From the Blueberry Patch in Virginia...

  Dearest Clara, This past week, I just couldn't stop thinking about strawberries.  I guess I read too many articles on picking your own fruit because I packed us up in the car and insisted that we pick our own too.  As it turned out, we were too late for the strawberries, but it was the first day that the blueberry "patch" was open, so blueberries it was.  I thought that blueberries grew in bogs, like cranberries, but that just goes to show you how much your mother knows---it turns out they were potted in large planters in a field.  You turned out to be a much better at picking than I, although I was much better at putting them in the basket.  You (perhaps like your father) seemed to be concentrated on eating them.  But the whole day out at the berry farm got me thinking about a few different things I hope you'll remember:

• Take the time to learn where your food comes from: Our experience so far has been mostly living in cities, and it's so easy to think that your food just comes from aisle six of the supermarket.  But food is a little more complicated than that---someone had to grow it, to pick it, to take care of it, to package it. Don't take that for granted---knowing where your food comes from makes you appreciate what you put in your own body.
• Gathering your own food takes tremendous time and care: After about an hour in the blueberry patch, we had barely half a bucket to show for our work, yet when you go to the grocery store there are cartons upon cartons of berries.  If you're not in charge of providing your own food, make sure you appreciate those that do.  It's not something many people do.
• Make time for the countryside: When you live in the city, it's especially important to make time every once in a while to visit green space, farms, small towns . . . these are an important part of what makes living in the city possible.  Not only will you see where our food and animals are from and meet the people responsible for it, but you'll hopefully notice what fresh air should smell like, and what green grass should look like.  It's easy to get caught up in the pounding pavement and speed of the city, but that's not all there is out there in the world---plenty of people do just fine without it and bring something completely different to the table.
• The best part of gathering your own food is eating it . . . with friends: We may not have picked all that many blueberries, but we added to our stash at the farm's general store, and we added raspberries and blackberries too---enough for snacks on the way back, and pancakes for breakfast, and then some. Blueberries have never tasted better.  When you have the satisfaction of eating what you grew or collected, it's best shared with others, so always bring home extra, even if you buy it.  After all, it's still straight from the farm . . . and that tastes a little different than straight form aisle six.

So what's next for us? Peaches? All my love, Mom

Rebellious Eating: Today’s food movements seen through childhood memory

By Shani Gilchrist I always smell a horse when I eat a peach. I close my eyes while chewing and am suddenly enveloped in warm, humid air, the musty mammalian fumes from the hot animal’s coat and the greenness that wafted up from the black dirt. My best summer days were spent on my family’s horse farm in the country.  I would sit atop my favorite horse and meander through the grounds, often reaching just above my head to snag a peach when we would pass beneath a tree.

When I was a teenager we had to sell the farm, as it was a large operation and too far from the hospital where my father took call on nights and weekends.  There were no major highways that led from the tiny stoplight-less town where we lived to the hospital in the tiny city where he worked. There were too many nights of pulling through the gates to find that he had to immediately wind the car 35 minutes back to admitting. Then, after finally getting back home at two or three in the morning he would have to get up, check in with the trainer and the grooms, then drive back to his office next to the hospital once again. Something had to give, and since no one of sane mind raises horses for profit, the farm had to be sacrificed.

At a certain time in South Carolina, where an average of 60,000 tons of peaches are grown every year, it is impossible to avoid the smells and lures of the juicy peach. During that time I am often transported back to the sloping grass that was home to most of our fruit trees. By the end of the summer I’ve been known to throw my children into the car and start heading out to the country, toward the direction of the old farm. The only cure for the melancholy that the flavors evoke is a trip to my old stomping grounds and a stop in front of the now dilapidated barn to dream of what the land could be if it were mine. I probably look ridiculous sitting in my big SUV in the driveway of a property whose current owners, I am told, are likely to come out with hunting rifles if they were to see me. Thankfully no one can see the silly look of nostalgia on my face, as if every time we sat around the kitchen table there was a full farm meal, complete with fruits from our orchards and milk that I had gotten from an imaginary goat that lived outside my bedroom window.  The truth is that our dinners often consisted of frozen lasagna, spaghetti with sauce that was doctored from a jar, or barbeque from up the road. There were many evenings when I scowled ungratefully at the food on my plate and wished for “real food.”

Right now there are tomatoes fattening on hairy green stems in terra cotta pots in my backyard. They are out there for two reasons. One is that I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t kill them before we embark on planting a larger vegetable garden. The other reason is that one day, as my 5-year-old son scrambled his unruly limbs into his booster seat at school pickup, he declared that he wanted to grow tomatoes. This was one of those moments where my child’s words almost caused my forehead to violently meet the top of my steering wheel. My oldest child—the skinny kid with the infectious smile and cherubic curls—does not eat anything. And by anything, I mean he does not eat any food that one would consider for true sustenance.  Somehow we have kept him alive on a diet of strawberries, pepperoni pizza, pancakes, and a variety of cheeses. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to hear his sudden declaration that he wanted to grow vegetables of any kind.

The other day we picked our first tomatoes of the season. They were beautiful. And they are still sitting on the kitchen windowsill. My son recoils in incredulous horror every time I suggest that he taste one of “his” tomatoes that he diligently waters each afternoon. I had harbored visions of him being enthralled by the plants that he had nurtured into food for the table. It would be another step toward achieving the sustainable household that I’ve been trying to build. We will grow our own food. We recycle. I make my own counter sprays. We use cloth napkins. Then, a thought occurred to me as his top lip curled as I waved the sweet cherry tomatoes at him this afternoon.

 What if he spends the next thirteen years pushing back?

A friend of mine recently told me about her own childhood growing up on a farm. She was surrounded by everything she needed to feed and clothe herself, but all she wanted to do was go to Pizza Hut. The food on her table actually did come from her cows, goats, chickens and orchards, but it was the last thing that she wanted to eat. I listened to her story and thought about how much the teenage version of myself despised my days of drinking Diet Pepsi and eating whatever artificially-sweetened version of spaghetti sauce my mother had thrown together for dinner at the last minute. Now here I am, wanting every bit of food that sits on my table to be local, organic and at least seventy-five percent homemade.

My food memories don’t usually include the way I longed for dishes that didn’t taste like a garlicky Christmas elf had made it. My mother gave us the gift of insisting that we all sit around the table together each night to talk over our day, but “master chef” was far from being on her resume. My food memories are instead made up of the days that I felt self-important because I was eating a peach right off of a tree, with no packets of SweetN’Low anywhere near me. It was real, but most importantly it was different from the way my parents presented food to their children.

Is our current and beloved farm-to-table movement a similar reaction? It certainly has its perks… no one can really fight the sustainability argument… but now that the movement is heading down the path towards mainstream I have to wonder if our generation, like so many before us, isn’t sticking it to our parents for the quick-and-easy food approach of the 1970s and 1980s that is now being blamed for everything from obesity to cancer. Are our teenagers going to look at us like we are the ultimate dorks for spending so much time on things that could have been thrown into the microwave in another version? Most likely, yes. And their children will be horrified by their parents’ food hastiness.

