that’s a sourdough french loaf from journey 2 bakery in deland, florida topped with lane southern orchard peaches, a plum from the farmer’s market, peanut butter and bonne maman strawberry jam. had 2 eat it with a fork and knife
home again. where i am filled with hazelnut coffeemate! and the humdrum of catch 21 reruns
the mediocre feels so sweet at home the allure of knowing everyone’s name at the post office and the bank of walking to the library of folgers i’ve spent and will spend all of my energy chasing the big dog in bigger cities when there’s so much more life here than i remember
i am spending my energy trying to make the perfect pizza and trying to study ken forkish’s flour water salt yeast. i am feverishly taking notes. i can’t troubleshoot my cracker crust problem
things are weird. i keep getting these deep, penetrating migraines around noon of every day and cannot seem to cure them. i think i’m undereating again, but nothing but fruit and bread appeals to me. i need to pull myself out of this funkÂ
eating a lot of fruit lately. less apples than usual — $1 strawberries and ripe mangos and pineapples and hunks of watermelon that i cut myself. so much watermelon. i didn’t like watermelon much before but now i can’t go an afternoon without it
my anxiety has been really bad over the last few days — i’m restless and bored and, well, the world is on fire
i’m reading a lot. reading and baking things and organizing reorganizing my bedroom. i’m doing laundry folding laundry washing dishes taking out the trash to keep myself busyÂ
from a sachet i poured all over my bruised organic banana
i traveled with my own english muffins jam and peanut butter only to find out the hotel has honey and tiny jam jars everywhere
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oh brother i’m in texas! here for a conference / feeling strange in the only pair of pants i own that fit me well / talking about words and structure and form and all other good things that mold and meld journalism
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my san antonio banana against the backdrop of the roof of a ruth chris steakhouse / the FINE institution in which i have not eaten / in six years
i’m very tired! wow! very tired but full of sugar and coffee and cream and butter. very tired and just very warm
one
hello from athens, where things are strange / and there’s a big windowÂ
i’m living alone for the first time ever and i could barely lift my microwave from my car / still can’t figure out cable - only one foreign language channel is detectable / but my walls are less white than they were a week ago
two
i’ve started a new journal too — well, almost / i have three pages to wrap up in my last one and that pesky new york entry to finish but that’s for another day another time
(hard to commit to a new one for three years - i haven’t found one that i’ve loved since beginning my last one / but settling is only a small bump in the road)
three
i found out i was going to paris today - strange tidings, i know! after three years of studying the language i can’t tell you why i started / a lifelong fascination — kind of / and i get to put the language to good use / on american airlines — bon!
(she was a college student, by the way - what a payout that must’ve been)
four
oh, and the cashew butter—
perhaps the most unique tasting one i’ve ever had / clearance closeout checkout boy scout
grand on sourdough / with blueberries / on anything, yes!Â
five
the sludge on your teeth after eating a spoonful and the chia congeals / bliss ! heaven on earthÂ
oh, and the terrible coffee at buvez / that i drink for the four-seater table / will you help me fix my cable? wayfair red frames chop down the chair that wouldn’t fit in my apartment /
farmers market whole wheat sourdough
sherry’s peach peanut butter strawberry jam (i know i know)
avocado red pepper garlic salt balsamic farmers market arugula
because i care about you
i reviewed tyler the creator’s pepper-/spearmint white chocolate and sea salt extravaganza for paste magazine. you can read it here
melter skelterÂ
the atlanta heat sucks the fun out of eating an ice cream cone in the sun / dripped on my shoes and down my forearm as i spit out my wintermint gum / with preteen girls gawking at me from wherever they came from
and good grief it was a knockoutÂ
swelter skelter
melt it down let it get everywhere / the smell of jenis still stuck in the air / where did my $5 go?
early
thank you to the little tart for my annual summer scone / last year’s strawberry buckwheat gave me the shakes / best beast in town!
