Let me set the scene for you. It is 5:16 pm on Monday evening. It is very dark out. I am still wearing my pajama top under my sweater, because I never got around to showering today. The boys had to stay home from school and Kita today and you know how these things go. Mom's personal hygiene is always the first to go unless Mom insists on showering, everyone else be damned, and sometimes that small indulgence ("indulgence") is just a hill too far. (Is that the right metaphor? I'm tired.) (Also, "Mom"? Sigh.)

The boys are watching a movie. They watched a movie yesterday too. And the day before that too. I no longer really care that they're watching a movie a day multiple times a week. I mean, objectively, I know it's not great? But I don't care anymore. I'm sitting here next to them, making pretend that we're spending time together and that I'm present, but I'm typing away here, trying to work, trying to achieve something. ("Achieve." Sob.)

Choosing the stupid movie was a struggle. Voices were raised. Tears were shed. Rooms were left. The older child doesn't want to watch what the younger child wants to watch and the younger child sometimes just wants to get its way and one of them is intractable and the other one is mostly agreeable and I try to be fair and balanced and sometimes I end up getting so mad about the stupidity of all of the arguing and complaining and anyway, wasn't acquiescing to a movie about me trying to practice some form of self-care and now it feels like it's backfiring and omg get me out of here, no, really, I need to leave the house, but I can't and also, I'm wearing yesterday's underpants and ten-year-old sweatpants.

(If it sounds like I am on this parenting experience solo right now, well, I am, because despite the fact that the poor man has worked from our utility room since March 2020 and basically never leaves the house anymore, Max had a positive PCR test last week and has been in masked isolation in a separate room in our apartment since Thursday evening (THURSDAY EVENING), which basically feels like a benevolent yet still hungry-three-times-a-day ghost has moved in and my husband has moved out. Mercifully/miraculously, the boys and I are negative!)

But! Let's focus on good things, shall we? This recipe! Which I first made several weeks ago, not thinking much of it, just needing to use up some wilty bok choy and funny-looking shiitakes that I'd bought as a special at the grocery store and then forgotten in the fridge for nearly a week, urgh. I even declined to take a photo, just in case, because I just figured it would be whatever, and then it went and straight up blew our minds and I didn't see that coming at all!

To make it, you first blanch some bok choy. Before blanching, you cut off the ends of the bok choy so that you're left with individual leaves rather than little bulbs. You drain these and let them cool, then arrange them in a serving dish.

Next you deal with the mushrooms. You stem the shiitakes, but leave them whole, and fry them together with some kind of chile (the first time, I used one hot fresh Turkish chile, which was delicious; the next time I used one tiny dried Calabrian chile and it was also delicious - but in both cases, one chile was plenty for making this fiery enough that small children wouldn't be able to eat it and grown-ups would get a runny nose). Then you add minced garlic and ginger and what seems like a lot of soy sauce as well as sugar and sesame oil. This boils down, glazing the mushrooms and making them incredibly savory and delicious.

This mixture is scraped over the blanched bok choy and then topped with sesame seeds (and scallions, if you like, but I find it richly flavored enough without the scallions adding another layer of allium flavor). You need to serve it with rice to soak up the delicious sauce and provide a bit of soothing balance to the punchy, moreish flavor of the mushrooms.

Most thrillingly, if you, like me, have a grown person in your household who thinks they hate mushrooms, this will possibly be the dish that finally makes them change their mind. Yes, really! I don't know why this feels like such a triumph to me, but it does. For years, I've been trying to find a way to change his mind and this finally did it.

The nicest thing about the whole thing is that it's so satisfying and delicious that you don't have to make anything else for dinner (besides rice, yes, and fried eggs and toast for your children who refuse glazed mushrooms and bok choy no matter how wonderful they are). Win win win.

But now it's 6:14 pm and the movie is over and the boys are bickering again and it's even darker outside than it was before and once more I don't know what to make for dinner! Off I go...

