There are few feelings that compare with going about your life and in one sudden, happy moment — maybe you are on a sunny park bench or sharing a glass of wine with someone who delights you or falling asleep on a beach towel — you realize you are exactly where you want to be, living exactly as you always hoped.

This happened to me twice in the past two days: once, sharing a scoop of vanilla ice cream with someone I love and laughing our way down the street while the breeze blew hair into my eyes. The second time it happened, more mundanely, while walking up and down the aisles at Trader Joe’s, deciding between Spanish and Italian olive oils, a bouquet of cheap yellow flowers already in my basket. And then again, riding the bus home and staring out the window at the brewing rain clouds, the day and my movements in it seemed right. I wasn’t hosting a party, I wasn’t wearing a pretty dress. I was simply on the way back from the doctor in jeans, and bursting through the bus’s rear doors, onto the sidewalk and into pre-thunderstorm sunshine.

Is it a matter of eating well? Have all these good vibes in my brain come from all the good food in my life lately? Is it that the weather has finally turned hot and sunny here and that there is something delightfully miserable about the heavy, humid air and dewy skin? Is it having a nip of wine with lunch now and then, or that I have been seeing lots of the women in my life who make me think hard and laugh harder?

Whatever ushered in this contentedness with the rhythms of the everyday, I am so grateful for it. But still, I hesitate to call this happiness. There’s something more solid about this feeling. It doesn’t come from the way the world is coming at me — there are still bills on the desk and dirty clothes on the floor, after all — but from the way I am coming at the world: centered, assured, as if some nugget of certainty has fallen out of the sky, and onto my head, knocking me into thinking that this moment, this one right here, is all right. And the next one, whatever it holds, will be okay too. That somehow, even in these perfectly unsettled days, I feel like I’m there.

The bittersweetness of this feeling — which I so distinctly remember from this past fall, even as I was accompanying my mom to the hospital every other Friday — is knowing that it will pass and that in its place will come uncertainty and doubt and more funks. Now that it has come again I wish I knew how to bring it on at will, how I can summon it like an eager knight to the feet of a king. But I don’t know. It wafts in like a cool breeze and blows back out like a thunderstorm. Maybe that’s part of it’s charm.

I very seldom bother to attempt what the best cooks can do — wander down the aisles of the store, feel inspired, and bring something marvelous together, first in the brain and then on the plate. For me, that kind of grocery store adventure usually results is some overly-creative concoction involving anchovy paste and jam (true story). I will say, though, that this salad is the result of such an exercise. Who can pass up pea shoots when she sees them for $1.99, and I feel I haven’t nearly enough smoked trout in my life. We happened to — also serendipitously — have a bottle of Loire Valley Muscadet that our downstairs neighbor, a wine rep, had given us. Together, this was a most sublime lunch for a hot afternoon. Dessert was a plum. Would that everything always came together in such an easy and delightful way…

Potato, Pea Shoot, and Smoked Trout Salad
Serves 2

2 smoked trout fillets
2 ounces pea shoots
1-1 1/2 pounds yellow baby potatoes, such as baby Dutch
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
salt & pepper

Bring an inch of water to boil in a large pot, and place a colander (or steamer) inside (potatoes should hover above the water) and steam for 10-12 minutes until tender. Meanwhile, whisk together mustard, oil, and vinegar and season with salt and pepper. When potatoes are done, cut larger ones in half and toss in the vinaigrette until coated. Add pea shoots and gently toss. Divide onto two plates and flake trout over top, one fillet to each portion.

There’s something slippery about summer. And that’s the beauty of it: a season so moody and brilliant, so frivolously sensual and bold that it eludes your every effort to contain it. Instead, it wraps you in abundance, in swaths of sunlight and long, lazy hours–none of which is ever really yours to keep. Therein lies the lesson: While fall inspires nostalgia and winter a longing for warmth, summer has an endless amount to give, if only we can stand still and receive it. This season, resist the urge to control every last vestige of time. Instead, practice letting life spin around you in bright, concentric circles, filling your attention with light. –Terri Trespicio, Body + Soul

Are you a sweet or savory breakfast person? My default setting is definitely savory, and I’m much more apt to order a farmer’s omelet than the French toast. But sometimes, after weeks of diurnal eggs, I get a hankering for something with a taste of sugar.

