into the picture. Getting your bread from the baker and your meat from the butcher.

I love it because food is important to me and so I try to seek out what is the most fresh and flavorful. I also much prefer popping into several small shops to spending 45 minutes getting everything I need at a massive grocery store. It's also nice to support local businesses and believe it or not--I think this approach may have saved me some money (traditional NYC grocery stores are enormously overpriced).

I'm dreaming of the day when I can shop this way again. In the meantime, think I can convince my little brother to ship me some NYC bagels?