This weekend two couple friends and I had a crawfish (Crawdaddy? Crayfish? Crawdads? Mud bugs?) boil.

It required not using a fork and knife to eat.

Gasp!

This is completely out of my comfort zone. I also felt really bad for the crawfish. One husband put one on his ear like an earring. One dog had a great time trying to figure out what was going on.

One dog just wanted to eat it.

So did another one.

There was a lot to eat. It was too cold to eat outside like the real tradition, so we improvised.

A part of my heritage (I found out late in life) is Acadia, people expelled from Northeast Canada (mostly). Some of those people headed to Louisiana. Some came back to the Northeast. But I know next to nothing about this culture and the food and the traditions behind it. Same for my Dutch side and Québécois ancestors. It’s all a bit of a mystery to me, just like crawfish kind of are. And hushpuppies.

THE SOUP

This soup is from a website I just found. I will hopefully make it soon! Without the ham. :)

The website is adorable though. You should check it out if you have time! It’s a lovely woman named Sophie and her culinary adventures.

POEMS

The Poetry Foundation has a recording of “Some Lines Scrawled on the Door of a Vagabond's House,” by Don Blanding, which is quite full of energy.

This is SUGARING from the July 1920 issue of POETRY. It’s by Raymond Holden.

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The kiddo and I went to Northeast Harbor on Sunday afternoon for a belated Mother’s Day adventure and headed to these public gardens run by the Land and Garden Preserve that we used to go to when she was wee.

We did not take her favorite Gold Fish crackers this time.

But it was lovely and calm and full of things blooming.

It made me think a bit about how things can bloom and blossom so quietly all around us. Fruit trees flour and bud. Seedlings reach up from the dirt toward the sun. It’s all quiet moments.

Yet, so many of us make so much noise.

THE POEM

THE RECIPE

This is an amazing mushroom pot pie by Jesse Szewczyk from Bon Appetit. It’s a bit dramatic honestly because of the phyllo top, but it’s pretty much my favorite thing in the world right this second.

QUICK NOTE

Comforting usually comes out every two weeks now. Thank you for hanging out with me. I hope you are finding good, quiet, cozy things.

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This Sunday, as I write this, it’s a bit cold and super dreary for a May day. It feels a bit like October in Maine instead.

I’ve decided to embrace it. Two of my friends have too.

One texted a photo of her clam chowder.

“It’s a chowder kind of day,” she said.

The other texted that she’s making homemade macaroni and cheese and doing laundry. I was a little envious because Shaun (my husband) does not do well with the lactose, so we aren’t making either of those things. He does okay with some cheese, but not a ton of that even.

Anyway, there’s sort of a beautiful coziness in both being able to have enough money (and time) to make food and to step away from the hustle enough to do that.

My father was born in Staten Island, New York, during the Great Depression. When my grandmother talked about the city, she talked about longing for the art and the music but also about the smells. They were not good smells.

He would find such joy and wonder in a garden—the opposite of that city smell, right? He would marvel at a pumpkin, peas you could shell and eat right off the vine.

His dad was a stockbroker who watched his friends despair, one after another, in the market crash and he became very poor and he became a socialist/communist. I was just telling one of my friend’s husbands this story.

He’d have my sweet, young, dad pass out pamphlets for him on NYC street corners while he ran (very unsuccessfully) for governor. I think he got two votes?

My dad would tell the story of how people would spit on his little kid self, bawl up the pamphlets and throw them at him.

Horrible, right? How is this cozy?

Well, it made my dad so grateful for people’s kindness, for them willing to share thoughts with him, stories with him.

Having seen the mean that people can be, it made him lean into the joy of discovering the kind.

My mom was born in Manchester, New Hampshire. When she talked about her childhood, she talked about the joy of the milk man coming; this amazing joy from fighting with her brothers over the cream on the top of the bottle.

This was hysterical to me as a kind because my mom hated milk. Loved cheese. Hated milk.

I think maybe now that the ritual of jockeying over the best part of the milk bottle, the amazing taste of fresh, delivered-to-your-door milk back in the 1940s when she was a kid.

(I am not 100 years old. My parents just had me super late in life comparatively._

I grew up with a lot of stories of scarcity and gratitude. In our recent hustle-hustle-hustle culture, that’s a lot to unload, right?

My mom found so much joy in that milk and in being with her brothers. It didn’t matter that her mom was a single parent, scraping by, that they had to strive a lot to get to someplace that wasn’t poverty. She found joy in milk.

THE RECIPE

This is what we’re making tonight (no soup, sorry, and also no dairy). Here’s a link to the gift article.

THE POEM

I cautious scanned my little life (19)

Emily Dickinson

I cautious scanned my little life,
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a barn,
The former blew away —
I went one winter morning,
And lo! my priceless hay

Was not upon the “‘scaffold”’,
Was not upon the “beam”,
And from a thriving farmer
A cynic I became.

Whether a thief did it —
Whether it was the wind —
Whether Deity ’s guiltless
My business is to find.

So I begin to ransack —
How is it, Heart, with thee?
Art thou within the little barn
Love provided thee?

From The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson. This poem is in the public domain.

Thank you for reading this and being here with me. I hope you find some joy this May Sunday (or whenever you’re reading it).

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I think I should potentially have named this Substack “Coziness” instead of “Comforting.”

That was a mistake, wasn’t it?

The original name was “Finding Comfort in Poems and Soup, Damn It,” which was and still is my initial feeling. Or maybe it should just be called “Fighting the Ugh.”

I might go with that one today.

There’s this post on The Greater Good by Jill Suttie that doesn’t quite talk about The Ugh, but about how to let go of the little things that annoy you, which is a bit like fighting the ugh, right?

She talks about how every life has stress, but how it’s not helpful to take smaller ugh moments. It hurts us.

She writes:

“Feeling irritated sets off the release of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, that prepare our bodies to respond to danger. While not problematic in itself, a stress response than happens too frequently or doesn’t dissipate quickly can cause wear and tear on our bodies and exhaust us. That’s why daily annoyances may harm our well-being, lead to depression, worsen our long-term health, and decrease our overall life satisfaction.

“Less direct, but no less consequential, is how feelings of irritation can spill over into our relationships. If we’re stressed out by minor things, we may react badly, says Greenberg, by “saying the wrong thing or taking things the wrong way.”

