then and now.

Eight years ago, I spent ten days backpacking-without-a-backpack in Europe.  I sent juicy newsy emails to a list of family and friends every few days.  I am very glad to have those, and the replies, in the archives.  It reminds me of a simpler time, before social media became the filter through which we experience life.

I started in Amsterdam, where I stayed in a Christian women's hostel and met a group of four girls from York.  I visited museums and strolled the canals during the day, and ventured out at night with my new friends to gawk at the red light district and drink warm Heineken.  I almost fainted in public after spending too long watching from the sidelines at a coffee shop.  I visited the Anne Frank Huis and was very moved, most of all at the display of international editions of her diary.  I ate at a vegetarian restaurant one night and felt really self-righteous, even then.  I remember the moment of realization that serving fries in a paper cone with a dollop of mayo made more sense to me than bloody ketchup ever would.

The train to Belgium was fast and clean.  Antwerp was underwhelming, but I chalked it up to the miserable weather.  I feigned great interest in Belgian beers when my hostel-mate, Anders, asked me to find a bar called the Kulminator with him.  He was from Idaho and I remember finding each other on Myspace before we said our goodbyes.  He is probably the first guy I ever drank a beer with who grew a beard for fun.  We went to another bar called The Eleventh Commandment, decorated almost completely with religious statues.  The bar was an altar and the booths were old pews.  I shopped in H&M and ate a waffle every day.  The waffles were amazing.

In Bruges (before the movie came out), I stayed at a hostel where beers cost 1 euro at happy hour and the smell of cigarette smoke wafted into my dorm room all night long.  I celebrated Fourth of July with two Americans from Tennessee, one of whom, according to social media, has since put on weight and become a father.  I climbed the belltower in the main square and far below, an orchestra played near the square's fountain.  I remember calling my mum that afternoon with the music in the background.  The sky was very blue.  Also, more waffles.

My last stop on the solo tour was Brussels.  I hung out with some Californians and developed a weirdly intense two-day crush on one of them who had a tattoo across his chest that said BLESSED, like Lil Wayne.  I didn't know who Lil Wayne was but went with it.  He kind of looked like Russell Brand (??)  We drank premade sangria that we bought at a corner shop and the guys rolled their own cigarettes.  The next day, I ate moules frites at a table outside a restaurant in a little alley, where tourists walking by looked at the empty seat across from me with confusion and pity.  It was great.  The main square of the city was impressive even though the rest of it, at times, felt like Philadelphia.

When my ten days came to an end, I boarded a train from Brussels across the border to Lille in France, and then onward to Angers.  My family met me at the train station and I felt strangely relieved to be reunited with them.  It felt like longer than ten days.

In two weeks, I'll be back in France with my sisters and my parents.  It will be the first time I have been back there with my entire family since that summer.  This time around, instead of eating fries with mayo and drinking with strangers in the preceding days, I'll be tying up loose ends at the office in preparation for a new job and making arrangements for our plants to get watered and the cat to be fed while we are away.  Those ten days in 2007 feel like just yesterday, so I guess I've done a lot of growing up in the meantime... but I could definitely still go for a waffle.

"one minus one"

"I do not even believe in Ireland. But you know, too, that in these years of being away there are times when Ireland comes to me in a sudden guise, when I see a hint of something familiar that I want and need. I see someone coming toward me, with a soft way of smiling, or a stubborn uneasy face, or a way of moving warily through a public place, or a raw, almost resentful stare into the middle distance."

From "One Minus One" by Colm Tóibín

timing is everything.

Summer has come on strong.  Muggy humid days appeared seemingly out of the blue around Memorial Day and with them, all the sneezing and sniffles and lethargy of springtime allergies.  On the days in-between rides to the subway or around the neighborhood, my bike seat was covered in a thin film of green powder and even the cat is sneezing daily.