Our most distinct memories are tied to our senses no matter what the quality of the thing we are experiencing. What remains poignant is that which is outside the realm of the everyday, and as humans, we naturally seek out experiences--large or small--that take us outside of our comfort zones. Everyone wants what they can’t have, and we don’t even notice this when it comes to food anymore because it comes in the form of righteous “movements”.  The farm-to-table movement is out to save the American small-farming industry and reintroduce the population to foods that don’t have as much potential to cause harm to our bodies. These are causes that are important and need to be championed. But the viral spread of such a movement has more to do with acting on our childhood statements of “When I have my own family, I’m going to do things differently,” as we stomped out of our dining rooms in our untied shoes. Our childhood rebellions will always stay with us, which is why at some point every summer I end up standing in front of a fading barn, looking at it as if it is the Taj Mahal, thinking of horses and tasting peaches.

[Original peaches photo by CaptPiper on Flickr]

The Best Intentions

This is part two of Megan's travel diaries from Nicaragua, part one can be found here. We had been mildly planning for a few months. Mildly, meaning ordering Lonely Planet's guide to Nicaragua and Google imaging the places that sounded cool. My college girlfriend/favorite travel buddy/sister soulmate, Wanna and I are both business owners who had been working our asses off for the past couple of years and we needed a vacation---vacation, meaning an adventure. We weren't the types to plan out the entire trip's itinerary or relax on lounge chairs while a hot pool boy hands us piña coladas all day. We wanted to go with the flow and see, hear, touch, taste, and smell a new culture. We wanted an EXPERIENCE.

One place that stuck out in our limited research was a tiny island off the Caribbean coast called Little Corn Island. It was off the beaten path, a serious adventure-seeker's paradise. You had to take a plane, a taxi, and a scary little boat over huge ocean surges to get there. And once there, the only way to get around was by foot. There were no cars or roads on the entire island, just a poorly paved sidewalk through the village and dirt paths through the jungle that led to the pretty beaches. It was exactly what we wanted.

We made camp at the most magical little eco lodge called Ensueños on the Northside of the island. The modest accommodations were just what we needed: a palm frond-covered hut with two mosquito-netted beds, steps away from the ocean.

We slept like babies, ate like queens, swam like fish, and zenned out like Buddhas. There were plans for further Nicaraguan explorations but we were so enchanted by the island, we made it home for 2 weeks. Before long, we befriended some of the locals. There was the Spanish ex-pat lodge owner/painter/philosopher who expanded our minds over bonfires, the Italian chef who blared reggae from the kitchen while he prepared delicious meals, the bad-ass female British scuba diving instructor who had sailed the world, and the two groovy Nicaraguan sisters who could have been our alter egos.

After exploring North of our beach one day, we happened upon what we thought was the best beach on the island.

It was an empty expanse of smooth white sand, the warmest bit of perfectly clear turquoise water, and lovely gentle waves. There was a blue house set a few steps back with a hammock on the porch, some roosters, and a couple dogs wandering about. Nailed to the leaning palm tree that crossed the beach's path was a hand-drawn sign that simply read "Hay Cerveza."

After hours of walking, swimming, and sunning, a frosty beer sounded just right, but there was no one around for us to order one. Soon enough, two lovely island girls made their presence and in our broken Spanish we asked for beers. A little hungry at that point, we asked if they possibly had any snacks. They looked at each other, walked away, then came back holding up a huge, freshly-caught fish. We nodded and gave them the universal thumbs up.

Twenty minutes later, we were presented with the most beautiful plate of food. It was hands down one of the top 5 meals of my life. There was something about the freshness, the combination of tastes and textures, and the care put into the presentation. Wanna and I felt like the most fortunate girls in the world eating that small feast. We hugged and thanked the sisters, Darinia and Muriel, and gave them a giant tip.

From then on we were the ambassadors of "the blue house." The first thing we said to every new traveler we met was "Have you been to the blue house? They make AMAZING food! You must go." Soon enough, it was the talk amongst travelers on the island. We had figured this was common knowledge with the locals, but as it turned out, this was a new venture for the girls. One night in the village, we met up with the sisters and discovered that Wanna and I were the first ones to ask them for food. They had never considered cooking for people before, but since we had been sending people their way, a new business venture was budding. We figured this must be some sort of synchronicity.

There was talk of making it a business . . . the dream was to have a real restaurant for tourists and eventually build huts on the property. We loved the idea of these two women pursuing a dream---I think we saw a little of ourselves in them. Wanna and I decided long ago that we didn't want to rely on being taken care of. We wanted to support our own lives and provide for our own futures. And after getting to know these girls a bit, we were hopeful that they could do the same. It was going to take a little start-up cash to get a new kitchen going and we were totally willing to donate our hard-earned cash to the cause. We were elated to be involved in potentially changing the lives of virtual strangers a world away from us. We had big plans to support the sisters in making their dream a reality.

Once back on our home turf there was a lot of Facebook messaging and Google translating to work out the next steps. After a couple months, despite everyone's hard work and big dreams, the restaurant had to be put on hold due to family complications. Wanna and I felt we had seen a reflection of ourselves in these women (maybe more than was actually there) and we had good intentions. We were probably overly optimistic and a little naive in thinking that we could blindly send money and change these women's lives. Even though our hearts were in the right place, we realized that our goal of supporting women in their efforts to come into their own might be better realized through an established organization such as Kiva. It might sounds cliché, but we did come away with an important travel lesson from all of this: live and learn!

Urban Foraging

I wish I could say that I forage with wild abandon all over Brooklyn. I wish I scouted mulberry trees and returned as they began to fruit, that I rooted around for burdock in city parks and dug up sidewalk purslane and dandelion greens. Truth is, I’m something of a serial rule-abider and foraging in the city makes me nervous. In the country, there’s more of a sense of communal ownership. At the very least, you can usually find a field and wooded path where nobody’s there to watch as you fill a basket or two. Growing up, my mom would pick my sisters and I up from soccer practice and pull our lumbering minivan off the side of road to pull down a bramble of bittersweet for the front door. She’d spot a cluster of black-eyed susans during a walk by the beach, and we’d have a vase full of them at home. Once, she enlisted me and all three of my sisters to dig up an entire forest floor of daffodils in order to save them from their impending death by backhoe. You’d think that all of this wanton disregard for personal property would have instilled in me a similar streak. In some measure at least, it seems to have done the opposite. I get nervous about breaking rules. In the city, the side of road usually means someone’s yard. Trees have fences around them, for goodness sake. Foraging in city parks is frowned upon by park officials and last week when the juneberries were at their peak in Brooklyn Bridge Park, all I could muster was to pop a few ripe ones into my mouth. When I saw a young couple filling containers to take home, I felt a pang of jealousy, but found no more courageous reserves to harvest a pie's worth myself.