“‘If we’re not calming to be around, people may not feel as close to us,’ she says, which could lessen the kind of social support we need for good health. Lashing out at others when we’re annoyed is more likely to backfire than help make an irritating situation better. It can even be dangerous, like when our inability to curb our frustration over a reckless driver turns into road rage.

“Not taking out our frustration directly on other people can have social consequences, too, though. For example, wallowing in a bad mood, muttering to ourselves, or slamming a door in frustration is bound to put the people around us on edge. Even those folks we don’t interact with much—like the barista at your coffee shop—may read our tense body language and behave differently, says Greenberg.

“‘We [humans] react to the way others respond to us. So, if we emanate a more chronically stressed-out vibe, I think we’ll get more stressed out or negative responses in return,’ says Greenberg.”

Her ways to fight it are pretty standard:

1. Practice gratitude and remind yourself of the good stuff.

2. Be compassionate to yourself too.

3. Practice empathy.

4. Practice mindful acceptance.

5. Reframe things.

It’s a lot, kind of. At least, it seems a lot when it’s in list form.

You can read her entire article at the link above, but I’m going to pull out her bit about reframing things because I know in my family we all tend to go into a doom spiral when bad things happen. That relates to this.

She writes:

“Part of the reason a minor hassle can become more upsetting is that we overlay it with harmful interpretations. For example, if I take my husband’s lapse as a sign that he doesn’t care about my feelings, I may become more upset than if I put it down to something innocuous, like fatigue and distraction. Not every annoyance, however it feels, is a personal affront.

“‘A lot of the stuff [couples] argue about is just stupid stuff,’ like replacing the toilet paper roll or how to load the dishwasher, says Greenberg. ‘But it takes on this huge significance because of how they’re seeing it as evidence that person doesn’t care about them or they’re not being heard.’

“Reframing is similar to a technique used in cognitive-behavioral therapy, where patients are taught to question their negative interpretation of events and consider alternate explanations. While reframing won’t change the annoying situation itself, it can help negative feelings dissipate more quickly.”

“Another way we can reframe our experience is by seeing an annoyance as just an unavoidable facet of life or small in the face of other concerns, says Greenberg. When triggered, she suggests asking ourselves, What’s the big picture here? How important is this, really, especially compared to everything going on in my life? Is this something I even have control over? Asking questions like these helps us see our situation more objectively, as a small blip that doesn’t need to hijack our mood.

“‘Trying to take a step back and broaden our view can help us be like a fly on the wall, giving us a more distanced [perspective],’ says Greenberg.”

THE SOUP FOR THIS WEEK

This is from Serious Eats, but you can find a similar recipe in all kinds of places.

You can sort of tell I’m longing for summer with a recipe that calls for fresh basil.

THE POEM

The Singers Change, the Music Goes On

By Linda Gregg

No one really dies in the myths.

No world is lost in the stories.

Everything is lost in the retelling,

in being wondered at. We grow up

and grow old in our land of grass

and blood moons, births and goneness.

We live our myth in the recurrence,

pretending we will return another day.

Like the morning coming every morning.

The truth is we come back as a choir.

Otherwise Eurydice would be forever

in the dark. Our singing brings her

back. Our dying keeps her alive.

This poem is part of the folio “Linda Gregg: Never Give Up Longing,” curated by David Semanki, and was published in Gregg’s 2008 new and selected volume, All of It Singing. I found it on the Poetry Foundation’s site.

QUICK NOTE

I put out this post every week or so. If you want to hang out with me here? That would be wonderful. No pressure though. You can sign up below.

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There are some lovely comforting things out there. Today, I’m going to share with you my favorites in case you need comfort some day and I’m not here any longer to share these resources with you.

COMFORTING MUSIC

FHE Health writes, “Music can have a powerful effect on emotions. Whether it’s in the background of movies, setting the tone for the environment of a workplace or enjoyed at a concert, it’s woven into nearly every part of society to express emotion, inspire change and entertain.

“Whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, many people use music to change their mood. An individual can scroll through the curated playlists on their favorite digital music service and find playlists for cleaning the house, going on a road trip or dealing with the loss of a relationship. Listening to music can trigger memories, bring feelings of happiness or help individuals work through feelings of grief and sadness.

“For some, the power of music can provide a temporary escape from stress, depression and sadness. While it isn’t a cure-all, it can be a vital part of someone’s mental health journey. For that reason, it’s a popular form of therapy to help individuals process their feelings, build connections with others and express themselves.”

First, there are a bunch of music channels on YouTube that sort of live in the comforting music space. Some are classical focused. Some are hygge focused. Some are like this one, which is sort of more chill meditative sounds.

It is hard to find any that don’t have AI-produced images and I am sorry for that.

This basically makes me fall asleep.

But what I also find super comforting music-wise is those troubadours of the Windham Hill era. Singer-songwriters like John Gorka and Cheryl Wheeler (she is very funny) and Cliff Eberhart and Lucy Kaplansky. And then pianist like Will Akerman and George Winston.

Sometimes my comfort comes from things a bit more “savage.”

Or, honestly, singing songs from my youth.

A POEM

Did you know that in April, the Academy of American Poets encourages us all to have a poem in our pocket for Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 10.

You place a poem in your pocket, you share it with the people you meet.

Here is the one I’m sharing with you, a little early.

A RECIPE.

This vegan carrot soup comes from A Taste of Home. You can go here to check it out and print it, too.

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There are weeks when the world feels like it has been set to “gentle simmer,” and weeks when it feels like someone cranked the heat on the burner, forgot the pot, and walked away from the stove.

This has been the second kind of week. The kind of week where your foot keeps betraying you—just a small misstep, a wrong angle, a sharp, humiliating reminder that your body is not, in fact, invincible—and suddenly everything slows down whether you like it or not.

I hurt my foot in the least glamorous way possible about six weeks ago and it’s slowly getting better. I talked about this a bit last week.

There’s no heroic tale that goes with this foot issue. I did not do this saving puppies or hiking in Portugal. There’s no slippery cliffside or dramatic rescue involved. Just a misjudged step while dancing salsa in the kitchen barefoot, a pain, and that awful, immediate knowing of: Oh. That’s going to be a problem (and obsessing over whether I have gout or not).

The thing about pain is that even the small, domestic kind basically rearranges your life. Not in big, cinematic ways, but in the quiet negotiations like how to get down the stairs. Is it worth standing long enough to cook? How many times you can forget something in another room before you just decide you didn’t need it that badly anyway? Should you buy new shoes or will the swelling eventually go down? Maybe? Sometime soon?