David Tanis's Glazed Shiitakes with Bok Choy
Adapted from the New York Times
Serves 2 as a main course with rice, or 3 to 4 as a side dish

1-2 pounds baby bok choy
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 small dry red Calabrian pepper or one fresh red chile pepper
1 pound shiitake mushrooms (about 4 dozen), stems removed
Salt and pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
6 scallions, sliced diagonally, for garnish (optional)
1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cut off and discard stem ends of bok choy. Separate leaves, rinse and drain. Drop leaves into boiling water and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until barely cooked. Immediately remove and drain. Arrange leaves on a serving platter, then set aside.

2. Put a large wok or cast-iron skillet over high heat. Add oil and heat until nearly smoking, then add hot peppers and shiitake caps, stirring to coat. Stir-fry for 2 minutes. Reduce heat slightly and add garlic, ginger, sugar, sesame oil and tamari. Stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes more.

3. Spoon shiitake and pan juices over reserved cooked bok choy. Garnish with scallions and sesame seeds, if using. Serve immediately or at room temperature.

Well, remember how I said that I was still trying to figure out my way back to the kitchen on August 23rd? It's November 8th and I'm just barely getting there! September and October were mostly about survival. We ate a lot of Abendbrot and fish sticks and pasta and salad. I avoided the kitchen as much as I could. Happily, though, I did have one very big cooking revelation, which was discovering this method for juicy chicken schnitzel, in which you marinate pounded chicken in a creamy bath of mustard and mayonnaise before breading and frying it. 

If you had told my eight-year-old self! My 18-year-old self! My 28-year-old self! That one day I would always have a jar of mayonnaise in my fridge! That I would fall in love with a recipe that uses nearly a cup of mayonnaise! I and my various selves would not have believed it, so great was my loathing for mayonnaise. And yet, here we are. If you are a mayo loather, I imagine you will scroll on by here, but the truth is that you can't actually taste the mayonnaise, it's really there to tenderize the meat and flavor it, along with the mustard, as well as allow you to skip a step in the breading process. The bulk of the marinade gets scraped off (as best you can) before doing the breading and frying.

So, yes, you make a marinade of mustard and mayo and plop the chicken in there to rest. The recipe says to do this up to a day beforehand, but I've never done it more than an hour before (and shh, sometimes even less than that, even though it says an hour is the minimum). Then you put a bunch of breadcrumbs in a shallow dish, clean off the chicken as best you can and dredge the chicken pieces in the breadcrumbs. I've used both regular fine breadcrumbs (that were gluten-free) and I've used panko and both work really well. So you use whatever you like.

Heat up some oil (well, more than "some" - which is really the key to a good schnitzel, not skimping on the oil) in a cast-iron skillet and you're good to go. Blissfully, pounded chicken schnitzel takes mere minutes to cook, which means that as long as you're willing to do that one marinade step in advance of dinner, dinner itself will take hardly any time at all to make.

The chicken comes out crunchy and moist and tender and delicious, and has entirely supplanted this as our weeknight chicken of choice. You probably don't need any help with sides, but it's lovely with a very simple, vinegary salad. It also makes good leftovers and is stellar in a sandwich. Hooray for kitchen revelations! 

Emma Laperruque's Easy Chicken Schnitzel
Adapted from Food52
Serves 4

3/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for the breadcrumbs
1 1/2 cups peanut or vegetable oil, adjusted as needed for frying
4 chicken breasts
2 cups breadcrumbs (plain or panko)

1. Combine the mayonnaise, mustard and salt in a large bowl and mix well. Pound the chicken breasts to 1/4-inch thickness. Place the chicken in the marinade and coat all sides of the chicken in the marinate. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 1 day.

2. When you’re ready to fry, add enough oil to a large cast-iron skillet to reach about 1/2-inch in depth. Set over medium-high heat.