Besides my mild case of  rule-abiding, there’s also the pollution factor. I worry thinking about the kinds of things city plants are supping on. If the filmy dust on my window sill is any indication, there’s a lot of stuff floating around in the air around here, and not all of it can be good. Brooklyn Bridge Park is managed organically, but the same can’t be said for the 1700 parks managed by the City Parks Department. [gallery link="file" exclude="2086"]

Sometimes though, even a scaredy cat needs to face her fears. This weekend, I enlisted the help of my fiancé James to do some old fashioned foraging. If you live in New York, you might know that it’s linden flower season. Take a stroll down many of the city’s sidewalks and you’ll stumble upon the intoxicatingly floral scent of just-blossomed linden. It’s heady stuff. Dried, linden leaves and flowers make one of my favorite tisanes. It reminds me of lazy evenings spent in the south of France. After dinner and cheese and a glass or three of wine, we’d sip linden flower tea and ease even more gracefully into the evening. James and I plucked a whole bagful of the new spring leaves---flowers still attached---and I strung them up to dry in our apartment. Another batch is steeping, destined for syrup.

There’s yet to be a Brooklyn-berry pie baked at our house, but I think I just got a step closer. What about you? Any courageous foragers out there?

Why I Didn't Breastfeed

When I found out I was pregnant, I had just turned twenty-two. I had moved down to Florida after graduating college in Chicago and started dating my now husband. We hit it off right away and went on this amazing two-week long vacation down the East Coast. We spent hours in the car talking, finding out every facet of the other’s life---all of our wants and dreams, hopes and fears. After the trip, we were pretty sure we would get married. After six weeks, SIX weeks. That was before I even knew I was pregnant. At our wedding, my husband’s friend James gave a toast. He talked about how just a year earlier, when five of the engineers, including he and my husband, were cramped in a too-small office under lots of stress, they played “Would you ever”? The question was: Would you ever marry someone after only six weeks? The oldest employee (who had been married already for over twenty years) said he would, and he did. He and his wife were married after only a few weeks. Every other person said, No way, that’s crazy! And then the question came around to my husband. “Yes, when you know, you know.”

And then, a few weeks later, amidst throwing up daily several times a day and watching bad television, unemployed lying on the couch, reality hit me: OH SHIT, I AM HAVING A BABY. I didn’t know how to escape, didn’t know if I wanted to escape. If there’s something my generation is defined by, it’s this attitude of feeling lost without a purpose. Before getting pregnant, I was just floating along. I’d quit my job and moved in with my parents. I was considering graduate schools, and thinking about moving to the west coast. I thought in some naïve way, that this baby would give me a purpose. I would wake up everyday thrilled to take care of this little human being, pack lunches, and dry tears. I would have a job, and it would be mother.

Except you are pregnant for nine (practically ten months) and during that time I didn’t have a job. I was depressed and spent most days in bed looking at blogs online and shopping. My body turned on me. After weeks of throwing up and being sicker than I had ever been, the weight just started to pile on. 5, 10, 15 pounds, all the way up to 50 plus pounds as the due date neared. The truth is I stopped looking at the scale towards the end. The first time the nurse weighed me above 150, clunk . . . clunk went that second weight, I started to cry. Never in my life had I had the two clunks. Boom, boom went my old life. By the time Charley came, I had gone from a size 4 to a size 14.

Even though I only threw up in the first trimester, the entire pregnancy I felt sick. I had heartburn, my body hurt all over, and I couldn’t sleep. The only things I wanted to eat were sugar and carbs (hence the weight gain). I couldn’t even look at a vegetable without feeling something rise in the back of my throat. I was miserable and I wanted my body back. I wanted to have sex with my husband, without this giant belly. I wanted the old me back. The labor took hours and hours; I had an epidural and then Pitocin, then the epidural wore off and the Pitocin increased. It was terrible. But even still, immediately after giving birth, shivering under warmed blankets and tea from the missing heat in my body, I felt better than I had the whole pregnancy. It was amazing how quickly it took for me to stop feeling sick. As soon as he came out, the apple juice tasted fantastic, the air felt cooler, I was comfortable; I could have run a marathon. Then they handed me this squirming tiny alien, his eyes closed, and I tried to breastfeed. And PAIN, PAIN, PAIN, he was tearing apart my nipples! Just as I had started to feel better and like myself, he’d attached to me like a clamp. The nurses didn’t know why he wouldn’t latch properly. They kept trying to reassure me it shouldn’t hurt and I’m telling them, through my tears, it does, it really does. And just like that I gave up.

Psychologically I couldn’t do it. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable around breastfeeding. I admit it. I’m a woman, and a mother, and breastfeeding makes me embarrassed. Am I just a product of our society’s fascination with breasts as being purely sexual and disgusted with breasts for their biological purpose? I want to feel that it’s natural and amazing, I read blogs where women profess their love for breastfeeding---“I’ll be doing it till he’s five, or in college, it’s so easy!”---and I think, good for them, that sounds wonderful, and then they whip out that boob in front of me, in my living room, and I have to turn my eyes.

Maybe it’s my age. I talked to a breastfeeding friend recently who mentioned how her mother-in-law was a huge breastfeeding advocate, but didn’t breastfeed her first child. My ears perked up. I want to be a breastfeeding advocate, I’m intelligent and educated. I read the studies about how it’s better for everyone: better for the mother, healthier for the child. I hear stories of how women lost ALL of their weight within weeks; it just came right off! (Mine didn’t, still hasn’t, hello permanent size 10). And I wanted to do it, wanted to try it, I really did, but I just . . . couldn’t. My friend said her mother-in-law had her first baby at age twenty-two and didn’t want to breastfeed. She felt like it was her body and she didn’t want to share. She wanted her breasts to remain sexual, not utilitarian. A light bulb went off---that’s me! That’s exactly the psychology of it. After watching my body morph into something it never was, and being so sick and depressed for so long, I wanted my body back. I wanted to own it, be in charge of the weight and my breasts. I wanted to just be me, not just mom.

We are a naked family, and sometimes I’ll take a bath with my son, just for fun; it keeps him entertained. Lately when he sees me naked, he is fascinated with my breasts---wants to touch them, pour water on them---and I think dammit, he’s a male, how did it start so early? Because he wasn’t breastfeed, will he just be obsessed with them as he gets older? Or did it really not matter? And when he reached for my breast, just like he did when he was only a few hours old, a pain shot through me, and I thought, don’t touch me. 

What's Cooking?