Enter: soup.

Soup is what you make when standing hurts but nurturing feels necessary, right? Soup is forgiving. It doesn’t mind if you lean heavily on the counter or sit down halfway through. It doesn’t rush you.

Writing 2-3 news stories a day on top of my other work often makes me feel super rushed. I am the opposite of soup.

There is something deeply reassuring about a pot of soup on the stove. The slow bubbling. The way the house begins to smell like you have your life together, even if you absolutely do not. You can throw in what you have—carrots going a little limp, onions that have seen better days, a handful of herbs you forgot you bought—and somehow it turns into something that feels like care.

I’ve been eating a lot of soup. Not in a sad way. In a deliberate, almost ceremonial way. Ladling it into a bowl like it’s medicine, like it’s a promise: You are going to be okay. Maybe not today. Maybe not even tomorrow. But eventually.

Because I am me, and because slowing down always reveals things I’d rather not notice, I’ve also been reading more poems.

Poems are the opposite of rushing. They refuse the hurry-hurry-hurry. You can’t skim a poem the way you skim an article or scroll through a feed. Well, you can, but it won’t give you anything. Poems demand that you sit with them. That you let a line land and then echo. That you feel slightly off-balance, the way you do when your foot hurts and you’re learning how to walk differently.

There’s a particular kind of comfort in poems that don’t try to fix anything. They don’t offer solutions. They just say: This is what it feels like to be here, in this body, in this moment, with this strange mix of ache and hope and boredom and longing. You can find meaning in the white space around the words, in the pauses.

Which, it turns out, is exactly what I needed.

Because a hurt foot is never just a hurt foot. It’s frustration and vulnerability and the quiet fear that things break more easily than we’d like to admit. It’s also, inconveniently, an invitation to slow down, to notice, and to sit still long enough to realize that maybe the world hasn’t ended just because you can’t move through it at your usual speed.

I’ve been sitting. Eating soup. Reading poems. Letting the days be smaller than I planned.

In those smaller days, there have been moments—tiny, almost forgettable ones—that feel like grace. The way steam curls up from a bowl. The exact right line in a poem that makes you stop and think, “Oh, someone else has felt this too. The strange, reluctant gratitude for a body that, even when it fails you a little, is still trying.”

I don’t recommend hurting your foot as a lifestyle choice. There are easier ways to learn these lessons. But if you find yourself slowed down, sidelined, stuck in a chair with an ice pack and a slightly bruised sense of dignity, I will say this:

Make soup.

Read a poem.

Let the world wait a little while because it will still be there when you’re ready to get a shoe on and go outside again.

LINKS FOR BETTER, COZIER THINGS:

Butternut Squash Chipotle Chili with Avocado from Cookie and Kate.

A cozy poem by Iain S. Thomas (with a lovely accent/voice).

A cozy quote: “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for talk beside the fire; it is the time for home.” —Edith Sitwell

QUICK NOTE

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It isn’t writing tips. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes. Okay. A lot of the time. But it feels wondrous, too. And that’s what I try to hold onto.

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So, I hurt my foot.

And it has finally stopped being swollen so that I can put my foot in shoes and things.

This, let me tell you, is a big improvement. It’s sort of important to be able to wear shoes in Maine in winter.

Anyway, because I hurt my foot, I haven’t left the house for a month. I took a lot of Advil. I iced it. I did all the things. It didn’t get better very quickly.

What did I do to my foot?

I’m honestly not sure. I was dancing barefoot in the kitchen and it started hurting, sort of under my big toe on the bottom of my foot.

I danced through the pain.

Then it went kind of around the side.

I danced through that, too. It was salsa. I do not know how not to dance around the kitchen when there is salsa music playing.

Then at night, something moved in the bed—Pogie Dog was that something—and she jumped off—maybe off my foot? I was sleeping so it was hard for me to know. And I woke up in so much pain.

“IT IS GOUT!” I told Shaun. “I HAVE GOUT!”

He insists that I do not have gout. “It is mechanical. Your feet are weird. You have that EDS thing. You have psoriatic arthritis.”

“Gout and psoriatic arthritis are besties,” I said the next day.

“Baby, you do not have gout.”

The day after that, when I couldn’t walk, I showed him photos of inflamed feet because the internet is magic like that.

“IT IS GOUT!” I announced.

“It is not shiny or hot.”

“Whatever. I can never have seafood again!” I told him and gave him a list of all the things I can never ever eat or drink.

This was not comforting at all. I thought, honestly, that it was a disaster, but it turned out? I’m just eating like I did when I was 20, minus the instant Ramen noodles. Poor Shaun—he of the meat-loving/processed food love, he of the “GIVE ME FIERY HOT CHEETOS” taste buds—is enduring.

The man is very patient with me, honestly.

THE POEM

This is actually the poem of the day on the Academy of American Poets site. Bliss Carman was Canadian (born 1861), from New Brunswick, and really into Sappho. He was the poet laureate of the country, too, such a big deal, right? So cool.

Low Tide on Grand Pré

by Bliss Carman

The sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
I almost dream they yet will bide
Until the coming of the tide.

And yet I know that not for us,
By any ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
A little while the grievous stream,
Which frets, uncomforted of dream—

A grievous stream, that to and fro
Athrough the fields of Acadie
Goes wandering, as if to know
Why one beloved face should be
So long from home and Acadie.

Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?

The while the river at our feet—
A drowsy inland meadow stream—
At set of sun the after-heat
Made running gold, and in the gleam
We freed our birch upon the stream.

There down along the elms at dusk
We lifted dripping blade to drift,
Through twilight scented fine like musk,
Where night and gloom awhile uplift,
Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

And that we took into our hands
Spirit of life or subtler thing—
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
Of death, and taught us, whispering,
The secrets of some wonder-thing.

Then all your face grew light, and seemed
To hold the shadow of the sun;
The evening faltered, and I deemed
That time was ripe, and years had done
Their wheeling underneath the sun.

So all desire and all regret,
And fear and memory, were naught;
One to remember or forget
The keen delight our hands had caught;
Morrow and yesterday were naught.

The night has fallen, and the tide . . .
Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
A sigh like driven wind or foam:
In grief the flood is bursting home.

This poem is in the public domain.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Love and Lemons.

More about Bliss.