These healthy muffins have the tenderest crumb, which I think is the doing of the buckwheat, and the slices of soft strawberry tucked here and there are an explosion of juicy, wholesome sweetness in your mouth. I brought two to a friend in the coffee shop this morning and stowed a bunch in the freezer to be pulled out for a quick breakfast in the hot summer mornings to come.

Strawberry Buckwheat Muffins
adapted from Body + Soul
makes 12

1 1/2 cups sliced strawberries
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1/2 cup buckwheat or whole wheat flour (spooned and leveled)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/4 cup light olive oil or vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a standard 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners. Toss together strawberries and 1/3 cup sugar. Using a potato masher, lightly mash berries; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla until combined.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk mixture and the berry mixture (including juices). Fold until just combined. With an ice cream scoop or ladle, divine batter among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with remaining sugar.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in the pan, then transfer muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

Feeding people graciously and lovingly is one of life’s simplest pleasures: a most basic way of making life better for someone, at least for awhile. –Anna Thomas

On a sunny Saturday, on our way to the farmer’s market, we popped into Paper Love, a sweet shop, perfectly edited, walls lined with charming letterpress cards, notebooks, and other paper delights. I immediately fell in love with these miniature books from Brookfield. The size of a deck of cards — but infinitely more delightful — each letterpress book is filled with quotes and tiny illustrations on a given topic: “Cheerful Thoughts,” “House and Home,” “Incomplete Book of Dog Names.” I picture a pretty bowl on the coffee table, home to a stack of loose photographs, crowned with this gem. Also, what great hostess presents!

Put on a stripey top and an apron. Grab a whole chicken. Wielding a boning knife and kitchen shears — or, if you are a girl with a less fully equipped kitchen, a sharp knife and a lot of determination — cut chicken into pieces, fearlessly, and with the cold detachment of a surgeon. For dinner, sauté the chicken parts with shallots and fresh tomatoes; serve with a chilled Macon Chardonnay. Toss the leftover neck and back into a stockpot with whatever bits you have rolling around in the fridge: celery, carrots, an onion, some sprigs of parsley and thyme. Cover with water and let simmer for a few hours to make stock while twist in the living room to Francoise Hardy.  When tired, recline on the couch with Cheri, and later, when complimented on your cooking prowess, shrug your shoulders as if it’s nothing. Buf.

Even if you skip the French shenanigans, I would highly recommend attempting to cut up your own chicken. I was scared, I’ll admit, and had successfully avoided the task since I first learned to cook chicken. But then there it was in Week 3 of my Grand Diplôme program, and I couldn’t hide anymore. I channeled my imaginary boyfriend, Jacques Pepin, and his relaxed efficiency as well as his no-waste policy, and here’s the thing: there was immense satisfaction in buying the least processed poultry available in the highest quality available and doing the heavy lifting myself. Some people may squirm at the up-close-and-personalness of this process, but I saw it this way: if I choose to eat animal products, the least I can do is learn how to handle it with skill myself and not to waste a bit of it.

Do you know Patricia Wells’s Bistro Cooking? It sat in my Amazon wishlist for a few years until I went to an impromptu poetry reading (!) in Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill hosted by a woman with a flawless eye for making things lovely. I plucked the book off her shelf, sat down at her farmhouse table with my glass of rosé and could not stop oohing and ahhing: I wanted to make everything and spend the rest of my life eating lunch, drinking wine, and thinking big thoughts in the sunshine. I checked a copy out from the library, spattered the pages with spitting-hot butter and oil, and now think it’s time to spring for a used copy to call my own.

Chicken Sautéed with Shallots
Serves 4
adapted from Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells

3 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 chicken (about 3-4 pounds), cut into 8 serving pieces
salt and pepper
2 cups shallots, peeled
3 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons water
3 large tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded and chopped
Hot brown rice, to serve

In a large, deep-sided skillet heat the oil and butter over high heat. Season the chicken liberally with salt and pepper. When the fats are hot but not smoking, add 3 or 4 pieces of chicken and cook on one side until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Turn the pieces and brown them on the other side, an additional 5 minutes, remove from pan and repeat process with remaining chicken pieces.

Reduce the heat to moderately-high heat. Add the shallots and garlic, burying them under the chicken at the bottom of the skillet. Return all of the chicken to the pan. Sauté, covered, shaking the pan frequently, until the shallots are soft and begin to brown, and the chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Add water to pan and let cook for a couple of minutes. Add in tomatoes and continue cooking until the sauce is nicely blended, about 5 minutes.