Lovely illustrations by Akiko Kato

The F Words: Nicole Cliffe

For our first non-navel-gazing edition of the F Words, I knew I needed to give you guys something really, truly, spectacularly great. To that end, I strong-armed my incredibly talented friend Nicole Cliffe into sharing her (always ridiculously entertaining) thoughts about cooking, gender roles, and parenthood. Nicole is one of the smartest, sanest, funniest and most wonderful women I know - and not only because we first bonded over our shared love of Sondheim. Some of you likely know Nicole from her work as the newly-minted Books Editor for The Hairpin---and if you haven't been reading along with her incredible Classic Trash series, posted over at The Awl, you should start catching up immediately. (Her take on Valley Of The Dolls is a personal favorite of mine.) But, before you dig out your copies of Peyton Place and Gone With The Wind - and your mom's copy of Clan Of The Cave Bear (Dirty!), let's hear what Nicole has to say about feminism and food - peach pie, in particular.

Tell us a bit about your day job. I'm the Books Editor for The Hairpin, which is so little effort and so much fun as to be almost embarrassing. I also write a biweekly/monthly column for The Awl, Classic Trash, in which I discuss noted works of gooey literature.

How did you learn to cook? Post-college, definitely. I went the "buy complicated cookbook, treat like a logic puzzle" route. Then, like most people, I relaxed into a little stable of reliable dishes and went from there. If you're not a cook, I recommend throwing a little dinner party for two friends, and cooking Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe (it's on Epicurious) and making a green salad with a bit of goat cheese and sliced beets from a jar, plus this pie for dessert. When you're just starting out, the perfect formula is a) your main, b) a starter or side that need only be assembled, and c) a make-ahead dessert that can sit on your counter taunting your guests. And, obviously, a fancy vanilla-bean ice cream to serve with it. Keller's chicken is perfect, but deactivate your smoke alarm first.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? ALONE. Get the hell out of the kitchen. I have tremendous amounts of performance anxiety. My father-in-law kept hovering over me when I was making my first Thanksgiving dinner, and once he finally got to "you know you're using that cutting board upside down?" I had to bounce him formally. Of course, that was also the year I made the goose, and was using one of those awful single-use foil roasting pans. It snagged invisibly on the element coil, and about three cups of goose fat settled into the top of the stove. The goose, of course, was delicious, the experience of using a putty knife the day after to scrape congealed goose fat out of the stove, less so.

As long as you don't watch what I'm doing, you're welcome to stay and make me a gin and tonic and talk to me about Mad Men.

What’s your favorite thing to make? I do a two-day plan about once a week, where I bake too much mustard-y salmon for dinner with sauteed peppers and mushrooms or zucchini, then for dinner the next night I nestle my leftover fillets and vegetables in a frittata and liberally coat the whole thing in goat or feta cheese and a dash of cream. It's a little different every time, goofproof, and the frittata makes you look like a pro.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Indian. There's nothing so soothing to me as rice-and-sauce. A jar of ghee survives in my house for about two weeks.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Mandolines. Mandolines. Mandolines. And anything that has to be flipped, poached, or, God-forbid, only gels correctly 80% of the time.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? We're all eaters, and we all start thinking about what we'll have for lunch halfway through breakfast.  We never socialize in the living room, we're always in the kitchen.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women’s traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? I was extremely lucky, I think, to grow up with a male homemaker and a working mother. My mother is a great cook (the recipe I'm sharing is one of hers), but my father is a genius. He makes his own samosas, he has a clay baker, he makes his own pasta, he's never bought salad dressing. In my marriage, however, I'm the cook, and now I have a baby, so I'm a cook-balancing-a-baby, which is a visual I hadn't really internalized for myself. My husband is older than I am by over ten years, and I do notice a bit of a gender AND generational divide in domestic duties. Which doesn't bother me, mostly, as we have great communication around it, but I think that most women I know have husbands that are far more hands-on than their own fathers were, and, having had a male primary caregiver in my childhood, I'm having the opposite experience.

I think a larger factor is that my husband is fundamentally dis-interested in food, other than as fuel, which, for me, is like being an anthropologist every day. I stand there, making notes, watching him not obsess about food. When they eventually develop a pill you can take with a glass of water thrice daily to provide all of your nutritional needs, he'll be the first one in line.

I'm very ughhhhh about choice feminism, generally, but, like most of us, there are things I get really incensed by (name-changing, Brazilian waxing) and things I just merrily roll along with (doing 100% of the laundry and dishes and cooking). That being said, I think the fact that I choose to shoulder the domestic stuff is not a feminist choice, and doesn't occur in a vacuum. I would say I'm a feminist who, for various reasons, has made some choices I would consider un-feminist. I can make my peace with that, but I don't try to do a juggling game to justify it as furthering the course of equality: it doesn't.  As the mother of a baby daughter, I think I'll have to do more work than my mother did to raise a daughter who doesn't have static notions of gender. My family never looked like the breadwinner-dad, apron-mom pictures, so I never bought into them.

Like a lot of women with kids, I've been reading all the interminable pieces on Badinter and the attachment parenting backlash. There's something real there, of course. I planned to be an Attachment Parent, but gave birth, as some of us do, to a daughter who didn't want to sleep with us, lost weight constantly despite 24/7 nursing until she happily switched to Enfamil, and vastly prefers to sit and observe and play with her toys to being worn in a sling. You have to roll with it. And, of course, it makes you question other parts of the intense-parenting lifestyle. I thought I'd make my own baby food, because I had a "natural" birth (just because I skipped the epidural doesn't mean I like the way we create birthing hierarchies) and am generally an organic-seasonal food person, but I was at the supermarket one day and picked up a thirty-cent jar of Gerber's to glance at the ingredients: peas and water. Or, carrots and water. Who gives a shit, then? I bought about eighty jars. She likes them, and I'm not cleaning orange crud out of my food mill.  And now we give her bits of what we eat, and she loves it. You have to do what works for you, and I think you have to rigorously protect yourself from doing unnecessary things in order to compete with other women. Ask yourself every day: would I still do this if no one besides my baby and I ever knew? Sometimes the answer is yes: I cloth diaper, and I love it. Sometimes the answer is no: hence the little jars.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? I will eat anything with peaches. If there was a peach-flavored anthrax, I'd be dead now. This is the pie my mother brings to church suppers, to family reunions, etc. I rarely bake, because I find it more stressful than cooking (it's a formula, not a painting) and because I tend towards a more cult-like primal/paleo diet. Because of that, I subscribe to a go-big-or-go-home attitude towards desserts and starches. 98% of the time, I eat meats and fish and eggs and cream and butter and vegetables and berries. But when I make a dessert, I make a DESSERT. Or, of course, I make mashed potatoes with cream cheese. Don't eat it, or do it right. Sometimes, when I make this pie, I think, oh, I could cut the sugar in half. And I've done it, but then the texture isn't quite right. Don't lie to your baking. Embrace it. On a related note, there's nothing I loathe more than those women's magazine articles on making healthier choices at Thanksgiving. It's one meal. Eat whatever you want. It will make zero different in your life or health to eat a single slice (or two, or three) of a wonderful pecan pie. I'm completely neurotic about maintaining a (for me) artificially low weight (which, again, is an active detriment to my feminism), but I will not go to Eleven Madison Park and ask if they can steam some fish for me. I'm going to eat the foie-gras-chocolate torte. And it's going to be delicious. As an atheist, I feel very strongly about the iniquity of attaching shame to our food desires and our sexual appetites. There are only two things that we actually KNOW we're on this planet to do: eat and fuck. Go forth and be glad.

