january feels like morning so i have no choice but to adore it

birthday pasta, wine before babygirl, thinking of people i love under bedsheets

January feels like morning so I have no choice but to adore it.

I’m continuously struck by how nice a morning can feel—and also by the inevitability of the disappointment that hits every day when, after what feels like no time at all, I glance at the clock and realize it’s almost noon—that the sharp jolt of morning has faded into pale, lifeless afternoon. I’ve said it before, I wrote about continuously seeking a weekday lunch that gives me the will to live at 3pm. I love the morning. Delicious morning. The day still unburdened.

Mostly I think of mornings spent at home, or on holiday, surrounded by others. Setting an early alarm to go off quietly enough to wake only me. Knowing everyone is in their final lap of sleep, breathing hot and heavy, soon to stir and encourage the day to get a move on. Willing that not to happen, not yet, and very slowly and deliberately turning the door handle, hoping for a near-silent click.

Padding softly to the living room and taking in the picture of the prior evening now cast in bright grey light: a card deck, a sticky note with scrawled points tallied in pen, drained wine glasses and curiously growing piles of paper. I think of curling my legs up on the couch. Reading a few pages of my book, and with every turn of the page, selfishly wishing that it could go on like this for longer—for no one to open their door, or dare speak at full volume.

The day might turn out to be a nice one. Maybe we’ll ride bikes. Make sandwiches in the kitchen. One of us could see a bird at the feeder just outside the sliding glass door, and we could all peer out to have a look, and it could be beautiful. But in the precious stillness of the morning, the day has not yet begun and the potential of it grows bigger yet. I want to stay there instead.

My mom is always the first to join me. After saying her low, murmured good mornings, she heads straight for the kettle. Seeing me nestled in the couch, in front of the window, book on my lap, it’s obvious she doesn’t want to ripple the air she sees I’m breathing (and I instantly love her more for it). She asks, just above a whisper, if I want any tea. Of course, I nod. She tries to be quiet, closing the door of the cupboard without a squeak, filling the kettle with the faucet barely turned, carefully setting two mugs on the countertop. She, too, understands and appreciates the fragility of the morning’s stillness.

/

A half hour can’t ever pass without my mother’s mug filling with milky tea. An hour or so later, she’ll switch to coffee. Splash of half and half. A bowl of muesli. But the day always starts (and ends) with tea, and there’s no way around it.

For my sister, morning is a scroll in bed, a hot shower, the wraparound of her giant, luxuriously thick white robe, and the Keurig spitting out hot coffee. Fortitude to shrug on her coat and leave for the hospital.

My father has puffy eyes and a gravelly voice. News blares from an iPhone speaker all the way from the bedroom. In summer, his morning is stepping out to submerge in cold pool water after stirring the coffee grounds. The close of the wooden door, the splash of the dip. Returning with gleaming skin and a better ability to think, to finally push down the plunger of the press.

A friend of mine, a heaping bowl of oatmeal piled high with California blueberries and handfuls of every different kind of seed and nut in her pantry. An essential drizzle of honey.

Someone I’ve loved, sometime in the past, a hoodie thrown on and a tall, opaque, French press left on the kitchen counter. Laptop open at the dining table, settling in for work, typing hellos and cheeky good mornings. A then-favorite mug, the heaviest one, poured with black coffee. I wonder of the favorite mug now.

Roommates, so many of them over the years. All with different mornings, all precious. The intimacy of observing each of them, especially when you’re new. For her, now, it is the squidge of Yorkshire Gold. Barry’s Tea, even better. For him, the scooping of powders from crinkly bags into the cup of the blender, and hearing the electric whir of the power turning on. The day only then able to begin.

/

I can shut my eyes tight and smell every one of these mornings, special to each of them, and be brought as much peace as getting out of bed and heading straight for my own favorite mug. And I’ve done it. When I’ve been separated for a long while by some kind of distance, or when I haven’t been able to sleep, I’ve found myself visualizing the people that I love riding their last waves of sleep and stirring from under their warm sheets. I think of their room, and of them mindlessly putting on socks and slippers and willing for a good day.

And to me, January feels a little like all of that.