To serve, place a bed of cooked rice on a platter, cover with the sauce, and arrange chicken pieces on top.

image via OneBrightSpot

By my calculations, we are halfway though the year this week. This is a time when it’s hilarious to go back and look at what we resolved on a cold night in December, giggly with champagne, metallic streamers caught in our hair. In the dark days of winter, I was looking for answers and community: I resolved to go to church, join a book club, and develop a meditation practice. None of those have happened yet. But I also wanted to grow this website and get the wedding show on the road, and with a wedding date and a redesigned website under my belt, I’m happy to have held up my end of the bargain on those.

The second half of the year stretches before us now, filled with empty days and unfilled hours. Will you recommit to your New Year’s Resolutions? Or have you learned something about life in the past six months that has brought new priorities to the forefront? Maybe you’ve already checked off the boxes next to your resolutions, and if so, you’ll have to share with the rest of us the secret to your success.

I feel ridiculous complaining. After all, I’m not the one standing under the hot lights, or worse, holding the hot lights. But all the same, I’ve felt dumpy and stinky all day, my feet ache, and more than ever, I understand how Greta Garbo felt.

Making movies isn’t as glamorous as I thought.

This week, I am a food stylist on the set of Colin Hearts Kay, a modern day Annie Hall set in Brooklyn. In the past 24 hours, I have made a mock cassoulet, a tarte tatin, and a buche de noel. I’m glad two out of three were familiar faces, but even so, I think I’ve folded under the pressure a little. Never before have I struggled so much with pastry or to whip egg whites. Suddenly, I saw whisks and oven temperatures through the eyes of someone who doesn’t just la-di-da her way through cooking; it all seemed hard, confounding.

Surely I will stand at the stove and make a grilled cheese sandwich soon and it will all seem simple again. But for now, I don’t even want to go back into the kitchen. When the mere idea of cooking makes your stomach turn, what do you do? Stick to salads and Chinese take-out? Force yourself in front of the stove?

Everything about the principles Victoria Moran lays out for charmed living I find utterly delectable and so right. She is a proponent of pleasure, luxurious self-care, and the power of positive female relationships. But she is also an advocate of maxims that don’t come quite as naturally to me — waking up early, restraint, moderation and self-discipline, and tithing. Her vision of how to live a charmed life is so sound and so doable — and she packages her suggestions in a down-to-earth, personal, non-cheesy way. In short, I think she’s grand.

I thought I would share an excerpt from her new book Living a Charmed Life. I suggest you check it out from the library or get a copy for yourself, though. It’s the perfect volume to keep on your bedside table and read before you fall asleep each night or spring out of bed in the morning. At the very least, this passage is something to think about over the weekend:

Make life-charming decisions

If you’re serious about this charmed-life business, you must make certain decisions. I’ll list them here like a quiz in a magazine: which ones can you check off right now, and which ones have you yet to make?

I’ve decided to:

See life as a magnificent adventure. If you see it as anything less than this, it will be less than this, and that’s too bad.

Make my mark. We won’t all be known in the eyes of the world, but we’ll all know what we did with our lives. When you decide to make your mark you embark on the road to fulfilling your unique destiny.

Take risks. Go ahead and go for it. Somebody with catch you.

Be disciplined. Lazy people don’t live charmed lives. Know what you need to do today and do it. No excuses.

Become a seeker. You’re practical, ambitious, and have both feet firmly on the ground. Excellent. But without looking into the philosophical and mystical underpinnings of all that is, you miss out on the grand and the glorious.

Live in the biggest possible world. Travel. Get to know people from many different places. Read the literature and history of other cultures. The bigger your world, the richer your life.

Care profoundly. To help the environment, we want a smaller carbon footprint, and to help others, a bigger caring footprint. In practical life, this means seeing things through others’ eyes, sharing resources, and shopping with conscience–asking, Where does this come from? Who made it? What is its history?

Listen to my instincts. That’s why you have them. They’re dependable. Practice inner listening. Until you know what’s what, run your intuitive promptings past a trustworthy confidante who’ll tell you the difference between wishful thinking and the wisest counsel you’ll ever receive.