Creamy Dreamy Peach Pie Nicole Cliffe

For the crust: 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup butter

For the filling: 4 cups sliced fresh peaches, if in season. Canned work "just" as well. 1 cup sugar 2 1/2 tbsp flour 1 egg 1/4 tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 cup sour cream (full-fat, please)

For the topping: 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup flour 1/4 cup butter

Prepare the crust: Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine flour and salt, cut in butter. Press into a nine-inch pie plate (deep dish is best). Set aside.

Prepare the filling: Place peaches in bowl, sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the sugar, set aside. In another bowl, combine remaining sugar, flour, egg, salt, and vanilla. Fold in the sour cream. Stir the mixture into the peaches.

Prepare the topping: Combine all three ingredients until crumbly.

Finish the pie: Pour the filling into the crust and bake for twenty minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 30-35 minutes more.Remove the pie from the oven and sprinkle the topping evenly over the filling. Set the oven back to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for ten more minutes.

Allow pie to cool before slicing. Eat!

Makes one nine-inch pie.

Finding Kindness in a Simple Salad

It's easy to forget to be kind to ourselves on an average day.  How many of us get sucked into the incredible whirlwind of life and all it throws at us---job demands, family stress, relationship ups and downs, self-criticism, daily schedules jam-packed down to the minute?  We're guessing some or all of this sounds familiar.  Who doesn't want to do it all and then some?  Sure, often times we pull it off, but at some point, hitting that wall of complete emotional and physical exhaustion is inevitable.

And that's when it's nice to remember that kindness can come in very small packages. It can refresh, relax, and recharge us in a matter of seconds. Fill yourself with negative or stressful thoughts (or from this column's angle, non-nourishing, energy-zapping food), and you won't get very much kindness in return.  From our respective corners, Jen and I are both coming off of a few draining weeks---draining for various reasons, but we tend to be on the same wavelength about 99% of the time.  So I went about the task of coming up for air and creating kindness, energy, and nourishment for the both of us through a simple salad so delish it might just become one of your summer staples. Jen then tag-teamed by shooting and styling the lovely photos you see here.

You can't really  go wrong with quinoa.  Gluten-free, nutty, and nutritionally-dense with protein and antioxidants, it's an edible force to reckoned with and makes a rock-solid, satisfying lunch or side dish at dinner.  To boot, this recipe takes about 20 minutes or less to crank out---so you can return to your hectic daily routine, but with a bit more "kindness" in tow this go-round.

Quinoa Salad with Spring Peas, Fava Beans, Mixed Herbs and Feta Serves 4 as a side, 2 as a main

1 cup quinoa 2 cups water 1/2 cup fava beans 1/2 cup spring peas 2 to 3 cups arugula 1/3 cup cilantro, chopped 1/3 cup mint, chopped 1/3 to 1/2 cup scallions, chopped 1/2 to 1 small hot red chili, thinly sliced (if desired) 3 ounces of feta cheese, crumbled 2 tablespoons olive oil (add a little extra if needed) juice of 1 lemon 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Bring quinoa and water to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 8 to 12 minutes.  If there’s a little liquid remaining, strain quinoa and place in a mixing bowl. Remove fava beans from pods and blanch for 4 to 5 minutes.  Plunge into ice bath, cool and remove skins. Blanch peas for 6 to 7 minutes until tender.  Plunge into ice bath. Add fava beans, peas, and remaining ingredients arugula through feta cheese.  Drizzle olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar and season with salt and pepper.  Toss lightly to coat.

xo,

J+M

The Iced Coffee Dilemma: To Stay or To Go

Iced coffee is one of my favorite warm weather pleasures. Truth be told, I’m not too picky when it comes to icy drinks.  When I lived in the South I guzzled more sweet tea than should ever be admitted and I’ve never said no to a tangy glass of lemonade. If I don’t do something about my fondness for cocktails soon, I’ll find myself without a roof over my head. My relationship to iced coffee is a whole different animal. For me, an iced coffee isn’t something that I make a plan for. On an August morning, I might plan to make a pitcher of sun tea to enjoy in the afternoon. If I have a hankering for the latest elderflower-infused cocktail, I’ll make plans with friends to enjoy it with. Iced coffee? It just happens. The mood strikes and I need one. This usually happens when I’m not at home. When my energy is languishing after a morning’s trip around the town, I’ll get a little rumbly in my tumbly for an iced coffee (with cream and sugar, please). These sudden cravings are mostly manageable. A girl can get a cup of iced coffee approximately every 4 paces in this city. But at most of these places, the coffee is to-go and it's served in plastic. Enter my dilemma.

Take a walk around New York City on a warm day and you’ll notice green trash barrels filled, mostly, with clear plastic to-go cups. On average, it takes me about five city blocks to guzzle down an iced coffee.  After such a short walk the indignity of trying to discretely balance my garbage on an already overflowing pile is almost too much to bear. I know I should really just bring my own reusable cup, but the likelihood of me having one at the ready the moment an urge for iced coffee strikes is slim to none.

And so, I've chosen abstinence. This summer I'm making a pact not to enjoy coffee on the go. That's right. Either I’ll make my own cold brew to enjoy at home, or I’ll take a minute to sit in a cafe and enjoy an icy cuppa. The trouble of course is finding a cafe that actually serves their iced coffee in glasses, even if I'm planning to stay. Lucky for me, there’s an little spot in the neighborhood that I can duck into if the mood strikes and the cold brew isn’t ready. Still, it might be a very long summer, indeed.

Eating for Two

When I first found out that I was having a daughter, back in July of last year, I was awash with joy.  I had secretly hoped for a girl, although I certainly gave everyone the standard answer, “Of course, we don’t care about the sex, we just want a healthy baby!”  I mean, who doesn’t just want a healthy baby?  Obviously.  Naturally.  Oh wait, ME.  I WANTED A GIRL.  I wanted a healthy GIRL.  And a healthy girl is what we have so far. Like many parents, I am constantly assessing the things that are within my capacity to keep her that way---both physically and mentally.   As a woman and a clinician, I feel I have a distinct responsibility (somehow greater than my husband) for safeguarding our daughter’s mental health.

The recent Time Magazine cover of a young mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old child piqued my interest for perhaps different reasons than most.  Lately, I have been obsessing about the next developmental phase for our baby daughter---transitioning from exclusively breastfeeding to feeding her solids.  The fact is . . . I am daunted by the prospect of actual food entering into our relationship.