On Sunday, after an impromptu barbecue with friends the night before and a flurry of spontaneous morning cleaning, we sucked down icy coffees and headed for the India Street pier.  The East River Ferry is neck-and-neck with riding a bike as my favorite way to travel in New York.  The view is spectacular, the air is (relatively) fresh as it rises off the river, and for the price of the aforementioned iced latte, you get a few moments of watery respite from the hustle and bustle.  We touched down on East 34th Street and scurried beneath the FDR towards Second Avenue and the Kips Bay movie theater.  A few hours in air conditioned darkness seemed like the perfect way to escape both the humidity and promised thunderstorms forecast for later that day.

Two and a half hours later, the engines of Mad Max still humming in our ears, we stepped out of the cinema to scattered raindrops and a blackened sky.  Timing is everything.  After fifteen minutes in the supermarket for baguette and tins of cat food (we have become Those People) and chickpeas for that night's dinner, the skies had opened and Second Avenue was flooded.  I immediately thought of California, and of the doormen on the Upper West Side who clean off the sidewalks with a hose every morning in the heat of the summer, instead of with a broom.

We decided to brave the rain.  It's only water after all.  Ten minutes and ten blocks later, the rain had eased and we had arrived at the subway.  Timing is everything.  A couple of train delays and another downpour later, with a fresh bottle of gin in hand, we were back across the river and ready for cocktails.

I drank my negroni as I wandered from room to room to room to room (there are only four) closing the windows to keep the rain from wetting the carpet.  The smell of roasted garlic emerged from the oven.  We listened to jazz.  I noticed that my watch had stopped ticking.

I might leave it that way all summer.

four years on.

As of today, I have been living in New York City for 4 years.  On the scale of places I have lived so far, that is creeping close to my college years spent on a leafy campus outside Philadelphia.  That seemed like a lifetime.  My time in New York does not.

The thing is, I have a bad habit of qualifying my responses in conversation.  If someone asks me what I do for a living I start by saying, "I work at an education non-profit" and end with ...I'm the chief executive's assistant.    When I cook something for dinner and someone compliments the meal, I say, "Thanks, I'm glad you like it!" and then ....here are 4 ways it could taste better.  And when people ask me how I like living in New York, my typical response is, "It's great!  It's a great place to live... but it's really expensive/stressful/crazy."

Living in New York City is all those things.  It is expensive.  It can certainly be stressful.  It is without a doubt crazy.  But it is also really, really great.  My bad habit can sometimes make it hard to see the forest for the trees but when I take a moment to examine my life at this very moment, on the brink of a fifth year of this crazy expensive stressful life, I have to be grateful, above all, for the opportunity to live in this city.

A brief random, but relevant, anecdote:

Around lunchtime today, my coworker Caroline frantically told me her pants were "broken".  She realized a clasp had fallen off the zip and was mortified at the thought of her meeting at Google later in the afternoon.  She walked down to my desk practicing a hunched-over version of her usual confident stance to hide the embarrassing zip-less fly of her trousers.  By some stroke of luck, I had an extra pair of trousers at my desk which I had neglected to bring home last night.  And by another stroke of luck, said trousers were of appropriate size and exact same color as aforementioned zip-less perpetrators.  Caroline quickly changed and headed off to her meeting, crisis averted.

After this exchange and in thinking about this long overdue blog post, I had to laugh.  Three years ago, Caroline and I did not even know each other (though we have since discovered many junctures at which our paths could have crossed).  Now we can confidently wear each other's pants without blinking an eye.  I have often thought about how hard it can be to make new, true girl friends after the somewhat forced close quarters of high school and college.  I feel very lucky to be able to share pants with Caroline.

So, here's to another year of swapping trousers, of craziness, of stress, and of (moderate) expense.  I hope I can finally stop qualifying those answers and instead, confidently speak about my job, my home, my cooking, my friends.

I look forward to the day when I up and move somewhere greener, quieter, cheaper.  I am sure that I will be ready to leave New York behind.  But now, four years in, I guess what I'm trying to say is that  I am grateful for the friendships I have made and the path I have followed.  And in its own way, New York has really begun to feel like home.

there is always soup.

