photos: birthday cakes for nick and grumpa / ugly hanukkah sweater dala cookies / graham cracker village / black sesame halloween cats! / bernie as elmo / one of many recent hotdishes / homemade gelt! / the splatter cake i made on drew barrymore’s show! / making latkes on the today show / latke nachos (lat-chos!) / pumpkin pies packed up for special deliveries / day-after-thanksgiving sandwich / thanksgiving / the donut cake from yossy’s new book, snacking cakes / snow and mitten / a random hummus platter / made pancake cereal lol / s’mores sufganiyot

Hi fronds! 

I just wanted to check in and say hi/happy holidays before we leave for our fake-cation to Florence later this week!! A fake-cation is when you strap yourselves to the couch for seven hours while you “fly” to Italy and then when you “get off the plane” you only eat Italian food and wear fanny packs and have very limited cell phone service for a week. We’re going to pretend that we’re staying at the Four Seasons Florence and only use tiny soap and then when we depart for our day we’ll map out our route based on what’s walkable and then choose our meals according to menus in the area. Is this deranged? On a scale from pancake cereal to breastmilk cheese have we lost it? Ok we’re not actually going to simulate the flight because can you imagine doing that to yourself with a toddler (!) but we ARE stocking up on Nutella and ingredients to cook through Emiko Davies’ Florentine, and we do fully intend to immerse ourselves in Italian art and music and, oh yeah, wine. I should set alarms on my phone to sneak chocolates onto Nick and Bernie’s pillows before bedtime. 

So that’s where we’ll be next week and I don’t plan on bringing my computer (i.e. I’ll do the thing I always do between Christmas and the New Year which is that I tape my computer shut with washi tape). But I wanted to tell you about some highlights of the latter part of our year!  As some of you have noticed on Instagram, we’re in a temporary house right now because we’re adding onto our home! It has been such a fascinating process and I can’t wait to share more details, but it should be ready sometime in the summer. So that means I’ve been writing Home Is Where The Eggs Are in a temporary kitchen which has been a highly informative adventure because I have an entirely different set of appliances to test recipes on. But we also miss our house so much! Being in a temporary house + this pandemic feels like walking in a never-ending ball pit some days but we’re safe and cozy and here are things that make us smile:

1. I have stumbled on one of the great unexpected bonuses of having a child: Bernie loves brushing my hair!!! I don’t even miss going to spa days anymore, I just sit on the living room floor and Bernie says “comb! comb! comb!” and does this hybrid brush/pet thing on my head, it feels so nice.

2. Our temporary house is more out there than our farm and yet there is so much life all around. There are three deer, two mamas and a baby, who come by at dusk and eat the apples from our trees. We wave at them from our window. And also a cat! Mitten. She comes on evening strolls with us and puts up with a certain someone who likes to tug her tail. Probably because she knows she gets post-soup chicken carcasses if she sticks around?

3. We had a tiny but very tasty Thanksgiving. It was one of the few meals I can remember that didn’t revolve around testing for my book and so I didn’t have to sit down and immediately analyze every bite and bring myself on that emotional roller coaster haha… I could just use butter/salt/pepper and enjoy brussels sprouts, Alexandra Stafford’s stuffing, Hayden’s cranberry sauce, Sister Schubert rolls, smoked ham, lefse, Nick’s pumpkin pie, and more stuffing in all of its delicious glory.

4. Bernie has become such a great help in the kitchen! We got her this thing called a Toddler Tower which is basically a really high step stool with a railing around it and she helps wash potatoes, whisk batters, dump seasonings into things, and just last week I put her on piping bag duty for our little graham cracker gingerbread houses. She ate all of the crackers that she piped frosting onto so none of them made the final houses but her coconut snowstorm did!!!

5. We had a great Hanukkah in which we lit candles and read new books every night! The best book of all was this board book for Bernie that we made using pictures of her doing all of her favorite things (it is called “Self” because she loves looking at “self”). And we made homemade gelt!!

6. So much soup. Always soup. I love soup.

7. And so much Elmo. And then when it’s naptime, I watch that new Disney+ ballet series! It’s so great.

Ok that’s all! Happy holidays, friends!!!!!

-yeh!