Breastfeeding has had its own set of challenges and possibly deserves a separate column.  But there has been some comfort in the ancient, simple ritual of my body producing the perfect meal and my daughter eating it happily.  To a large extent, I don’t have any say in the quality or quantity of my milk and breastfeeding takes on no emotional life, save the sweetly mutual opportunity to reconnect throughout the day.  Meanwhile, like so many women, my dynamic with food---the kind you select and prepare---has always been rather fraught.

Feeding a child seems like a truly basic function of parenting and clearly it is.  And yet it has me tied in knots.  Let’s set aside the fact that I don’t really cook, never really have, not even for myself and certainly not for my husband.  Dinner in our household is like parallel play at preschool---we each enter the kitchen and put together our own separate meals, side-by-side.  Sometimes we share a task: for example, together we will cut up vegetables that we will each use in separate salads.  My fortes are (not surprisingly) salad, pasta and translating the stunningly complicated and heavily accented descriptions of the sushi specials for my husband.  This is all very tragic and boring and I know this even as I write it. But there are larger issues at work here.  Ultimately, I will learn to cobble together meals to nourish a child and/or rely on a bevy of spectacular delivery options in the wonderland that is New York City.  My paramount concern is that I want to raise a daughter who is not neurotic about food and her body.

In an ideal world, I would like to feed my daughter without tainting her experience of eating with my own food ghosts.  I recognize the exquisitely delicate balance it requires to bring up a child - particularly a girl - with healthy attitudes toward food.  The experts caution that parents should maintain a neutral, positive approach to eating, offer a wide variety of nutritious options, not to label certain foods as “good” or “bad” and never use food as a reward or a punishment.  Of utmost importance, specifically in terms of the mother-daughter dyad…check your own fixations about food and your body at the door.  Children as young as two years old are watching their mothers (and popular culture at large) for cues about gender socialization and how to feel in their own skin.  This is a lot of pressure for a new mother who has battled weight issues and body acceptance, essentially always.

I grew up in a Southern California beach town in the 1980’s, which tells you two things right off the bat: I was immersed in a culture of excess and I was expected to be in a bathing suit on a daily basis.  My first bikini was at age 4 or 5 and it was an orange, terry cloth triangle top with bamboo ring connectors.  I was first told by a friend’s mother not to order lemonade because the sugar in it would make me fat in 3^rd grade.  As far as I knew, several of the mothers in my life ate nothing but Alba ’77 shakes for at least two decades.  In Junior High School, a friend taught me about a weight management technique: chewing food “just to get the taste” and then promptly spitting it out.  By High School, I was experimenting with eating nothing but air-popped popcorn and an apple for lunch.  Incidentally, high school lunch took place on the quad, where the Senior boys would sit holding up numbers written on notebook paper, “rating” girls as they walked past.   And so on.  Although it was a different time and place, I am keenly aware of the pitfalls awaiting my tender infant.

Since embarking on an adult life of intensive self-exploration and cultivating health, I have come to terms with the fact that I may never shake the critical voice in my head entirely.  While I would like to achieve perfect liberty, it is not out of the question that I will be 95 years old and still pause, experiencing a lightning flash of self-loathing before reaching for a cookie.  But I will persist in swimming upstream against it.  And now I will do this for my daughter, as well as myself.

My plan, therefore, is first and foremost to buy some kind of steamer?  Or something?  I understand squash, gourds, yams and the like might be first on the menu for our tiny gourmand.  Oh, and avocado, too, which seems infinitely easier to “cook.”  Second, I will commit to meal times being low-key, joyful and inviting experiences, free of gravity and judgment.  Third, even though she is only a few months old, I will not allow her to see me frowning in the mirror, muttering about my soft bits or hear me talk about foods that I “should” or “shouldn’t” be eating.  This will be my auspicious start.

An Introduction

I’ve always been something of a city mouse and a country mouse. For me, the New York City skyline makes me catch my breath in just the same way that the rocky coast of Maine does. Whether I’m driving down a country road or cruising down the West Side Highway at sunset, my heart fills with pure and unadulterated glee. People like to draw stark lines between the city and the country. Where the city is fast-paced and full of energy, the country is calm and quiet. Where life in the city is described as complicated, country life is depicted as simple, serene. The reality, of course, is that the two ideals don’t have to exist so separately. To make sure that when I’m in one spot I’m not spending all of my spare time wishing I were someplace else, I’ve chosen to bring bits of my country life into my city life. You can see them in the photographs I take: my window box in Brooklyn, flower stands at farmer’s markets, herbal tea, brewed at home.

At first glance, this marriage of country and city appears to be mostly an aesthetic choice.  But I don’t eat farm fresh produce just because it’s beautiful to photograph and my choice to fill my home only with flowers from nearby farmers goes beyond my particular adoration of Black-eyed Susans. For me, these choices also take into account my impact on the planet. I’m not saying that country folk have all the world’s environmental questions sorted, but sometimes living in a big city can mean that the nuances of seasons and the environmental impact of our choices can feel distant. The truth is that whether we’re in the country or the city or in all the places in between, we’re living in an era of global climate change. In the face of these changes, it’s been important for me to reconsider my own lifestyle.

For the most part, the changes I’ve made have been small and gradual. I was never a Hummer-driving, Big Mac-eating lady to begin with. But carefully thinking about the impact of my lifestyle on the planet has become a part of my everyday life.  I may live in a big city, but I’m trying my darndest to make sure that I stay in touch with the country all around me. Rather than flee the grit of the city for a simpler life in the country, for now anyway, I’m committed to making a simple life in the city. It’s mostly a fallacy that life in the country is so simple, anyway. Just ask my sister, she’s a farmer.

It’s a tough thing, this writing about sustainabilty and lifestyle. For some folks, it will across as preachy: pushing an agenda that finishes by boosting the confidence of the author and trampling on the choices of readers. For others, it won't go far enough: buying cut flowers from a nearby farmer isn’t going save the planet. Always, the issues are complicated. What of the workers? What of the economics? How do you afford grass-fed meat, anyway? This column isn’t a place for me to tell you what to do,  it’s a space for me to chronicle what I’m doing. It’s a celebration of the city. It’s a celebration of the country. Mostly, it’s a celebration of the planet and a story about making my place in it. I hope you’ll indulge me. 

Spring Fresh: Cocktail & A Nibble

 

Who we are.

Asheville via Brooklyn + East Village, NYC.  We are two good friends fortuitously brought together by a common love of food, design and afternoon cocktails.  Marissa’s a nutritionist and food writer in NYC.  Jen is a photographer, writer and stylist in Asheville, NC. Creating an indulgent balance through fresh, healthful food, we inspire each other endlessly and hope to pass on that love for beautifully prepared and easy dishes to you. Together we’re a whirlwind force in the kitchen, behind the camera and beyond.  And we relish every minute of it.