January is fresh and baby-pink, with rosy cheeks, and sleep in the corner of eyes. January is standing on the morning train next to the businessman with still-damp hair who smells of soap. Of course nothing has changed, not at all. It is just another month, just further, hideous proof of the passage of time. So what. But there is such fiercely protected air, and charged electricity, even in the gentle approach of a new year.

In response to the feverish, blood sugar-spiked months just prior, January is a month guided by feeling, by a hunger for recalibration, by a real belief that things can be better and sure, maybe that even starts now?

January feels like slowly turning the door handle and hoping not to wake up the rest of the house. Wanting to linger in the hope, and the question of Maybe and What If, as long as possible without any chance of ruin. Willing no one, nothing, to disturb or get in the way of what’s popped into that little brain since waking. Of course it will happen, no way otherwise. And the interruption could be catastrophic or wonderful. Who can know what a year will bring? January feels like wrapping fingers around a hot mug, inhaling in steam, and understanding that regardless of everything else shifting all around, this really is a nice way to start the day.

A loaf of walnut banana bread and a frosty view for a mid-Jan morning. Does it need to be said that while I love the feeling of January as January, this one was kind of a shit show? I’ll say it nonetheless. A royal, cortisol-spiking shit show. Onwards! Hope you had some nice mornings in there, and that you’re feeling, ummmmm, fortified for February (a month that has no silver linings, I’m sorry).

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Everything I’ve Cooked

Soups, Salads, and Sides

• A gentle, post-holiday chicken and rice soup, with added ginger and leeks.

• A Parm-rind stock made with chicken thighs and parsnips. Currently in the freezer, waiting for its time to shine.

• A repeat make of this lovely coconut-miso salmon curry, tossing in some cherry tomatoes to burst in the broth.

• Red-lentil soup with a lot of lemon and cilantro, served with my chia bread butter.

• Simple olive oil, paprika, salt and pepper-roast carrots and turnips at 400° for 30 minutes, tossed with herbs, oil and vinegar.

Proteins, Pastas, and Mains

• Peppery zucchini eggs spooned onto oat cakes.

• Creamy polenta with nutritional yeast and a shit-ton of black pepper (200ml of polenta mixed into 400ml of boiling water, simmered and stirred for about 15-20 minutes, tossing in seasoning and nooch to serve).

• Pantry peanut sauce pasta (peanut butter, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, chile crisp) with leftover shredded chicken, sesame seeds, lime juice, a jammy egg, and a side of smashed and salted cucumbers.

• An orange, sumac, and green olive roast chicken (a recipe I might transcribe and share soon).

Sweets, Brekkies, and Baked Bites

• Buckwheat Chia Bread topped with pumpkin seeds. Slices slathered with goat cheese, endive, avocado. Peanut butter, tahini, salt. Butter.

• Emma Waddell
  ’s Granola, with some added cocoa powder, spooned onto kefir yogurt, and spooned directly in my mouth every night at 10pm.

• Wholewheat banana bread with walnuts.

• I made the Internet’s favorite cookie again: salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread. So reliable, so delicious, great for compliments if you’re in need of some of those?

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Everything I’ve Ordered

Seville, visiting my parents before the start of my spring term.

• A gorgeous patio and a gorgeous citrus glazed fish at Casa Manolo León.

• Morish spins on classic tapas from Marabunda.

• A return to a very reliable Lebanese spot, Restaurante Fatouch.

• Clams in hot garlic oil, and shelled shrimp for peeling, from the historic El Rinconcillo.

London

• A leafy salad blanketed with cheese, and a heavy pour of white from 107 to prepare my mind/body/soul before seeing Babygirl.

• Broccoli with muhammara and mint (fantastic), and a ragu tagliatelle (dreamy) for my solo birthday lunch at Jolene.

• Pints at Chesham Arms, where I invited my cobbled-together group of new London friends to celebrate my day. A lovely birthday in a perfectly wintry pub: fire crackling, dogs being scratched behind the ears, etc.

• A selection of the most decadent treats so lovingly gifted and/or sent to me for my birthday, from: Lunar (a white chocolate raspberry cookie that is unreal), Violet Cakes (a tahini brownie that made me moan in the library), and Zabars (chocolate babka and black and whites), shipped all the way from New York!!

• My one two allotted tourist treats for the month: a fluffy sultana scone from Cheeky Scone, and a massive, hearty Full English from E Pellicci.