3. Place the breadcrumbs on a plate and season with salt. Remove each chicken piece from the marinade and wipe off any excess. (Emma's note: No need to be obsessive but it should look mostly mayo-free, otherwise it won’t crisp properly.) Dredge each chicken piece in the breadcrumbs, pressing firmly to completely coat.

4. When the oil is hot, drop a crumb in the oil - it should immediately sizzle. Fry the chicken in batches, taking care not to overcrowd the pan. Cook each piece for 3 to 4 minutes per side, until deeply browned. Transfer the pieces to a paper towel–lined plate to drain. Repeat with the remaining chicken, then serve immediately.

Hello, hello!

I am sitting at my dining table eating a cold blueberry pancake leftover from yesterday's celebratory breakfast. Celebratory because it marked the end of an unexpected quarantine triggered by the fact that we sat very close to someone infected with Covid-19 on one of our flights home from Italy two weeks ago and the boys, being unvaccinated, were therefore classified as close contacts. Wait. Two weeks? That makes me laugh. Italy feels like it was months ago. Something about being stuck indoors with two little boys who very much would rather be in Kita and school will make 11 days feel like 11 weeks, right?

Anyway, the best news is, of course, that we all tested negative at the end of the quarantine. Today, in the pouring rain, Hugo set off for school with his six pounds of brand-new notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils (the pleasure I got from getting his stuff ready!) and art supplies and a new supply of ink cartridges for his fountain pen. Bruno zipped happily off to Kita, snack box under his arm. We are home alone now, Max in his office, me in the aforementioned dining room and it is very quiet which is what I've longed for, but I cannot help but feel like this is just a fleeting moment of normalcy and I don't quite know what to do with this weird, unpleasant mix of relief and dread.

Parents Are Not Okay about sums it up, yes? Yes.

Anyway. I know that I very much left you hanging with my promise to share lots of delicious food from Italy and I'm sorry about that. Italy this year was...not always easy. It was uncomfortably hot a lot of the time, I was trying to squeeze in work whenever I could and there were quite a bit of parenting difficulties which cast a pall over the holidays. Cooking was an afterthought most days. Which is very easy to do in a place where everything you buy at the market tastes like the sweetest, juiciest version of itself. Upon reentry to Berlin, it felt like I had to relearn how to put food on the table all over again.

I'm not quite back to actually looking up recipes and following them, but while I get there, I wanted to tell you about this slam dunk from Melissa Clark that I made in May when I was in Boston. My parents live not far from a wonderful fish store called Captain Marden's which was such a treat for me. In Berlin, I cook almost exclusively with frozen or canned fish. Fresh fish is a wild and rare exception. With fish as fresh as it was from Captain Marden's, you can get away with barely doing anything to the fish before eating. But if you follow this recipe, you'll be so, so happy you did.

This is a sheet-pan dinner, so it's easy, but there are a few elements to it. First, you roast a tangle of sliced bell peppers until they're starting to get soft and silky. Then you scrape them out of the way and put white fish fillets in the center of the pan, topped with thyme and olives. While this roasts, you make a sort of short-cut salsa verde with parsley, garlic, oil and vinegar. The salsa verde is served with the fish and peppers. (We ate the fish and peppers with boiled potatoes if my memory serves me, but rice would be nice too.) The whole thing was very satisfying and delicious and easy to execute. And just the thing to make when you're feeling slightly incompetent, but in dire need of something special. 

Sound familiar? I'm feeling extremely incompetent these days, like I'm failing at most things in my life. Motherhood, work, being a functioning human. Everything feels difficult, impossible, really, and when I lift my head from my own stupidly privileged situation, the scope of suffering elsewhere is nearly unbearable to contemplate. I know a lot of other people are feeling this way too. If you are, consider this my sympathetic fist bump. 