I’m not linking to gout or foot injuries because I love you, not hate you. :)

QUICK NOTE

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It isn’t writing tips. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes. Okay. A lot of the time. But it feels wondrous, too. And that’s what I try to hold onto.

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I was looking at top-selling writers Substack newsletters (so this, but not this because this is the least top-selling thing ever). A couple of them hadn’t written in months. One guy wrote every single day like a really long and eloquent diary entry. This is very Anaïs Nin of him, really.

This, of course, sent me into a wormhole where I found this except from one of her diary’s.

“As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. Everything Henry has said about her is true.

“I wanted to run out and kiss her fantastic beauty and say: ‘June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses.’”

There is so much to think about here. There are her words and her ability, of course, but then also the Junes that we create in our lives. And what it is to be an actress in every moment.

THE RECIPE

The link to that site herbivore.

BONUS COMFORT

I just found this and I thought I’d share it. I do not know if I’ll ever get the time to make faux moths, but it’s nice to think I might.

QUICK NOTE

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It isn’t writing tips. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes. Okay. A lot of the time. But it feels wondrous, too. And that’s what I try to hold onto.

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It is my birthday today!

Woot?

Noticing age is an interesting experience, really, how things need to stretch to survive the bumps and falls and incidents that you used to survive so well, right? The realization that moments really are these gorgeous precious things. The way your hair and skin transforms, and your heart and brain do too.

It’s the coolest experience.

Anyway, it is my birthday today and there are cute little squirrels gallivanting on the front deck. Jack the dog is not happy about this and he’s trying to talk to them. They prance along the rail to get to the bird feeder and completely blow him off the way squirrels do until they’ve had enough. It’s sent him pacing in circles through the house. Beyond the squirrels, the sky is gray, but it’s sort of a lovely gray because you know there is blue behind it. There are always things behind things, aren’t there? Days behind days. Skies behind skies.

And despite the fact that I’m trying not to eat much sugar (gasp!), Shaun is making me pancakes, which is adorable. He thinks I do not know. I know.

A BIRTHDAY POEM

Birthday Lights

By Calef Brown

Light bulbs on a birthday cake.

What a difference that would make!

Plug it in and make a wish,

then relax and flip a switch!

No more smoke

or waxy mess

to bother any birthday guests.

But Grampa says, “it’s not the same!

Where’s the magic?

Where’s the flame?

To get your wish without a doubt,

You need to blow some candles out!”

Copyright Credit: Calef Brown, “Birthday Lights” from Flamingos on the roof: poems and paintings. Copyright © 2006 by Calef Brown.

QUICK NOTE

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It isn’t writing tips. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes. Okay. A lot of the time. But it feels wondrous, too. And that’s what I try to hold onto.

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There is a blizzard alert today on the island where I live, which is pretty exciting. Hopefully, the power will stay on

When I was little, there was a blizzard on my 11th birthday party day. I wrote about that here.

In that post (all about my bonus dad trying to save my birthday party), I shared this quote and I like this quote a lot so here you go . . .

In a post on Psychology Today’s website, Nancy Collier speaks about ‘operating from love.’

Operating from love is to set our own ego aside long enough to listen to the experience of the other, to be courageous enough to be willing to try and understand what the other person is experiencing, no matter how radically different it is from what we intended to happen, think happened, or believe was the cause of what happened. It is to have the strength of heart to understand and open our heart to what the pain is that the other is skillfully or unskillfully trying to express. A response (not reaction) that comes from love is listening to the other’s upset as if we were just ears hearing, ears alone, not ears attached to a head, attached to an ego, attached to an identity, attached to a person intent on remaining intact and unchanged.

I hurt my foot last weekend it a rather spectacular way and I’ve spent the week pretty much laid up, which is not something I enjoy, but it’s allowed me to think a bit more about life and choices and pain and love and what it means to operate out of love, what it means to actively chose it.

So, I’m grateful for my injury and that I’ve had that time to recalibrate a bit.

THE POEM

This poem seems a fitting snow poem. It was at my sweet Uncle Dick’s funeral.

THE RECIPE

I am trying the new recipe cards which Substack now allows! I’m very scared about this, but hopefully it’ll look okay. Let me know if it’s weird. Also, I’m using a non-soup recipe from the olden days of 2022 for this first try.

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Pepper makes me sneeze.

It’s not just that really.

Pepper makes me sneeze in these mad bursts… one, two, three, seventeen.

I thought it was only black pepper that did this, but this weekend I learned that it is also red pepper.

I learned this in a brilliant Carrie way where I leaned over ¼ cup of red pepper flakes and breathed in.

It was worth it though. We made a really simple spin of chile crisp, which is something I’ve loved since Sarah Yasutake since me some a few years ago.

It was a fast and easy falling in love for me.

It is spicy sort of. I mean, I’ve had spicier, but this would have killed my parents who thought El Paso Taco Seasoning (mild) was spicy and only used half the pack.

Here it is in process. So, yes, pepper makes me sneeze. I still love it.

THE POEM

This one is by Elizabeth Bishop via the Poetry Foundation. Do you know her? I was a bit in love with her when I was in college because she painted and traveled everywhere and she lived in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia which in my college-brain was a bit like New Hampshire and Maine and Ontario.

I could only dream of being as well traveled and talented as she was.

Anyway, here’s the poem.

The Armadillo

By Elizabeth Bishop

for Robert Lowell

This is the time of year

when almost every night

the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.

Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint

still honored in these parts,

the paper chambers flush and fill with light

that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it’s hard

to tell them from the stars—

planets, that is—the tinted ones:

Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,

they flare and falter, wobble and toss;

but if it’s still they steer between

the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly

and steadily forsaking us,

or, in the downdraft from a peak,

suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.

It splattered like an egg of fire

against the cliff behind the house.

The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up

and up, their whirling black-and-white

stained bright pink underneath, until

they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.

Hastily, all alone,

a glistening armadillo left the scene,

rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,

short-eared, to our surprise.

So soft!—a handful of intangible ash

with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!

O falling fire and piercing cry

and panic, and a weak mailed fist

clenched ignorant against the sky!

BONUS COMFORT

I’ve also in love with Lucy Kaplansky and especially this song.

QUICK NOTE

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So, Shaun is singing “Super Freak” while refreshing my tea, which makes him the most lovely and intriguing and vaguely weird of husbands. And it made me remember how unfiltered and open about my weirdness I used to be.

