Back in November, my friends and I went to the Poconos for a weekend, sharing a house next to a near-frozen lake. It was to jointly celebrate two friends’ birthdays, which was honestly a brilliant idea. These are friends from my last job, where we bonded over stress and shitty hours (lol, remember when I worked overnights? I don’t recommend it); I love them all dearly, and obviously volunteered myself to cook a meal.
The day we were to leave, the 2019 Joy of Cooking arrived in the mail. I was originally thinking about bringing a Julia Turshen book, or maybe Smitten Kitchen; something, anything, that wasn’t so enormous and heavy. My girlfriend told me not to bring it. My brain told me not to bring it. My heart, and my friends in a cooking Facebook group that I mod (hi!), told me to just do it, and I did, and I had no regrets. I mean, aside from its weight. It’s a delight, a beautiful new addition to the Joy of Cooking catalogue; the recipes I recognized felt like old friends, and the ones I didn’t, new journeys in food.
Read MoreIn classic Chloe fashion, I’ve left a passion project to sit for nearly a full month and barely noticed the time go by. It’s been a busy month, but it’s about to get busier, what with Thanksgiving coming up; around this time of year I start really wanting to cocoon, but that’s not a full-time option. Unfortunate. But if I can’t do that, I can spend my days off doing things I like — baking, spending hours with my girlfriend watching TV or hanging pictures on my walls for the first time in the 3 years I’ve lived in this apartment, petting my cats, reading, listening to Ariana Grande…all the usual things that make weekends nice.
But weeknights are important too. I sometimes feel like I’m tripping toward the weekend, stumbling through the days of work before I get to the full days off. On busy days at work that feeling is intensified. With the weather changes and general stress, I keep getting little (and big) headaches. At work I eat the same things over and over, which I can’t really complain about (free!) but am going to anyway. There is a lot to be said for making your own food. Maybe I enjoy it so much because I don’t do it a lot.
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