Melissa Clark's Roasted Fish with Sweet Peppers
Serves 4 to 5

1 small bunch lemon thyme or regular thyme
1 ½ pounds hake fillets
Fine sea salt and black pepper
3 large bell peppers, preferably 1 red, 1 orange and 1 yellow, thinly sliced
4 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
¼ cup pitted, sliced black or green olives, or a combination
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar, plus more to taste
1 garlic clove, grated
1 cup loosely packed Italian parsley leaves, chopped

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Pull 1 tablespoon thyme leaves off the bunch and finely chop.

Berlin public schools let out for summer last week and the city emptied out almost immediately. The streets feel empty and quiet now, parking spots abound, rush hour is muted, the air is thick with the scent of the blossoming linden trees. The smell, heavily floral and intoxicating, hangs in our apartment too, the windows yanked open day after day in the hopes of catching a faint breeze. Hugo's school closes for summer tomorrow and next week the boys and I leave for Italy, where the heat has already scorched the grass yellow and my mother awaits us. 

I am desperate to be there, itching with anticipation, actually, after having skipped our annual trip last year in an attempt to regain my sanity a little and write. These days, I feel different. I want to soak up every minute with the children, hold them close, watch them flourish in their happiest place, wild mint crunching under their feet, skin salted from the sea. I cannot wait to be where I feel most free and held, listening to the cicadas sawing away from morning til night, eating meal after meal of drippy melons and tomatoes, the rituals of summer anchoring us so firmly to that place. 

Until we leave, my calendar is filled with dinner dates and lunches and a picnic and celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries. We fling our arms around each other again in greeting and to say goodbye, promising more time together when everyone's back again in August. It feels delicious and indulgent and restorative and frightening and wonderful; totally banal and strange as hell at the same time. We weren't allowed to hug for so long. Is it safe? Meanwhile, tomorrow I will have a rising fourth grader and a little one with just one year left in Kita. It is nearly July. Wasn't it just January? Time is flying. Carpe diem.

The heat means that we mostly eat things I barely have to cook. Melon and ham, tomato and mozzarella, beans and tuna, peaches gulped down over the sink. The other day, I made a wonderful salad from Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons of wafer-thin zucchini and a whole array of cherry tomatoes, roasted peanuts and spicy fish sauce. I'm not the biggest fan of raw zucchini - I really love its velvety softness once boiled - but here, the zucchini is cut so thin and then salted and left to rest for a while. The zucchini slices are silky and nicely sweet against the fiery, lusty sauce, the crunch of the peanuts, the fruity burst of the tomatoes. This is the perfect salad to be piled high into a plate and eaten for a meal on hot summer nights when appetites are low, but the belly growls and is in need of satisfaction. 

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Zucchini Salad with Tomatoes, Peanuts, Basil, Mint and Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce
Serves 4
Adapted from Six Seasons

3-4 medium firm zucchini
Salt
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup salted roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
1 bunch scallions, sliced on a sharp angle and soaked in ice water for 20 minutes
1 small handful basil leaves
1 small handful mint leaves
1/4 cup Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce (recipe follows)

1. Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife, slice or cut the zucchini into thin slices, either lengthwise or crosswise. Toss the zucchini with a teaspoon of salt and place in a colander to draw out moisture for 30 minutes. Then blot the zucchini with a paper towel to remove moisture and excess salt. Place in serving bowl.

2. Add the tomatoes, peanuts, drained scallions, basil and mint. Pour over the spicy fish-sauce sauce. Taste and correct seasoning. Serve immediately. 

Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce
Makes about 1 1/4 cups

1/4 cup seeded, deribbed and minced fresh hot chiles (mix of colors, if possible)
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup white wine or rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar

Stir everything together in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved. The sauce will keep in a bowl in the fridge for up to 2 months.

Hello, good people! It is a beautiful June day. I am drinking a glass of Apfelschorle (which is the German term for when you mix fizzy mineral water with apple juice) and it is being cooled by the most beautiful ice cubes that I make using this mold, bringing me untold amounts of joy each time I pop out a perfectly beveled little cube. Mercury is retrograde until the end of the month and thus we have been gnashing our teeth for a week straight about all the various things that have gone haywire (to name only a few: broken brake lights on one car, a busted tire on another, a child who insisted on shoving a CD into the delicate CD player mouth of a 16-year-old audio appliance while a CD while already was playing inside of it whyyyyyy), but the fine weather and good humor and fancy ice cubes go a long way in soothing the blow.