Because the truth is that I am exceptionally weird. Not in a creepy way, but just in a I grew up in a town that helped create Sarah Silverman and Seth Myers (both comedians) kind of way.

Every once in a while for our paper, I write the story of someone in the community who has died. These are always hard for me because I spend most of my time crying for their family and friends and for the community who has lost them. This is definitely considered weird in the world of journalism, but whatever, right?

What I’ve noticed though is that the stories that get me about the people are the anecdotes, the moments of love or goofiness or humor that relatives or friends share: the moments that are real and both broader and more intimate than the names, the dates, the boards people were on, or places they worked.

So, in honor of that, I’ve decided to just be weird again, openly, and I’ve resurrected a recipe I shared in 2022. So long ago, right? Hopefully, reading it and eating it will help me get my weird back.

Raspberry My Sauce

Are you addicted to wine, raspberries, sugar, or Wordle? Do you have a microwave? This recipe is for you, baby.

Stuff That Goes In It

• 2 cups raspberries

• ⅓ cup sugar

How to Make It

• Prepare to stain your fingers red. Prepare to have to go to the door even in a pandemic so that you can sign the FED EX driver’s thing to prove you are over 21 so that you can get an entire box of wine off the internet. Watch the Fed Ex driver judge you.

• Okay. Here’s the recipe. Sorry about that. It was a low point recently. Another low point? Constantly checking when the next Wordle game was up and seeing gray, yellow, and green squares in my dreams.

• Swear off the Wordle addiction and get a big container (2 quarts) and put the raspberries and sugar into it. Wonder if ‘swear’ would be a good five-letter word for Wordle. NO! DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT!

• Put plastic wrap over the container (too many letters) and put it in the microwave (way too many letters).

• Cook for three minutes.

• Uncover it. Stir it. Realize you should have offered the Fed Ex driver some wine. Feel guilty.

• Cook another minute. Think about winning Wordle and wine.

• If you are anti-seed (let’s face it, most of us are), put the raspberries through a sieve. Wonder if you should use ‘sieve’ in Wordle. Realize no. More than one E in that baby. Wonder if the Fed Ex driver plays Wordle.

• Keep the strained sauce. Do not keep the seeds or go running after the Fed Ex driver with your bottle of wine yelling, “WORDLE! WORDLE!” That would be too weird.

• Eat that sauce. Get it all over your face. Trust me and do not answer the door if someone comes, not without cleaning your teeth first. Raspberries make you look like you’ve turned zombie. Not a good look. Even in a pandemic.

Notes

• This was adapted from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham. It’s a big, awesome cookbook, one of my first and I love it with all my little Wordle heart. HEART! That has five letters!

THE POEM

This is shared from poets.org.

QUICK NOTE

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Last week and weekend I needed a ton of comfort; I’m not going to lie.

And like a small, perfect gift, my friend Angie—who is one of the most beautiful souls walking this planet—sent me a link to Cookie and Kate’s West African Peanut Soup. It immediately reminded me of a soup I used to make ages ago, back when I was maybe better at remembering that food can be care.

I showed Shaun.

Shaun said, eyebrows raising, “Oh boy.”

I said calmly and persuasively, “There is peanut butter.”

His eyebrows came back down and we made it.

It was warm and rich and grounding and exactly what I needed. It was one of those meals that makes you feel steadier without making a big deal about it.

So many thanks to Angie, and to Cookie and Kate. Both for the soup, and for the reminder that sometimes comfort arrives in the form of a shared recipe and a quiet nudge that says, Here. This might help.

A QUICK POEM

We whisper through the uncertainty

Or sometimes stand in the middle of it

Bellowing, or just mouths open,

Stunned,

Worried

Hoping for clear-cut steps

Or easy answers to help us find

Softness, soup, poems.

We are so human, aren’t we?

Gifting each other moments

And nourishment, tiny certain bits

Trying so hard to help.

THE REVERSE BUCKET LIST

This is so interesting to me. The video is just a tiny bit more than 3 minutes.

Satisfaction, Brooks says, comes from dividing what you have by what you want. When wants grow endlessly, satisfaction shrinks. When wants soften, even a little, gratitude has room to breathe.

It’s such a simple reframing. Not about striving for more, but about noticing what’s already here.

I keep thinking about how these things are connected: the soup, the poem, the math of happiness and gratitude, the maps through uncertain times.

None of them completely fix uncertainty. None of them promise clarity or easy answers. But they do something quieter and maybe more important: they make moments more livable.

A friend sends a recipe. Someone makes soup. Someone else lowers their eyebrows and says yes. We write poems. We share ideas and tiny videos. We remind each other, gently, that we are here together.

And sometimes, certainty looks like a warm bowl, a small kindness, and the relief of remembering that we don’t have to carry it all alone.

QUICK NOTE

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes.

Also, this is my friend Jeremy’s Substack. He’s a great human, in case you want to check out his posts.

Jeremy Dougherty

“Hospitality is about chasing hospitality and investing in people—that’s where the real return lives. I write about being a dad, the overlap between parenting and leading teams, and the everyday moments that end up teaching us the big stuff.”

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This weekend, Shaun (the hubster) and I were trying to find a stir fry recipe for dinner. Shaun went to the internet. I went to my cookbooks and as I looked at the cookbooks and flipped to the indexes, I had this rush of nostalgia.

These were the cookbooks that I began with. The enormous and practical Fannie Farmer that explained how to knead dough and how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon. The Moosewoods and Horn of the Moons that were all vegetarian. An ancient slow cooker/crockpot book that my mom had always used. This giant Gourmet Today that has over 1,000 recipes.

How are you even supposed to make 1,000 recipes?

It’s sort of astonishing, right?

But they all felt sweet and wonderful and so hopeful. Like, yes, I will provide sustenance. Yes, I will create something for this really practical reason.

And also yes, food is yummy.

There is something deeply comforting about knowing those books would still be there if I needed them. They don’t ask me to scroll. They don’t refresh or have pop-up ads, right?

They don’t assume I’m optimizing my life. Cough. Spoiler: I am not optimizing my life.

They just sit on the shelf, patient and quietly competent, waiting for a moment when I need to be fed or reminded that feeding people (and myself, right?) is an act of care.

I think that’s what hit me so hard. It’s the intention behind the recipes. The assumption that you will be here long enough to cook again or make eggplant for your loved ones again and that they will be here with you, too. That you will try, maybe fail, maybe burn something, maybe catch a stuffed Santa on fire while making rice (Yes, I’ve done that.) and then try again after the firefighters leave. That you are worth the effort of chopping onions slowly or pressing garlic. That someone else is worth it too.