I have been known to eat around the white & hairy bits on a nub of cheddar.  I dunk wilted greens in icy water after picking off brown spots, hoping for a spark of new life.  In the summertime, the raspberry devotee in me has become expert at fishing out that one, offending, collapsed and mushy berry which, if not stopped in its (rotting) tracks, will contaminate the rest of the tiny plastic box.  I suppose there's a good reason raspberries come in such small containers in the first place.

And there is always soup.

Cauliflower with its green leaves gone all bendy?  Carrots beginning to shrivel into themselves?  A red pepper with spots of soft black?  Sad droopy celery?

With a bit of stock, an onion or leek or (in desperate times) some scallions, and a twist of salt and pepper these sad characters can be, and have been, transformed into spicy, velvety, hearty soups.

In our house growing up, there was (and is) always soup to be had.  Mum's freezer is stocked with soups from bright carrot and cumin to celery with its curiously creamy consistency to vibrant broccoli-- all perfect accompaniments to a slice of brown bread with Irish butter.  Although Mum never explicitly instructed each of us in how to make a delicious bowl of soup, we learned from the best.

During lunchtime today, as I sat at my desk with a bowl of broccoli leek soup in front of me (from my own, less well-stocked freezer), I came across a recipe for chilaquiles from the New York Times embedded within an article about "aged" ingredients versus "spoiled" ones.  The recipe is a good way to use up old tortillas but besides that, the article extols the virtues of learning how to use ingredients that may be past their conventional prime.  And I got a thrill reading it!

I love wandering the aisles of Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, particularly on payday, and walking to the subway with a grocery bag full of exciting, tasty, wholesome ingredients for that recipe I've had my eye on for a fortnight.  But this year, Kevin and I decided to take the plunge and commit to a CSA subscription for the spring & summer.  Today is the last day, but we will be back to pick up another box next week when the fall season commences.  The CSA has been challenging, exciting, but frankly quite stressful for a person like me, who gets an insane level of satisfaction out of using every single last leek and zucchini before going out for more.

But the challenge of getting creative with those wilty Tuesday evening stragglers has not been the only benefit.  While feeding ourselves healthier, veggie-heavy meals, we have been supporting local farms and learning just how long zucchini season goes on.  Plus, one of the owners of the local beer and cheese shop where we collect our weekly box uttered an uncharacteristically familiar, "Oh, yeah, that's right," last week when we gave our names.

I'm getting off track here, but the point is that my cooking has become more resourceful and meaningful in the past few months.  I take such pleasure in standing over a pot of soup, or keeping a watchful eye on a chicken roasting in the oven, but knowing that the meal I make has equal parts taste (of course), nutrition, skills learned from my mother, and interactions with communities nearby have made time in the kitchen all the more valuable.

Now, what's for dinner tonight?



Broccoli and Leek Soup

1 lb broccoli florets (our CSA notes described them as 'young broccoli' and I was expecting broccolini but what we ended up with looked totally like regular broccoli to me)
1 large leek
3 scallions (or whatever other members of the onion family you might have lying around)
Olive oil
3 cups low-sodium chicken stock
Salt
White pepper

Wash the leek really well and trim so the really yucky bits are gone.  Slice in half lengthwise and check to make sure all the sandy soil is washed away.  Chop into 1/2-inch pieces.  Chop up the usable parts of the scallions, which have undoubtedly been sitting in your fridge for far too long.

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add leek/scallion mixture and cook until the leeks start to get soft and fragrant.

Meanwhile, chop broccoli florets (loose bits AND stems) into small pieces.  When leek is almost totally soft, add broccoli and do your best to mix it all up.  Sautéeing the vegetables before adding stock is key in the patented Deirdre Method of soup creation.

When broccoli and leek is nicely mixed up and broccoli is turning more vibrantly green, add the stock.  I probably should have added a bit more, as mine didn't totally cover the veg and the resulting soup was quite thick.  So if you like thinner soup, add more liquid.