What you’ll find in this column.

To keep things intriguing, we’ll be mixing things up in our posts.  You can expect a smattering of fresh, seasonally-driven recipes, breathtaking photographs, tidbits on how to make eating well an effortless part of daily life, and simple ways to source and cook more sustainably.  Oh, and we’ll surely be musing on various related topics--from travel to family and relationships to easy entertaining and more--because after all, lots of things whipped up with love and intention come out of the kitchen.

Easy, breezy springtime entertaining.

We couldn’t think of a better way to introduce our column and the launch of the Equals Project than with a celebratory seasonal cocktail and a market-fresh nibble to accompany it, perfect for a period of new growth.  Warmer weather, sunshine and loads of fruits and vegetables this time of year keep the options rolling.   Enough so that we’ll often volley ideas back and forth from north to south until we slam on something that gets our hearts racing just a little faster.  We love how food can do that sometimes.  Seasonal ingredients, which are inherently healthy and bring on bright flavor, are on the top of our “inspiration list” when we’re on the hunt for a new recipe concept—rhubarb, radishes, asparagus and strawberries made the pick here.  Jen picked up on Marissa’s memory of a fantastic rhubarb cocktail that hails from a trip to Copenhagen, and Marissa ran with Jen’s vision of emerald asparagus spears and ruby radishes.  And from there, we entered our respective kitchens and got to work.

Our schedules tend to be jammed (we’re guessing that sounds fairly familiar), so we generally seek out a balance between ‘easy, beautiful and delicious’ to keep things streamlined but exciting at the same time.   There’s nothing better than dazzling guests, or just yourself, with food and drink that looks more complicated than it is.  We’re all about ease and taking a few moments to kick back and enjoy yourself and those around you with a good cocktail or two.  Cheers!

~ J + M

Spring Smash

2 stalks of rhubarb, finely chopped 6 strawberries, de-stemmed and sliced 3 tablespoons organic sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Combine rhubarb, 2 tablespoons of sugar and lemon juice in a bowl, toss well and place in fridge for at least two hours.  Combine strawberries and remaining sugar in another bowl, tossing well together and place in fridge for at least two hours or preferably overnight.

To assemble: Drain off liquid from rhubarb and discard. Divide rhubarb pieces between two low ball cocktail glasses. Drain off syrup from strawberries and set aside.  Divide berries between the two glasses, smash and muddle fruit.  Add 2 tablespoons of the strawberry syrup to each glass. Top w/ crushed ice and add 2 ounces of Bushmills Irish Honey Whiskey to each glass. Stir and drink.

Market Vegetables with Spring Onion, Bacon & Lemon Dip

1 bunch of asparagus

1 bunch of radishes 6 ounces low-fat Greek yogurt zest of 1 small lemon 1 teaspoon lemon juice 2 tablespoons minced spring onion

pinch of red pepper flakes sea salt to taste 2 tablespoons of bacon, finely chopped and cooked until very cripsy (from about 3-4 slices) radish flowers for garnish

Trim asparagus spears and blanch in boiling water for 1 1/2 minutes, plunge into an ice bath and set aside.  Clean and trim radishes and set aside. Mix the remaining ingredients yogurt through sea salt.  Make dip 30 to 60 minutes ahead of time to allow flavors to meld.  Sprinkle dip with crispy bacon and serve with radishes and asparagus.

All images by Jen Altman.

Find us at:

Jen - @fieryeyed | info@jeniferaltman.com

Marissa - @nourishnyc | marissa@nourish-nyc.com

The F Words: Food & Feminism

Welcome to The F Words, where our mission is to share the stories of remarkable women through food, to explore the ways food binds us to one another in the present - as well as to generations past - and to do all of this without dismissing the complicated relationship second- and third-wave feminist women have to the kitchen and cooking.

My name is Meg, and I'll be your guide on the (assuredly) delicious, (definitely) exciting and (potentially) thorny journey. If you're friends with my mom, you might know me as Queenie, author of the food and travel blog Queenie Takes Manhattan. If not, hi! It's awesome to meet you.

I write an awful lot about food - and sometimes even more about Bourbon - on my blog, but I rarely touch on one of my other great passions: feminism. It's not because I'm scared of the word, it's just that feminism can be a tough thing to bring up in a food-centric context. I'm far past the point of thinking that feminists should shun the kitchen because of its associations with enforced domesticity and limited options, but I'm also not always entirely sure of how to articulate how I feel about the intersection of cooking and my feminist ideals. I think it's time to see if other people can help - and to prove true to my roots, I say we get them to give us some recipes, too.

To make sure my victims - I mean, interview subjects - know there's nothing to be scared of, I'll go first. But I promise that some seriously exciting, brilliant women will grace this space in weeks to come. In the meantime, let's hit it.

Tell us a bit about your day job. I work in user research and experience design, which basically means I ask people questions about what they want and need and tell their stories to other people all day long. On a good day, that is.

How did you learn to cook? Oh, gosh - in all sorts of ways. I grew up surrounded by people who love food, especially my mom and my au pair. We ate out quite a bit, but Mom and Lori were also both great cooks. Snack food was at a minimum; if you wanted something to eat, you had to make it yourself, so I mastered chocolate chip cookies at an unnaturally young age. My grandmother, Nonie, taught me how to bake pies, and I figured most of the rest of it out (including the savory side of things) when I moved into my first apartment after college. I remember calling my mom to find out how to cook meat in an oven - I’d mostly learned how to grill things like steak or chicken, and had no idea how to roast anything.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? Either alone, or with close friends or family - but really, I can cook with anyone who isn’t too much of a control freak. If I’m preparing a meal with someone else, I like it to be with someone who isn’t going to be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I love to cook with my best friend, Louisa. We have a pretty awesome rhythm when we’re together in the kitchen.

What's your favorite thing to make? Depends on the day - and the season - but I always find it really satisfying to make a stand-out dessert, like a gorgeous chocolate cake or a blueberry pie in the height of summer.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Probably either Vietnamese or French - baguettes and strong coffee are common themes, you’ll note.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Chinese food. So many new techniques and combinations to learn about, if you want to do it right. I need to find someone to coach me through it.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? My family is seriously into food. My mom is a great cook, but she also loves to dine out, and I feel really lucky to have eaten so many amazing meals even before I could (legally) drink the wine that came along with. I grew up with an appreciation of fine dining and simple, home-cooked food - the only food snobbery I know is a disdain for stuff that tastes bad. I also grew up with divorced parents, and my mom was single until just recently. That meant that - starting sometime in late adolescence - my brother and I had to fend for ourselves at dinnertime fairly often. I started us off with grilled chicken, salad, and Uncle Ben's wild rice (that spice mix was amazing), then graduated to stir fries, and, eventually, homemade pies. My brother was - and is - in charge of eggs.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women's traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? I’m a single woman who lives alone (and loves it), so when I cook for other people, it’s entirely by choice. And when it comes to cooking, I'm pretty much a choose-your-choice feminist. (That isn't the case for all things, but we can talk about that in another piece sometime.) If a woman cooks, it's not an anti-feminist act. And if a woman doesn't choose to cook, it doesn't make her a better feminist. People should do what works for them, whether that's ordering in, taking out or having another member of the household do the whole thing. Someone assuming I should cook because I'm a woman, though - that's not okay.