Comfort isn’t always big.

Comfort can be just a heavy cookbook in your hands or a very broken one (Sorry Horn of the Moon) that says, “Sure, there are 1,000 options. Start here anyway.”

Sometimes comfort comes from knowing that other people, long before you, stood in their kitchens wondering what to make for dinner and decided that nourishment mattered and that you could figure out a recipe with what’s in your house, of course you can. Sure.

Anyway, Shaun made the stir fry. It was fine. Perfectly fine. But the real comfort came earlier, standing there with flour-dusted pages (or in the case of Horn of the Moon, broken apart pages) and outdated focus on butter, remembering that care can be practical, repetitive, and still meaningful.

It comes from a lot of yes-moments that move you forward.

Yes, I will provide sustenance. Yes, I will make something warm. Yes, food is yummy. And that’s pretty damn comforting. Especially the yummy part.

THE SOUP IS GOLDEN MUSHROOM AND DELICIOUS.

This is from Something From Nothing Copyright © 2025 by Alison Roman via Epicurious.

Super simple. Really delicious.

THE POEM

By Jeanne Marie Beaumont whose website is here. Her poems interest me a lot. This one reminds me (in only the best ways) of the children’s books about giving a moose a muffin.

QUICK NOTE

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Hey, it’s just me. Carrie.

How are you all doing this week?

You okay?

I am all over the place and trying to intentionally calm down because I can’t control all the things or make everyone kinder or healthier or more empathetic and I really want to, which is hard.

Anyway, moving on, I have a weird sort of anxiety that is a bit like stage fright before I go to a lot of things.

I tell myself that this is just excitement. I think I’m possibly lying to myself, but apparently excitement and anxiety have some similarities in our bodies when it comes to our bodies’ chemical responses.

Having a digital newspaper forces me out of my little hobbit hole and out into the world so that I get to fight Sauron, go on adventures, meet elves, cover stories and face my anxiety.

That happened this Sunday when I went to cover an event that had all these artists (poets, photographers, artists, sea-shanty singers) and talked about using art/making art/being art for politics.

It was honestly pretty cool.

I was sad because I was just covering it and I couldn’t participate and make poems and paint and tweak sea shanties.

But gosh, it was beautiful no matter what your politics because it was about people coming together for a reason, exploring, being brave and doing art.

It was lovely. I’m so glad I got to see it. And it was comforting. It was comforting to see people hug each other, ask how they were doing and seem to be honest in answering. It was comforting to be surrounded by books and art and care in a big barn that has rested and welcomed in the middle of town for decades and decades, doing so in all its iterations.

POEM

When I was a little and aspiring poet (totally failed at it), I met Maxine Kumin for a bit. She was kind to me. This poem about chores in late September sun called to me this morning.

Source: Poetry (June 1996)

THE SOUP!

MUSHROOM, GINGER AND SEASHELL PASTA SOUP

This is from the Beyond the Moon cookbook, which was my happiness as a cook when I was super poor and Em (my kiddo) was just born. I felt like everything in this cookbook was the bee’s knees basically.

I still do.

When I had the flu right before Christmas this was the soup I longed for. (I also longed for strawberry muffins, which was weird.) Anyway, I’m probably going to make it today, actually! The soup, not muffins.

If you try it, let me know how it goes.

HORN OF THE MOON COOKBOOKS (They are out of print, but you can find some used):

Horn of the Moon Cookbook
Callan, Ginny
Random House, 1987
0-06-096038-8, soft.

Beyond the Moon Cookbook
Callan, Ginny
HarperCollins, 1996
0-06-095195-8, soft.

QUICK NOTE

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About a decade ago, my Rotary Club took over a project to help finish building a playground, a project that had been started by a cool local mom.

A little bit before that another cool local mom started a playground across town.

Around the same time, a cool local mom made a small skate park.

After the playground, we put up a Little Free Library at it.

A local dad and a bunch of volunteers started a Wednesday bike bus where kids meet up at the town ball field and write their bikes to school, together. Some music and parents are involved.

It’s gorgeous.

Our ball field has a snack shack on it and irrigation because a volunteer organization built it and because a local hotelier paid for that irrigation.

There’s a small wading pool in town that’s broken. A group of cool humans are rebuilding it. It’s taking a while because of cost and town contracts and because everyone is a volunteer and there’s a lot of money to raise.

That’s the thing.

All of these beautiful bits of our town—they are all there because of volunteers, because people took action to make something for kids, mostly, for families, for the community.

That’s happening again on our ball field as another couple of organizations (Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association and Witham Family Hotel Charitable Fund) paid for and organized an ice skating rink. Volunteers and our fire department worked on the area Friday and it will hopefully be ready for skating this week.

How cool is that really?

It’s beyond cool.

I don’t write editorials for our local online paper because I don’t believe in telling people what to think or trying to influence them, but if I did, I would write editorials that celebrated this: the work and kindness and action that so many beautiful people take to make a community better.

In a world that often feels far too scary and far too huge to make a difference in, it’s moments like these, actions like these, that give me comfort.

In a time when so much feels abstract and unfixable, these things are not. A rink is assembled piece by piece. Playgrounds are created. A journey to school is made fun because someone showed up on a Wednesday with a bike, a boom box of sorts, and a plan.

None of it is loud. None of the people are asking for credit.

It’s just people deciding, again and again, that this place and the children in it are worth their time. That kind of work doesn’t solve the whole world’s problems or even the whole town’s problems. But it makes one small corner of it sturdier, kinder, and easier to love and sometimes? Sometimes that is more than enough to find comfort.

THE SOUP

This used to be one of my favorite soups but Shaun hates dill. Sigh. He also hates spinach, tomato, and avocado. It’s a wonder we are still married. It’s from Food, but adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks of my youth, HORN OF THE MOON.

THE POEM

This is from the June 2004 edition of Poetry

Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes.

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So, I have a sickness.

Be warned. This post is created by me with a fever, which means it will likely make no sense at all.

THE POEM

My Grammy Barnard was well into her seventies by the time I was born and lived to be over 100. She wrote a lot of poems about people being unfaithful. Poor Grammy.