Cover and simmer until vegetables are soft, about 20-25 minutes.  Blend with an immersion blender (also crucial for soup making, just trust me on this one) to desired thickness.  I added a bit of milk in at the end to thin my soup out.  Season with salt and plenty of white pepper.

I had some stale bread on the counter which I tossed around in a pan with garlic and pecorino to make croutons, which, served on top of the soup, really elevated an otherwise "green" tasting bowl.  So much for my pre-holiday no-carb diet!

credibility.

It's been a long time.

Autumn has "arrived" and brought with it a return to routine which is very welcome in some ways.  But just when I have pulled out the ankle boots and considered how many pairs of tights I have without holes in the toes, New York City becomes a sauna once again and it is back to sandals and hair-off-the-neck-hairstyles and hesitating to go outside at lunchtime for fear of melting.  And just when I have returned to the hallowed halls of grad school and bought the linguistics textbook and downloaded the World Bank policy articles, an am I doing the right thing here panic creeps in, bringing feelings of uncertainty and confusion.  I want to be a credible something-- a credible teacher?  A credible policymaker?  A credible something.

I wonder about those people who seem to have their ducks in a row.  People who have "job satisfaction", doing something creative and fulfilling while making a living.  A living.  Savings accounts and seemingly endless vacation days and person-to-person contact every day that reverses the feeling of a job being an obligation.  Where do those careers live?  Who are those people?

I am lucky to have had lots of good experiences in my life thus far that have made me an enriched and curious person, but I am just sitting here trying to figure out how they will all fit into what comes next.

This is me just getting it all out.

RuPaul & chickpea sa-lahd.

Eighteen months after finding myself in Brooklyn with a job at a reputable supportive housing non-profit, I am saying farewell to downtown Brooklyn and moving on.  It's time for a new network and new experiences and, I'm almost sad to say, a new part of town.  Instead of spending most of my time in Brooklyn, my new office is on the Upper West Side... and with school starting in just a few weeks, I will now be spending more time outside this borough than in it.  Until now I was one of the few people I have met since moving to New York that not only lived in Brooklyn, but worked here too.  Trading my glorious "commute" (read: a 15-20 minute walk, or 10 minute bike ride) for an hour on the subway will be an adjustment, but I'm getting excited at the prospect of uninterrupted time to read and listen to music.  Optimism, people.

Although there were ways in which my job made me unhappy and frustrated, I was very lucky to find employment when I did-- especially because, I hope, the negatives have only served to make me more patient and tolerant.  I loved getting to interact with people every day.  Both my coworkers and the tenants of the apartment building made each day into a story to tell.

Neomie was the rent administrator at the office and sat at the desk to my left.  She is of Indian descent but came to New York from Trinidad about ten years ago.  She is a gem of a person-- warm, motherly, hilarious, not to mention a fantastic cook.  I will miss our chats and neverending inside jokes, saving each other from the tenants' lengthy TMI-filled conversations with a quick (fake) phone conference, and her infinite wisdom.  I will miss her curry chicken, and the breakfast potatoes she makes on birthdays, and her chickpea salad (pronounced sa-lahd).  Fortunately I will be able to think of her by throwing garlic, cilantro, carrot, and chickpeas in a bowl with a squeeze of lime juice.  I hope to master her curry chicken recipe after she hands it off to me on my last day tomorrow.

As for her lilting Trinidadian accent and advice on womanly matters and men, I will have to rely on either memory or text messages.  But, in the meantime, at least I will have her chickpea salad recipe.

Neomie's Chickpea Sa-lahd

1 can of chickpeas, drained

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 carrot, shredded

1/4 onion, diced

A handful of chadon beni, or cilantro

Lime juice

Mix all ingredients together, preferably in the kitchen of your workplace.  Season with salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lime juice.  Serve alongside your favorite chicken recipe.  Then, after talking about the latest in office gossip, RuPaul's Drag Race (even if you've never seen it), and the men in your life, get back to work.