A newly published piece and some fantastic food

Each November, Fox News online produces Thankful Nation, a segment featuring essays from and interviews with celebrities and regular folks. I believe that gratitude transcends ideology and am sincerely thrilled to join the Thankful Nation crew by sharing this essay about Nanny. Thank you to everyone -friends, family, and strangers alike- for the wonderful notes and comments throughout today. I’m happy so many of you have memories of blackberry pie too.

The past two days have reminded me what real cold feels like. The kind that cuts through your clothes and slices straight to your bones. The kind that leaves you longing for a warm fire and a big bowl of steaming soup.

Yesterday, Oliver and I bundled up and spent nearly two hours at the farmers market. He loves being there like I do: fully and with patient enthusiasm. He wolfed down a fresh-from-the-wood-oven margherita pizza. He delighted in the "longest eclair" the French bakers had, adding chocolate cream to the tomato sauce spotting the canvas also known as his face. He helped me choose sunchokes (bottom right) and turnips (bottom left), sampled apples and cider too. He flirted with our friend at the butcher's stall. We helped hands and laughed the whole time.

Using most of the sunchokes this evening, I did make soup: a huge vat (because it freezes well) of my sublime Leeky Sunchoke Bisque which I look forward to each year and which never disappoints. This plus some of this gorgeous bread made a hearty, warming, lip-smacking dinner tonight. Even Tom didn't balk about the absence of any meat.

Leeky Sunchoke Bisque

Now, we are jumping lanes here but it's still food-related. 

Last October, when I met some writer friends in New Mexico, I learned a bit about using dried red chiles to make sauce. I've had a gorgeous homemade ristra of NM chiles hanging and drying in my pantry window, and I pluck from it when the mood strikes. It's nearly 75% gone now and the peppers are marvelous as ever. Next time I make these chili tacos, I'll write down my recipe because they are insanely satisfying.

turkey, black bean, red chile tacos

All to say that we've been eating well, and I'm glad about it. 

Freaking A

Three times today, I wrote a heartfelt post about dreams and the spectacular fall we're enjoying and my deep hurt for Paris and Beirut and Mizzou and all the victims of intolerance and meanness. And three damn times, Safari crashed and erased it all.

Now, I am tired. I simply don't have it in me to start again. I'm channeling Scarlett: "Tomorrow is anutha day."

I'll leave you with this lovely news from this morning.

I am proud and thrilled to have a short essay -My Own Room- published on Literary Mama, an excellent magazine that features poetry, longer-form essays, book reviews, fiction and creative non-fiction about the many faces of motherhood. 

Literary Mama has been a goal site of mine since I started submitting my work for publication. The deep satisfaction that comes from a dream realized is something I never tire of. None of us should. Hard work and perseverance make possible so much in life. I hope I succeed in passing on to the boys a drive toward and appreciation for a strong work ethic.

Life makes its way

Nineteen again

Recently, prompts in one of my writing groups have guided my memories and pen backward in time. More Ouija board than overt direction, these prompts, about forgetting, remembering, standing out, blending in, have turned my pages back to the early chapters of middle and high school.

As is perhaps the case for many of us, I have a seriously conflicted set of memories about that time. Those coming-of-age years were not in any way my "glory days," but they included some marvelous, magical moments and provided a great deal of preparation and comparative context for college and early adulthood.

College. The proverbial best four years of my life it largely was. Despite being woefully unprepared academically, I was blissfully happy. I'd managed to throw my type-A, accomplishment-oriented cloak into Lake Michigan, watch it sink and race back to campus in time for the next party.

My grades plummeted, and I gained some of that freshman weight (you would too if you had Dan's Cookies on speed dial, ready to deliver warm cookies and milk at midnight; and/or kegs everywhere). I fell madly in love, lost that love, became friends with some of the women who are still my dearest soul mates, learned what real cold is and how to make a snow angel, joined a sorority and turned 19.

When I flipped the page to my final teen year, I was 75% of the way through my freshman year.  I had and was sick of the largest, ugliest, warmest parka you could buy at Eddie Bauer, I'd ruined gin for myself for the rest of my life (don't ever do shots of gin; terrible idea; I still can't even smell it.), I played ice hockey the night before a midterm, I couldn't believe I'd soon return to Louisiana for summer break.

I didn't know what lay ahead of me when I tearfully watched my parents and sister drive away from my dorm back in September. If I had known what a blank slate I'd just been given, I'd not have hidden in my room for four days in fear, quivering until my roommate said, "Emmy, you just gotta get out there."

While I'm certain she said that as much for her benefit as mine, she was right, and out I went.

When I was nineteen, I'd just learned about the complete liberation that comes from being no more than who you truly are. Of letting people meet that truth from the outset and seeing where such honesty takes things. It was almost like returning to a childhood state of mind, before the veil of after-college-into-a-career slipped down as had the pre-pubescent one. 

I'm certain this time of transparency (and relative lack of responsibility) is why so many remember college as a thrilling, watershed time of life. Why we look back on it with rose-colored (or beer-goggled) glasses and idealism and smiles. It's certainly why I do. Oh, to have been nineteen.
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*This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post (just a little bit late) that grew from the prompt "When I was 19...". Hosts this week are Kristi of Finding Ninee, Mimi of Mimi Time, and Vidya from Coffee with Me.