Besides, one thing Mercury Retrograde apparently doesn't affect is cooking, thank the moon and stars! 

The most revelatory dish I made this week was this big old pan of hot lettuce. Yes! I know that some of you will look at those words, "hot" and "lettuce", and sail right on by. But wait! Don't go just yet! Cooked lettuce is amazing and just happens to a staple in both Italian and Chinese cooking, so you know it has to be good. And it is! (Besides, I'm just messing with you. Stir-fried iceberg sounds so much sexier than hot lettuce.)

I don't ever eat iceberg lettuce. I don't ever buy it. (Though the excellent comments on this post are all you ever need if you are iceberg curious and need some ideas.) In fact, I stopped eating salad greens entirely a few years ago because I have a hard time digesting them raw. But when I got this big box of vegetables delivered a few weeks ago, a big old head of iceberg lettuce was in the box too. I let in languish in the fridge until this week and the outermost layers had to be removed. The inner leaves and core were still fresh and sweet and crunchy. 

It was just the thing to use in this recipe I'd been saving for...that one day I found myself in possession of iceberg lettuce. You chop up the lettuce into biggish chunks, and fry garlic slices and scallions in oil. Then you add the lettuce chunks to the pan and stir-fry them for just a minute. Then in goes the magic concoction of equal parts soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine (plus sugar and pepper). You cook the lettuce, stirring well so that the sauce coats every piece, and a minute later your meal is done. Pile it in a plate with some rice alongside and you've got my ideal dinner. Sweet and savory, silky and toothsome. It is so delicious and satisfying, not usually what you'd think to describe a head of iceberg lettuce, amirite? 

The recipe comes from this cookbook and Grace Young says you can use other vegetables in this exact preparation with great results. I'm going to do baby boy chop (ed: This is the funniest autocorrect of my entire life, so I'm leaving it, but obviously I meant to write bok choy!) next and then maybe romaine. Ooh. And iceberg again, too, of course!

Note: This post includes affiliate links and I may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

Grace Young Stir-Fried Iceberg Lettuce
Serves 2
Note: You can, instead of iceberg, use romaine lettuce, spinach, watercress, baby bok choy, asparagus, snow peas and snap peas. 

1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice wine or dry sherry
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons peanut oil or other neutral oil
4 scallions, cut on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or smashed
Half a medium head iceberg lettuce, cored, outermost leaves discarded, inner leaves torn into 4-inch wide pieces (or substitute 12 ounces of other vegetables)
Kosher salt, to taste

1. In a small bowl, combine soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine or sherry, sugar, and pepper; set sauce aside.

2. Heat a wok or 12-inch skillet over high heat. Add peanut oil, half of the scallions (including all of the white and light green pieces), and garlic and cook until garlic is golden, about 5 seconds. Add lettuce and stir-fry until lettuce softens slightly, about 1 minute. Drizzle in sauce and cook until lettuce is just coated with the sauce, about 1 minute. Season with salt, divide between 4 bowls while lettuce is just tender and still bright green, and garnish with remaining scallions.

This is an unapologetic ode to my Instant Pot, which I love and adore. I bought it used several years ago and yes, it did take some time to get over my initial fears of figuring it out, but once I started understanding how to best put it to use, I fell hard and fast. Yes, people, you can be a hardcore home cook and also love the Instant Pot! Loving to cook does not exclude loving the Instant Pot!

