The Recipe Dispatch: Early Spring
Gremolata, sourdough cinnamon buns, clafoutis, 30 min weeknight dinners and more.
Hello paid subscribers! Thank you so much for your ongoing support. Once a month I’ll be sending you The Recipe Dispatch, a collection of recipes I’ve been loving lately, recipes I’ve discovered to help satiate the collections of hungers within me. I hope they’ll make things a little easier at meal time, and perhaps become a family staple. Let me know your thoughts, which were your favorites? I’d love to hear what you’re cooking and discovering in your kitchen over on the chat.
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." — Virginia Woolf
I’ve been hungry lately. Hungrier than normal. Hungry for cream and meat and yolks and sourdough cinnamon buns and hibiscus raspberry leaf tea. The question I ask myself every day goes something along the lines of, “how do I fill my cup (properly and with delight) alongside my many other responsibilities? How do I quell this most ancient hunger?” Like a child tugging at my hem, the insistence of this urge is strong and unrelenting. How long can I ignore my hunger before a volcano erupts? If I look into its eyes, what does it want to tell me?
What I’ve learned in my ten years of motherhood is that responding to this hunger must be my first priority. If I’m not full (powered up, satiated, fueled, comfortable) I cannot with integrity meet the demands of modern parenthood, work, my relationships, entrepreneurialism. I'll snap. My patience will wear thin. I will tire, and melt, and then the UPS store will be closed and frustration will set in. No one needs that electricity. So, the hunger comes first. This sacred, palpable thrum in my blood, urging me to listen. Then this. This chopping and stirring and baking and mixing. This piling my plate with food, pouring milk and honey on the fire. This bringing a fork to my mouth. This listening. This love.
I must meet the demands of my body’s hunger, before I can meet the demands of my soul’s hunger, my family’s hunger, my life’s hunger. But that’s a topic for an entirely different essay (!)
Here’s what I’ve been cooking to stop my primary hunger, if only for a fleeting moment:
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