The date on this poem is 1927! How amazing is that? She was born in 1896 and died in 2001. I know! I know! You’re thinking, “Carrie, what is comforting about your Grammy Barnard being dead and that she wrote a lot about infidelity?”

To me, it’s comforting because her poems still exist and that I get this glimpse into her 31-year-old version of herself. How cool is that really?

THE SOUP

I have been super sick this weekend, fevered and sleepy where I don’t quite know what reality is. Shaun got me canned soup from the store. I couldn’t eat it all, because yuck, but also, it made me think of being a little kid and my mom making chicken noodle soup. I try not to share soups that had dead animals in them, so I’m not going to share that one.

Instead, I’m going with the easiest of miso soups because I adore miso soup.

WHAT TO PUT IN IT

• 4 cups water

• 2 teaspoons dashi granules

• 3 tablespoons miso paste

• 1 (8 ounce) package silken tofu, diced

• 2 green onions, sliced diagonally into 1/2 inch pieces

HOW TO MAKE IT

• Put the water and dashi granules in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a boil

• Reduce heat to medium and whisk in miso paste.

• Stir in tofu.

• Separate the layers of green onions, and add them to the soup. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 minutes before serving.

  ---

BONUS VIDEOS

This song was one of my favorites when I was a kid. I was kind of obsessed with George Winston in high school. I was also obsessed with Phil Aaberg and Tuck and Patti. Did you ever have artists/musicians/writers that you were obsessed with?

There you go! I hope you all stay well and healthy. Do not be like me! :)

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I come from a pretty extended family, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into a single tradition or belief system. There were different cultures, different religions, and some people who claimed none at all. At the time, I didn’t think much about what that meant or even realize that not everybody had that.

Now, I understand how lucky it made me.

On my mother’s side, life felt quieter, more reserved. But then there were my Portuguese aunties and uncles—an entire constellation of them—who seemed to live by a different set of rules. They hugged you the moment you walked in the door and again when you left. They praised you loudly, unapologetically. They forgave everything in advance, as if they already knew you would make mistakes and loved you all the same.

I adored them.

Their houses were never empty. Someone was always stopping by, sitting down, staying longer than planned, drinking Coke, coffee. Voices overlapped. Laughter filled corners and spilled into hallways. There was a sense that whatever happened in life—good or bad—you would not face it alone.

I miss them all now. Time has thinned those once-crowded rooms in New Hampshire. Most of my aunts and uncles and all my grandparents and parents are gone and are only reachable through memory, which can be both a gift and a quiet ache, especially around the holidays.

One of the dishes my aunts made this time of year was a meat pie—rich, savory, something that felt both celebratory and grounding. But the dish I think about most isn’t the centerpiece. It’s the soup.

The recipe was never written down, never really measured. They didn’t cook that way, the way my mom and her family did.

The soup began with a pot big enough to feed everyone who might wander through the door, whether expected or not. Their soups or sauces simmered for hours, filling the house with a smell that meant comfort before you even tasted it.

My aunts—Rose Mary, Lorraine, Mary Jean, Shirley, Doris, Francis—were not fancy cooks. Their recipes weren’t about impressing you. They existed to warm you, to fill you, and to make sure you were taken care of.

That holiday-time soup (and really anything my aunts made) felt like the truest expression of love I knew back then.

These aunts asked nothing of you. You didn’t have to explain yourself or prove you belonged. You were handed a bowl and a story and likely a Coke and that was enough as they chattered away, spinning stories out of their days.

During the holidays, when the world can feel loud and complicated and heavy with expectations, I sort of find myself longing for that feeling of sitting there with my mom and the aunts more than the food itself. I miss the way love was given so freely, the way forgiveness was just assumed, the way care showed up in practical, ordinary ways.

Love was sustenance.

Love was acceptance.

We all maybe could try in our own small ways, to carry that forward. To be someone who welcomes, who feeds, who forgives quickly. To remember that family doesn’t have to look one way or believe one way or act one way to be real, to remember that tradition doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful.

Around this time of year, I think about that soup a lot. I think about those aunties and uncles. And I remind myself that warmth, once given, doesn’t disappear. It lingers like steam rising from a soup pot, like love that stays with you long after the bowl or even the houses that were once so full of life stand empty.

CALDO VERDE

I did not inherit any of the recipes, but this is the most like I remember that holiday soup. I think you can substitute chick peas or tempeh or tofu (spiced up) for chouriço. There is a vegan version of chouriço, but if you live where I live (cough, Maine), it’s hard to find.

This recipe is close to what I remember and it’s taken from the fantabulous Spanish Sabores. You should check them out.

• 1 pound potatoes diced

• 1 pound yellow onions diced

• 1 large carrot diced

• 1 garlic clove

• 1 4-inch piece Portuguese chouriço cut in half

• 2 pounds kale chopped into thin strands

• salt to taste

• olive oil to taste

• 1 splash red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar

Instructions

• Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a boil.

• Add the veggies, half of the chouriço, and a pinch of salt to the boiling water, then reduce the heat to medium low and simmer until the veggies are soft and fully cooked.

• Once the veggies are cooked, blend the pot’s contents (including the chouriço) to form a smooth consistency.

• Place over low heat, then season to taste with salt and olive oil. Add the kale and simmer until cooked through.

• Remove the pot from the heat and add a drizzle of olive oil and a splash of vinegar; this helps the kale separate instead of clumping.

• Serve the soup in bowls topped with thin slices of chouriço and accompanied by broa (Portuguese corn and rye bread) or another crusty artisan bread.

  ---

THE POEM

This is by Luís de Camões (1524-1580), who was an exceptional famous Portuguese lyric poet and writer.

I’ll sing of love in a manner so svelte,
with theme and style perfectly matched,
two thousand amorous parts of speech
will make hearts feel what they never felt.

I’ll do it so love confers life,
painting its thousand delicate mysteries,
its blank rages, its heart-felt sighs,
it foolhardy courage, its remote grief.

But in writing of the highborn disdain
of your tender and fastidious eyes,
I’m content to play the lesser part.

For to sing of your face, a composition
in itself sublime and marvelous,
I lack knowledge, Lady; and wit and art.

from The Collected Lyrical Poems of Luís de Camões translated by Landeg White

QUICK NOTE:

Thanks for being here with me. These come out usually once a week. They meander. They are not newsy. But I find great comfort being in this weird cyber space with you. I hope you do, too. If you’re looking for my living happy thoughts and writing tips, that is over here.