Appreciate everything. It’s one thing to be grateful for the good stuff and that’s a fine place to start. For an exceptional life however, you’ll want to be grateful for everything: the hard lessons, the gray days, the detours that looked as if they were going nowhere but ended up taking you precisely where you needed to be.

Be in this for the long haul. You’re aiming for a charmed life, not just the occasional good day. You’re going to adopt certain attitudes and practices and use them for as long as they benefit you, even if that’s forever.

–Excerpted from Victoria Moran’s Living a Charmed Life.

It seems to me that the Grand Diplôme program has about 47 lessons in pastry which, in my book, may just be 45 too many. But at the very least, I’ll be learning the difference among them, which is probably a basic culinary knowledge requirement.

We begin, class, with Pâte Sucrée, a rich, slighty sweet pastry made with flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. This is the backbone for sweet tarts and pies (though people also make pies, of course, with pâte brisée, a pastry dough made without sugar and sometimes without egg). It’s nice to have options.

I made this tart to bring to a barbecue on Saturday night. This means I spent hours on a rainy Saturday afternoon, listening to Lauryn Hill, showing off my mad rapping skillz, slicing strawberries, rolling out dough, and admiring the silver shine of a tart pan. My meditation practice, sadly, has never really made the jump from “sporadic thing I do” to “part of my daily routine” but weekend baking is a great stand-in. In the relaxed assemblage of a baked good, it seems we have no choice but to be in the moment and enjoy the crack of thunder and hiss of rain on the black pavement.

Pâte Sucrée
adapted from Grand Diplôme Cooking Course
makes enough for two 9-inch tarts or one 9-inch double crust pie

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter
2 teaspoons sugar
1 egg yolk
ice water

With a food processor: Pulse together flour and salt. Cut butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture, pulsing, until the mixture resembles crumbs. Add sugar, egg yolk, and 3 tablespoons ice water, and process until dough forms a ball. If the dough is not holding together, add additional ice water, one tablespoon at a time.

Turn onto a lightly floured counter and knead lightly until smooth. Divide dough into two equal balls. Flatten each ball into a disc and wrap in plastic. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill at least 30 minutes. Dough may be stored, frozen, up to 1 month.

By hand: Sift flour with salt into a bowl. Cutter butter into flour in small pieces. Then rub the butter in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles crumbs. Make a well in the center and add sugar, egg yolk, and 3 tablespoons water and stir to combine. Draw flour into mixture in the center quickly with a knife, adding more water if necessary, to form a smooth dough.

Turn onto a lightly floured counter and knead lightly until smooth. Divide dough into two equal balls. Flatten each ball into a disc and wrap in plastic. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill at least 30 minutes. Dough may be stored, frozen, up to 1 month.

Note: I did not divide my dough, but instead rolled out the one flattened disc for the bottom of my tart. There was quite a bit to cut away and toss, but it also mitigated some of the stress of rolling and rolling, trying to make the dough big enough for your pan yet not thin enough to fall to bits.

Strawberry Tart with Buttermilk Pastry Cream
adapted from CHOW
makes one 9-inch tart

1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (or 1/4 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped and reserved)
1 quart strawberries, sliced
pâte sucrée

Combine sugar, flour, and salt in a small mixing bowl. Whisk gently to break up any lumps, and set aside. Prepare an ice water bath in a larger mixing bowl, and set aside.

In a small saucepan, combine buttermilk and egg yolks, whisking until evenly incorporated. Whisk in dry ingredients, and place the pan over medium heat. Cook, whisking constantly, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 4 minutes. (Note: I used low-fat buttermilk and medium-sized eggs and found I had to whisk much longer to create a custard-like texture).

Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla extract or reserved vanilla seeds. Transfer pastry cream to a small bowl nestled in the ice water bath and let cool completely, stirring occasionally to help it cool faster. Cover with plastic wrap, placing wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming, and refrigerate up to two days.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Remove chilled pastry dough from refrigerator and on a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to fit an 9-inch tart pan. Transfer dough to tart pan, pressing well into corners and against the sides. Line with aluminum foil, and fill center three-quarters full with rice or dried beans.

Place tart shell in oven; after 10 minutes, remove foil and beans/rice, reduce heat to 375°F and continue cooking about another 15 minutes until crust is golden brown. Let cool.

Pour buttermilk pastry cream into tart shell and arrange sliced strawberries on top.