That said, I actually think that home cooking is less fraught these days than the professional culinary world, where women are still actively encouraged to follow the (traditionally less prestigious) pastry track. While most (not all - you know who you are, slackers) hetero couples I know share kitchen duty (either cooking together or trading off cooking and cleaning), cooking for money and acclaim is still primarily thought of as men’s work. Which drives me crazy, for the record. When a woman does it, it's considered routine and expected. When a man does it, it's worthy of applause and statues. Step. Off.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you're sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? This is my brother’s favorite cake. I tend to gravitate more toward fruit desserts, especially in summer when peaches, plums, berries and the like are in season. My brother? Not so much. I mean, he won't turn down a strawberry-rhubarb tart, and he loves apple pie at Thanksgiving, but when it's up to him, it's going to be chocolate. And so even though his birthday is smack in the middle of July, I bake this cake for him, because I am an awesome sister.

It’s chocolate-on-chocolate, with a little bit of coffee thrown in to bring out the flavor of all that - you guessed it - chocolate. It’s also super crazy easy, which isn’t always true of cakes. It’s based on Ina Garten’s chocolate cake recipe; I’ve tweaked it a bit - notably by adding more coffee - but the luxurious simplicity (the thing I aim for most in my own cooking) is the Barefoot Contessa at her finest.

Perfect Chocolate Cake Adapted from Barefoot Contessa At Home

For the cake: Butter, for greasing the pans 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans 2 cups sugar 3/4 cup good cocoa powder 2 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. kosher salt 1 cup buttermilk, shaken 1/2 cup vegetable oil 2 eggs, at room temperature 1 teaspoon good vanilla extract 1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

For the buttercream frosting: 6 ounces semisweet chocolate (I use Guittard!) 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 extra-large egg yolk, at room temperature 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder

Make the cake: Position the racks in the top and bottom thirds of your oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter 2 round cake pans (8- or 9-inch both work.). Line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and baking powder into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the salt and mix on low speed until combined.

In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low, gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry. Add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the sides & bottom of the bowl with a spatula.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, swapping pans from top to bottom about halfway through, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack (parchment paper side down) and cool completely.

Make the frosting: Chop the chocolate and place it in a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir until just melted and set aside until cooled to room temperature.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium-high speed until light yellow and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and continue beating for 3 minutes.

Turn the mixer down to low, and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Beat at medium speed, scraping down the bowl as necessary, until smooth and creamy. Dissolve the coffee powder in 2 teaspoons of very hot tap water. On low speed, add the chocolate and coffee to the butter mixture and mix until blended - but don't whip! Now you're ready to frost!

Frost the cake: Peel off the parchment paper from both layers and place 1 cake layer, flat side up, on a flat plate or cake pedestal. With a knife or offset spatula, spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer on top, rounded side up, and spread the frosting (steps for making it are below) evenly on the top and sides of the cake.

Welcome!

It was a dark and stormy night—no really, it was.  Our boutique creative agency YOU + ME* was in need of a retreat/vision quest/mini sabbatical/whatever you want to call it and we decided the perfect location was Salt Lake City in January.  We weren’t there to seek inspiration at Sundance or on the slopes (though that would have been a solid plan following the storm that blew through town).  Instead, we flew three quarters of the way across the country to attend the Altitude Summit, lovingly referred to as Alt, a design and social media conference that attracts creative powerhouses from all over the country. If you think boondoggle when you hear conference, it might not be obvious why we expected to forge a bold new path for our business from the lobby of the Grand America Hotel.  But forge we did.  It was time to step away from the glare of our computer screens and into the warm glow of shiny notebooks and neon pencils.   We wanted to liberate our brains from practical matters like business taxes and invoicing systems and let our minds wander toward our biggest dreams and grandest plans.  Most importantly, we needed to meaningfully connect—with old pals, new friends, and each other.

Over the course of our four-day trip, we had a blast (um, as you can see), extended our wheelhouse with a few new tricks, and figured out the next step on our never-ending quest to create a business that reflects our values and leads to fulfilling personal and professional lives. We stayed up late into the night discussing the fact that our internet circles are closing, rather than widening, comparing our experiences of the world, and chatting about our desire to connect women to each other in ways that extend beyond what our houses and weddings look like, what we cook for our families, and how we conceive of and present our outer selves. We downed coffee after coffee contemplating the fact that the online world has been one in which women have been framed as tearing each other down rather than building each other up. We lamented the dearth of online content for women that acknowledges that we are more than our outfits, our homes, and our consumption habits.

From that, the Equals Project was born.

And it looks like others have been thinking along the same lines. From the growing "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" movement among bloggers, to the focus on meaningful gatherings in Kinfolk magazine, to people sharing incredibly thoughtful stories online with the sole intention of helping other people achieve happiness, it's clear that the internet is evolving from a place where we store and showcase our (often-unattainable) goals into a place where we can be real, multi-dimensional people. As we slow down and think about what we are really consuming on the internet, it seems as if we as a society are aching for meaning and process, rather than destinations and results. We hope you will find here a collection of stories, discussions, and art from women across the country (and across the world) that compels you to think, contribute your own stories and thoughts, and most of all, to act.

We are more than what we can cook, we are more than what we can create, more than our makeup, our jewelry, our aesthetic tastes. We are people with complex ideas, and conflicting thoughts, who read, travel, discuss, do, and make. We are people who are influenced and inspired by the women who came before us, and we aspire to create something greater than the sum of our parts.

After many months of work, tellingly accompanied by more grins than swear words, it’s finally time for us to make the Equals Project a reality.  We still have to pinch ourselves a little bit when we think of the talent, the stories, and the passion found among this amazing group of contributors and collaborators.  And we only get more excited when we think of how the Equals Project will be interpreted in print early next year.  We've also taken to jumping up and cheering on an hourly basis when we think about kicking off Equals Does, our philanthropic call to action--money is not the only tool for making a difference in the world.  In a short while, we’ll be announcing our first project representing Equals Does and featuring a series of inspiring projects that share a similar spirit. If you’re interested in supporting the Equals Project, you’re in luck:

• Follow us on facebook and twitter for regular updates
• Share The Equals Project with your friends, family, and every nice person you meet
• Contribute your writing, photography, or video (see submission guidelines)
• Send us a story of how you’ve used your skills, talents, or sheer gumption as a force for good in the world

Let's continue this conversation and get to know each other better, shall we?

Warmly,

Elisabeth & Miya