What I think is essential is figuring out how you personally will get the most use out of it. What might be important to me will not necessarily be as important to you. For example, I love the Instant Pot for making chicken broth. It's easier than cooking it on the stove and it results in a more flavorful broth, plus it's quicker. I also love it for cooking rice, as I've mentioned before. And braised meat and palak paneer, among other Indian recipes. (This book by Sarah Copeland is an absolutely wonderful must-have if you have an Instant Pot.) But the most important thing for me is Instant Pot risotto. I'll literally never make risotto on the stove top again.

Not only does risotto in the Instant Pot take a fraction of the time to make, but you barely even have to stir it. PLUS,  you're guaranteed the most perfect texture every time. It's magic and absolutely worth the price of the pot. (We eat risotto at least once a week and it is one of those rare meals that everyone loves and I don't even bother serving anything else with it, so it's easy as pie for me.) The first time I made IP risotto, we'd spent the afternoon at the playground and came home just at dinnertime. The children were hangry, as, frankly, was I, and I had prepared nothing for dinner. There was a moment of panic and then I pivoted to making this risotto and when I had a hot, perfect dinner on the table less than 15 minutes later, I felt like I could have bench-pressed a car.

I used a recipe from The Kitchn to get my head around quantities and time, but my risotto is more vegetable-forward and less cheese-centric. I usually make risotto with a box of frozen peas, but sometimes I'll use a medium zucchini, finely diced (as I did here). You can, of course, go nuts and use both! Or you could skip both and just add saffron to make risotto Milanese! (Add the saffron with the broth.) You can use fancy homemade broth, or store-bought boxed broth, or even just water with some bouillon cubes, which is what I usually do. (I use Italian Star cubes that I buy in bulk in Italy or at the Italian wholesaler here in Berlin.) If you have white wine, use it. If you don't (I rarely do), just substitute more water/broth. It's a very riffable base recipe and I love it so much I've committed it to memory.

This is what the risotto looks like immediately after removing the lid. You have to then quickly give it a good stir, add the grated cheese and stir again. And then you have to serve it right away - risotto must be eaten hot hot hot, just like pasta, or the texture changes and it goes all wrong.

Okay, now I'm very curious: What are your reasons for loving your Instant Pot?

Note: This post includes affiliate links and I may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

Easiest Instant Pot Risotto
Serves 4
Print this recipe!

4 cups (950 ml) low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth or water with two bouillon cubes
2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cups (400 grams) risotto rice
1/2 cup (120 ml) white wine, optional (if not using, add an additional 1/2 cup broth)
1 box frozen peas or 1 medium zucchini, finely diced
1/2 cup (45 grams) finely grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Warm the broth or water. Set aside.

2. Set the Instant Pot to SAUTÉ and pour the oil (or the butter, if using) into the pot. Add the finely chopped onion and sauté until fragrant and translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat every grain with fat. Cook, stirring, for another minute or two.

3. If using the wine, add and stir well. Cook until most of the wine has evaporated. If not, proceed directly to Step 4.

4. Turn off the SAUTÉ function. Add the warmed broth and stir in the frozen peas or diced zucchini. Cover the Instant Pot and set it to MANUAL, HIGH, and dial the time to 5 minutes. The Instant Pot will take about 3 minutes to come to pressure.

5. When the 5 minutes are over, immediately release the pressure using a QUICK release. Remove the lid. Add the grated cheese, stir well, season to taste, and serve immediately.

Let's talk about good things today.

1. Call My Agent. A television show (4 seasons) set in a Paris film agency called ASK (Agence Samuel Kerr) that includes real-like movie stars (think Isabelle Huppert, Monica Bellucci, Juliette Binoche) playing themselves as clients of the agency. We just finished watching last night and oh, how we enjoyed it! It felt like a little trip to Paris every night. My favorite characters were Noémie and Hervé, two quirky assistants who both undergo a transformation during their time at ASK. It was the best kind of escapist television, funny, interesting, fashionable and a little bit sexy. Also, PARIS.
   