• A friend picked Rogues’ Roast on Monday menu for her birthday dinner, and I haven’t stop thinking about the truffled cauliflower cheese.

Paris, less than 36 hours. Say it with me: thank you, Student Visa.

• An overstuffed street pita with falafel, quickly-shovelled as I walked the Seine after arriving.

• Boulangerie-Pâtisserie Terroirs d'Avenir for perfect pain aux raisin.

• Breizh Café for a goat cheese buckwheat galette, followed by a dessert crepe of brown sugar and yuzu-salted butter. Yum.

• Sain for bread window-persuing and a sourdough scramble for brekkie.

• Fantastic hummus, mint tea, and other Algerian plates at Yoummah.

• A bottle of red wine, and bathroom decor-appreciating at Maceo.

• A boulangerie spread of a baguette, croissants, pain aux chocolate, and turnovers, all eaten at home with salted butter, Bonne Maman, and tiny cups of coffee. Enough to make a girl weep before heading to the airport.

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Everything Else

Short Reading:

• The Golden Age of American Bakeries Is Upon Us. Here’s Why, by Meghan McCarron, for the New York Times.

• Everything i have learned through hinge prompts by

  namatayi <3
  . (listen to the audio reading—gorgeous voice alone).

• Lorne Michaels Is the Real Star of “Saturday Night Live” by Susan Morrison.

• Pick Me Up, a wonderful short piece by Lauren Bans on seeking a man to, literally, lift her off the ground.

• A Case for Sisyphus and Hopeful Pessimism by Gal Beckerman for the Atlantic.

Long Reading:

• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which I ripped through over the holiday and finished on the first day of the year. WOOF (is my review).

• Evenings & Weekends, by Oisín McKenna, is very East London. While I felt here-and-there about the book overall, it was undeniably fun to read about a place I’m slowly growing more familiar with and could say “I know that street!” and “I’ve passed that bar!” with dumb satisfaction every other page.

• I read Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie, in prep for my spring term’s Novel course, and wow is it beautifully written? Pacing felt a little off, though, which inhibited it from sticking the landing, IMO.

• Little Weirds, by Jenny Slate. Finally! Oh, how I loved this collection. And how surprised I was to find so much gorgeous food writing in there, too.

  • “I’m sure you can’t bake it all away, but you can transform the reality while still accepting the essential elements that make it what it is. You can make good smells in the place where you live, smells that are better than sitting around with stress breath and cigarette smoke. Who knows? Who knows how to do anything, but it’s not nothing that I know all my feelings and I have trust in their changeable nature and I am an expert at making treats out of tribulations.”

• And one of my favorite birthday gifts: Ella Risbridger’s part-memoir, part-cookbook, The Year of Miracles. I’ve been slowly thumbing through it before bed and getting very inspired!

Watching:

• At long last: Severance. If you somehow had also avoided watching it the first time around, let this be your sign to join the party. It’s excelllllllllent.

• Leading up to the Oscars that I won’t even be able to watch… January hosted theatre visits for Babygirl (medium good), We Live in Time (bad :/ ), A Real Pain (good!!), and Nickel Boys (great).

• More exciting, though, I saw the 30th-anniversary production of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. Go whenever you get the chance, wherever in the world it plays!

Listening:

• I devoured all of The Telepathy Tapes, a newish podcast that speculates on the telepathic powers of nonverbal autistic children. It truly broke my brain and I’m still trying to understand what I just consumed and I need you to listen to it too, yeah?

• Both released tracks from Lucy Dacus’ upcoming album, Forever is a Feeling, again and again.

• Beabadoobee’s summer album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, also on repeat.

Buying:

• An ever so slightly on-sale three-pack of Kodak Gold ISO 200.

• Giant friggen butter beans for a pantry treat.

• Cobalt blue is my favorite color, so I was thrilled to lock eyes with this simple but supremely cozy vest.

• And, while not purchased by me… oh my god I was sent a birthday gift card to a head spa. I had my scalp treated, washed, and massaged, and as someone who daydreams about having my hair played with, I can’t begin to tell you how relaxing it was. If you’re in London, I can vouch for Elite Head Spa.

That’s all I’ve got. Talk next month! XO

Laura killed it with this one. Zabars shipped across the Atlantic in a re-used Skims box. Thank goodness for friendship and the Royal Mail.