now we look towards BLUEBERRY, though strawberry is still in season / crumbling and crumbling and crumbling and very good / i would eat it all if i could / edible lavender blending in with the carpetÂ
speak! eat!Â
am i being annoying? can’t stop listening to unforgiving / girl eating up all of the money / highland row matchbooks taking all of mine
it’s the summertime and i stretch my mosquito bitten legs out into the wild and yawn
—because the sun makes me sleepy
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summerhill
as i’ve gotten older i’ve realized i cannot live in a place where there isn’t sun or greenery: it’s sick and silly but new york dulled me / where there’s undergrowth in georgia there’s wet concrete in the cityÂ
(i think often about bethany cosentino moving from california to new york and lapsing into seasonal depression because of the weather - and even more so how she moved home and made a career out of making music that sounds and smells like sunshine)Â
so the summer is my favorite season, though i sweat and overheat and get headaches so easily in the humidity. as june stretches on, i’ll spend less and less time outside and complain until no end about the weather - though i’ll be slick with sweat and covered in sweet seasonal comedones and smell like grass and propane, i’ll be content to be out of the winter and in the sun again — with one pale leg stuck in the front yard and another one in the darkness
there are so many quirks of the summer that i can’t stop thinking about — ripe strawberries and peaches! biweekly visits to la mejor de michoacan and the cookout drive-thru for fresh banana milkshakes; trips to the lake and cookouts and drinking diet cokes on patios in the shade; eating well and very much: grilled corn and grilled chicken, bowls of vinegar-soaked english cucumber and red onions, and many many spoonfuls of banana pudding eaten in secret
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eat me speak me
as i’ve gotten older i’ve begun to enjoy grocery shopping more and more and i now find it to be a calming thing / a basket in hand i peel through aisles and study closeout prices, squeezing apricots to assess their ripeness and never buying them anyway / staring at tubs after tubs after tubs of yogurt all lined up congruently on refrigerated shelves / filling bulk baggies with raw almonds and stealing pieces out of the bag as i race to the frozen section / where i study flavors of full-fat gelatos and sorbets and try to convince myself to buy a pint instead of purchasing milkshake after milkshake from drive-thrus / where i’ll end my sweet trip by undercharging at self-checkout for pink lady apples
georgia grocery stores are so much better than those in florida, where publixes and winn dixies and walmart neighborhood marketplaces infest every four-way intersection. kroger is a fine fun fantastic thing and my absolute favorite place to be in the suburbs
my own vision of paradise is the disorderly quarter-aisle dedicated to damaged and discounted goods, where gluten free crackers and jars of ragu gather dust underneath industrial-grade light fixtures and you never know what you might find (the allure of thrifting clothing right there in your very own local grocery store, would you fucking believe it?)
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the verdict
georgia grinders is expensive and i would’ve never purchased it if it wasn’t in the damaged goods section for half of its shelf price. i feel no more or less of a georgia transplant after eating my first spoonful of the overpriced honey roasted almond butter but do not regret inching towards overdraft for splurging on it
it tastes of nothing special or life-changing — it tastes normal, it tastes sweet. it’s chunky and goopy and has yet to emulsify with its own natural oilÂ
i was out of almond butter anyway (my squat plastic jar of kroger-brand crunchy almond butter was scraped clean — all that remained were hard chunks of nut and nothing else), and the crystallized honey cuts the paste-like tang that ruins most types
two hands
spent most of last month bent on waking up at 6:30 on a friday morning to take the subway into nolita before anyone had their morning coffee and show up at two hands before they opened / was the third or fourth person inside the small and boxy cafe and ordered immediately — i knew what i wanted!