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This morning there is a beautiful snow on the ground and a bit of disharmony inside the house.

We celebrate Christmas and we still haven’t gotten a tree.

This is a bit of an end-of-the-world thing for me. No one else seems to care. And then because of that, I think, “Have I failed because I’m the only one who cares?”

Or do I just let it go?

Does anyone relate to that?

I have decided to be comforted by the fact that though it is 18 degrees Farenheit and no one seems to be excited about getting a Christmas tree or even want to, I am very lucky to have a warm house and a very cuddly Jack the Dog and a pellet stove that has pellets and running water and a refrigerator and so many other beautiful things.

Still want a tree though. :) Lol.

THE POEM

I couldn’t decide on whether to have an angst poem or a tree poem and instead decided to honor again a long-dead woman who is a poet. This one is from the last century and a poet from Maine.

Brett C. Millier said she was “one of the finest lyric poets America has produced.”

Millier said, “The fact that she was a woman and that she defended formal, lyric poetry in an age of expansive experimentation made evaluation of her work, until quite recently, somewhat condescending.”

Blah to those condescending poops, right?

Anyway, here is one of Louise’s poems.

The Alchemist

Louise Bogan

1897 –1970

The Alchemist

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

This poem is in the public domain.

THE SOUP

This soup is from All Recipes. The wording is theirs.

Cockpot White Bean Soup Recipe

• Prep Time: 15 mins

• Cook Time: 4 hours (on HIGH) / 6 hours (on LOW)

• Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped

• 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced

• 2 medium stalks celery, chopped

• 1 cup chopped carrots

• 2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped

• 2 (15-ounce) cans of white beans, rinsed (great northern, navy, or cannellini)

• 4 cups vegetable or chicken broth

• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika

• 2 bay leaves (remove from pot before eating soup)

• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

• 1 teaspoon dried sage

• Salt and black pepper

• Grated Parmesan cheese, chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, crushed red pepper flakes, optional

Instructions

1. Gather all ingredients. Drain and carefully rinse beans.

2. Place all ingredients in crockpot and cook on low for six hours or high for four hours.

3. Right before serving, blend half of the soup in a food processor or countertop blender just until slightly smooth. Alternatively, use an immersion blender directly in the crockpot and blend until you reach desired consistency, 1 to 2 minutes.

4. Serve with a side salad or crusty bread and a dish of olive oil for dipping.

   ---

BONUS COMFORTING

If you’re looking for mellow, independent folky music, check out this YouTube playlist (not mine).

QUICK NOTE:

Thanks for being here with me. These come out usually once a week. They meander. They are not newsy. But I find great comfort being in this weird cyber space with you. I hope you do, too. If you’re looking for my living happy thoughts and writing tips, that is over here.

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Hello! I’m back.

How are you? If you have a Thanksgiving feast was it lovely?

I’ve been thinking a lot about winter lately because I live in Maine and it’s become so cold. We waited a bit too long to tackle the leaves and some have frozen together.

Fortunately, they unfroze again, and now we’re in a flutter trying to get outside things done before snow comes tomorrow. I am not sure we will make it, but I have hope!

And I’m so grateful to have things like an insulated house and a pellet stove and enough money for pellets. This also made me think (because of Thanksgiving and all its implications) of the early European settlers of the colonies.

One of these was Anne Bradstreet, who was a woman my Grammy Barnard was a bit obsessed with. Grammy Barnard’s family came to America long after those colonists. They were European as well, but from Moravia mostly, which is now a part of the Czech Republic. She was a very short (think around 4-foot 10) but brain-strong woman who wrote poems she refused to share and paintings that she refused to let be seen. She often thought about other people in other places and other times and often about women who were artists or poets.

Here’s a bit about Anne from the American Academy of Poets.

I’m always amazed by how snippet summaries and Wikipedia pages often don’t give the texture of a life, just details and dates.

Poems however? They provide the texture. Here is one by Anne.

Winter

by Anne Bradstreet

1612 –1672

Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie
In swaddling clouts, like new-born infancy;
Bound up with frosts, and fur’d with hail & snows,
And, like an infant, still it taller grows.
December is my first, and now the sun
To the southward Tropick his swift race doth run.
This month he’s hous’d in horned Capricorn,
From thence he ’gins to length the shortened morn,
Through Christendom with great festivity,
Now’s held (but guessed) for blest Nativity.
Cold, frozen January next comes in,
Chilling the blood, and shrinking up the skin.
In Aquarius now keeps the long-wish’d sun,
And northward his unwearied course doth run.
The day much longer than it was before,
The cold not lessened, but augmented more.
Now toes and ears, and fingers often freeze,
And travelers their noses sometimes leese.
Moist snowy February is my last,
I care not how the winter-time doth haste.
In Pisces now the golden sun doth shine,
And northward still approaches to the line.
The rivers ’gin to ope, the snows to melt,
And some warm glances from his face are felt;
Which is increased by the lengthen’d day,
Until by’s heat, he drive all cold away.
And thus the year in circle runneth round;
Where first it did begin, in th’ end its found.

THE SOUP

I try not to publish soups that involve meat or seafood here, but I thought I’d share this one just because of the nostalgia of it. I just posted it in the Bar Harbor Story’s Thanksgiving article as well. I find the Boston Cooking School Cook Book recipes completely fascinating.

Oyster Soup

From the 1922 edition of “The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.”

1-quart oysters
4 cups milk
1 slice onion
2 stalks celery
2 blades mace
Sprig of parsley
Bit of bay leaf
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
Salt and pepper

Clean and pick over oysters as for Oyster Stew; reserve liquor, add oysters slightly chopped, heat slowly to a boiling point, and let simmer for twenty minutes. Strain through cheesecloth, reheat liquor and thicken with butter and flour cooked together. Scald milk with onion, celery, mace, parsley, and bay leaf; remove seasonings, and add to oyster liquor. Season with salt and pepper.

BONUS VIDEO!

And finally, speaking of the food of colonial times, I enjoyed this YouTube video while I was doing my leg exercises this morning. It’s entitled, “Ken Burns Tries “Yucky” Revolutionary War-Era Food | PBS SoCal.” Just the title is so much fun.

QUICK NOTE:

Thanks for being here with me. These come out usually once a week. They meander. They are not newsy. But I find great comfort being in this weird cyber space with you. I hope you do, too. If you’re looking for my living happy thoughts and writing tips, that is over here.

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