   
2. This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell. Like so many others, I'm having a hard time concentrating on novels these days. I have a pretty strict rule about not forcing myself to finish books that I'm not enjoying. There's too much good stuff to get through and I figure that those books' readers are somewhere out there and they don't always have to be me. But then came This Must Be the Place. It took me a long time to get into it. I thought about giving up multiple times. And I don't know why I didn't. Something made me keep going. Then about halfway through the book, one of the chapters just...resonated. Right in my heart. I reread it three times. It made me rethink my own novel (yes, it still exists! sob!) and gave me a whole new perspective on an integral relationship that was stumping me completely. Just thinking about the chapter now gives me goosebumps! This is all to say that I'm so glad I listened to the little cosmic voice that told me to keep going.
   
   
3. Everything is Fine. A podcast that was started by Kim France and Tally Abecassis for women over 40. (Tally recently left the show and has been replaced by Jennifer Romolini.) I've enjoyed every episode that Kim and Tally hosted, but there are a few standouts you definitely shouldn't miss. The episode with Emily Flake was hilarious, the episode with Stacy London was unexpectedly enlightening, I'm still thinking about the episode with Claire Dederer, I have mentioned Ann Kreamer's episode on going gray before, but it is just so good, and an early one with Andrea Linett, about getting dressed, is also a delight. Basically, listen to them all. They're a burst of joy - wise, funny, smart, interesting, occasionally wrenching joy - and listening to them makes me feel less alone.
   
   
4. Willow Crossley. Willow's an English florist with a lovely Instagram account. She has given me more confidence with flowers and bulbs than anyone/anything else. She's adorable and bubbly and talks about flowers as if they were people. She demystifies flower arranging and bulb planting so effortlessly. (For those of us with black thumbs especially!) Her IG Lives are a highlight of my week and I currently have no less than three pots of Willow-inspired bulbs in terrines and planters going in my house right now.
   
   
5. Cody Rigsby's rides.
   
   
6. These brilliant cookies from Alanna Tobin-Taylor, the blogger at The Bojon Gourmet and the author of Alternative Baker, which won an IACP award in the Health and Special Diet category a few years ago. Their base is teff flour and tapioca starch, then you pack in rolled oats, toasted walnuts (hello lovers!) and chocolate chunks. You could leave them like this, but I added dried cranberries (sour cherries would work, too) because I love those kitchen sink cookies that are just packed full of all kinds of chewy delights. Oatmeal cookies just need a little fruity burst to balance out the buttery toastiness of the oats, don't you think? Anyway, Alanna's gluten-free cookie recipes are marvelous. They taste and feel, texture-wise, just like regular cookies. No grittiness, no weird textures. Just a chewy, crunchy, toasty, malty, delicious cookie that everyone can enjoy.

What's bringing you joy and comfort this week? Please, please share in the comments!

Note: This post includes affiliate links and I may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

The Bojon Gourmet's Teff Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies with Walnuts and Cranberries
Adapted from Alternative Baker
Makes 20 cookies
Note: For extra dense, chewy cookies, give the pan a few firm raps on the counter when you pull them from the oven.
Print this recipe!

8 tbsp (113 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (80 g) packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup (50 g) organic granulated cane sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup (100 g) teff flour
1/4 cup (27 g) tapioca flour/starch
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup (90 g) old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces (170 g) coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate (60-70%)
3/4 cup (90 g) walnuts, toasted, cooled, coarsely chopped
Handful dried cranberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a baking mat.

2. Place the cooled butter in a large bowl. Whisk in the two sugars. Then whisk in the egg and vanilla.

3. Sift the teff flour, tapioca flour and sea salt over the sugar mixture. Stir vigorously to combine thoroughly. Stir in the oats, chopped chocolate, walnuts and cranberries. (If you need the time, you can let this mixture stand for 2 hours before baking.)

4. Scoop the dough (about 2 tablespoons per cookie) onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake the cookies until the edges are golden and the tops are set, about 10-15 minutes. 

5. Remove the sheet and place on a cooling rack. Repeat with the second sheet and remaining batch of cookie dough. The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.