not to be a dick but this was so dreamy and i ate it so slowly with a knife and a fork / not missing a drop or a single crumbÂ
how the espresso mascarpone would make your head spin! how dense and indulgent it was! how easy to make me feel like a glutton — but i didn’t! i ate it all! i ate it all and wanted nothing more but to come back
now i spend my summer considering booking a one-way to manhattan just to order it over and over again
first and last toast in the city
yes, i did pack a small square of tupperware filled with bread and vanilla almond butter to bring with me in the city, but i spent two of my breakfasts eating city-specific treats: the banana walnut bread and a poppyseed bagel with egg, maple turkey sausage, and swiss (when in the city baby!)Â
on sunday morning i finally had my LAST TANGO TOAST before jetting to a cafe in the financial district to kill some time before my departing flight from LGA — using the airbnb’s fancy toaster to burn my bread and packet of nut butter to smudge on top. my banana was so ripe
sadly i didn’t eat it in the sweet daylight of an open bay window or on top of coffee shop linoleum — i sat in the dark in a shared airbnb and ate it quickly at the breakfast table (i first wanted to eat it underneath the light in the walk-in closet but there existed no such light — rats)
nothing spectacular to report — wish i had something more. toast is toast and i love it the most
some reds somewhere in the city
had the pleasure of meeting with my northern family i hadn’t seen in many many years at battery park city’s PARM, where i indulged and indulged and ate every morsel on my plate — baby’s first baked ziti
and many many more saucy / fleshy / old school meatballs - with three perrier bottles to split between us
i spent an absurd amount of time this day in subways and cabs and sparing myself the horror of staying on my feet for more than fifteen minutes at a time, but even more so was the time i spent walking aimlessly around chinatown and nolita, where i bought the very best lipstick on the market, and jumping from street to street in search of MAGIC JEWELRY and obscured stalls to find the knockoff louis vitton wallet my mother wanted so badly
i didn’t buy the reformation dress or the red moleskine i kept eyeing at strand / another day another dollar / another time when i’ll be wealthy enough to consume the whole city (but leave before my body begins to ache for atlanta)
strawberry season is the eighth wonder of the world
ever since spring has sprung, i’ve tried to shovel as many strawberries into my belly as possible.Â
easter weekend was its own sort of monster—i spent two days indulging in more milk and eggs and butter than i’ve eaten in a long, long time: eggs scrambled in oil and butter, mac and cheese stirred in with cups of whole milk and plate after plate of sweetened yams—some sort of southern food nirvana.
the sweetest part, however, was the bucket of freshly-picked strawberries from a patch in florence, south carolina that somehow ended up in my possession. i ate enough for breakfast on easter sunday to make me turn blue (redemption for all of the overpriced punnets of bland and underripe strawberries i subjected myself to throughout the winter—it’s a give and take, though, because all of the sweet Envy and Gala apples i lived off of in the winter are now mealy and gross)
strawberry season is coincidentally the only time of the year that i tend to indulge in pastries. i do enjoy pastries, but i rarely eat them—my dessert of choice is usually able to be sucked through a straw and preferably of the drive-thru persuasion (we’re living in a fast food dessert paradise, baby! the cheaper, the better—banana milkshakes from Cook Out will always be a personal vice, as will mocha frappes from McDonald’s).Â
but strawberry pastries are the exception. one of the greatest creations on the planet is the strawberry buckwheat scone that the Little Tart french bakery in atlanta makes every spring (which i look forward to buying in bulk at the Grant Park farmers market as soon as the semester comes to a close).Â
when i found out that the local bakery that supplies pastries to my favorite coffee shop in athens was starting to bake strawberry danishes, i began the hunt for one.Â
i woke up very early two saturdays ago to try to find one at the Athens farmers market, but i arrived too late. hell bent on finding one, i messaged the bakery on instagram two days ago to see if they would be vending the danishes to the coffee shop on saturday morning, and they immediately messaged back—i can do that
—the absolute magic of local bakeries.
so this morning i woke up at 7am and made sure i was the first customer inside of the coffee shop so i could secure my goddamn danish—and i did. i spent all four singles i had stashed in my wallet and ate the warmed danish in all of its glazed custardy glory, making a mess of myself in the very distant daylight cracking through the skylight window above my table
