Soup might not seem like an especially fitting spring endeavor, but in Brooklyn now, where it is sunny and 70 degrees one day and moody and cold the next, soup feels right. Especially when it is a bright, light one like this.

It would have never come into being were it not for the carrots at the farmer’s market, an especially young and sprightly looking bunch, unignorable in blightless, look-at-me orange. I grabbed three, not knowing what I would do with them, and hoping their end wouldn’t be boring or worse. Far too many vegetables spend their last days in my crisper drawers, giving up until they’re wan and limp.

I searched “carrots” on my Epicurious app, as I often do in this situation, and this rendering just about fell in my lap. It was my jumping off point. Simple, but still exciting, this soup has a warm, bracing hit of ginger along with a lift of lemon. I love it because it is so healthy (doesn’t it feel enlivening just to look at?), and because it saved me more than once. It was an easy snack one afternoon, plain and unadorned, and a fast hit-the-spot dinner one night, served over farro, and scattered with cilantro and mint. (I bought the herbs on that same farmer’s market run, and miraculously, I have kept them alive in their little pots out on the fire escape.) I dusted it with cayenne pepper, but a spoonful of Greek yogurt would have been a sultry companion, too. Half of the batch stands by at the ready in the freezer, ready to sweep in again at the next hungry moment.

I think this is why I’ve been blogging so little about cooking lately: they aren’t so much recipes I’m working with as they are components thrown together in various pairings. A bunch of sautéed kale appears with brown rice at dinner, then is scrambled with eggs the next morning. Leftover cooked grains go into a frittata, or to bulk up a soup, or get sautéed with herbs and nuts and served alongside roast chicken. When I do manage to get myself in front of the stove, I cook more than I need, and store the rest in the fridge or freezer. If it’s there and ready to use, chances are I will. It’s not a particularly exciting way to eat, and invariably my combinations involve garlic, soy sauce, and brown rice vinegar, but it’s working for me. It feels easy and simple and healthy, and there’s something reassuring about it. Without relying on our cookbooks or recipes, what happens when we just get down to practice of making a meal? As is often the case, we know more than we think.

I really tinkered with the original recipe, which I used more as a flavor profile inspiration.

Carrot-Ginger Soup with Lemon
Serves 4-6

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon grated ginger
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
3 cups (or more) water
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

After my birthday, I spent a sunny weekend at my mom and step-dad’s that felt like a super dose of fun. I held my niece upside down, we buzzed our lips back and forth and played a game where I touched her on the nose and said, “boop!”, all of which made her break into a smile that revealed all seven of her tiny teeth. I had a birthday dinner with my family. My sister decorated the porch with branches of plum, magnolia, and forsythia blossoms cut from the yard. Pink, orange, and yellow tissue paper spheres hung from a string of red wooden beads pilfered from a box of Christmas decorations, and we ate barbecue catered by a charming pit master from the market nearby. It was the best potato salad I’d had in my life, and we sat outside drinking daiquiris until a thunderstorm rolled in long after it had gotten dark. On Saturday there was coffee, a long walk, and digging in the dirt with my mom. We made a new compost pile, and I carried the raised beds to their new home. When I lifted the short black walls out of the dirt, damp soil and worms clung to the sides, and I hoisted them over my shoulder. And while it sounds too convenient to be true, there are wild violets blooming in the yard and between the patio stones, and none of us remember them being there last year. I dug some up with a trowel and patted them down into the wet earth near the entrance of the vegetable garden, hoping they’ll spread. This is not an adventure tale, just the joy-filled details of a nine-month old, the world in bloom, being outside with people you love. But at the end of the weekend, as we rode the bus back into concrete midtown, I felt like sunshine was pouring out of my skin.

Sometimes I bemoan that my life in New York can feel like a Woody Allen movie, everyone sitting in restaurants talking about their feelings. But when I am able to really do––to be active and present in a fun physical process––it’s as replenishing as good night’s sleep or emerging back into the world after a spa afternoon. Moving raised beds, rearranging piles of squirmy worm-filled earth, and tucking demure, winking indigo blooms into a new spot of earth made me feel like my best self again.

What role does doing play in your life? It’s an interesting question for reflective, emotional people, and an especially tough one for anyone who battles the blues. Getting going can be the toughest part of any day. Spring seems to have breathed enough life into my bones so that my body feels full as a canvas sail. Doing feels natural and good, so that whether I’m pedaling my bike uphill, playing peek-a-boo, or sorting through bunches of spinach at the greenmarket, I feel alive, engaged, and happy. It could be considered like flow, possibly, but while flow can happen while writing or painting, mindful doing feels best to me when there’s some kind of movement.

One of my friends has a fear of not doing, and so adopted a challenge as a way to get over it. Every day, she has to do something she’s never done before. You can imagine how difficult this would be. When I last saw her she had a notebook open under the window with a list of numbers running down the left-hand column, one for each day of the month. There were more new daily doings next to numbers than not. It was not only impressive but inspiring.

I prize my usual Monday nights because I have no appointments. It’s my night to go to the gym and make a proper dinner without feeling harried and hurried. But this past Monday, I did something quite goofy and frivolous for the first time. I stepped off the F train at West 4th street after 7pm and it was still light outside. Walking west toward the water, the brightly-lit sex shops and karaoke bars gave way to narrow, leafier streets, with jewelry boutiques and darker, more den-like sex shops. The sidewalks were filled with women in their workout clothes and tiny little dogs, and under the marquee of a theater, people stood in small groups wrapped in dark wool coats and sweaters waiting for a performance. It was a part of New York at a time of day that is not part of my usual daily doings. It felt like village life in all those period BBC dramas I love, filled with characters and daily dramas in one small pocket of the world unlike any other. I felt curious and alive and nervous. I was on my way to my first tap dancing class.

I signed in on the second floor of a windowless studio on Christopher Street, and rifled through a tub of tap shoes marked “7-8 1/2″ on the outside. I found a shoe that fit, and then couldn’t find its pair, so resorted to wearing two different shoes. I fit right in. We were a collection of oddballs, overly loud theater kids who had grown up into overly loud middle-aged women, an elderly woman, stooped and nervous, and a young girl in her twenties dressed for her first session of Absolute Beginners Tap like she was auditioning for Flashdance. I rather admired her chutzpah.

Inside our little studio, we stood in front of a mirror and tapped our toes and heels against a scuffed wood floor. Then, in time to the slowest jazz you’ve ever heard, tried for simple combinations of shuffles and ball changes the long way across the room. We wound up against the opposite wall a crowd of exasperation and laughter. It was pure delight.

Is this spring fever, this affection for doing? The longing to get out of our heads and homes and into your bodies? Whatever’s brought it on, it’s a  welcome antidote to the hours our modern life requires spent in front of a computer, typing out characters and numbers and rearranging widgets. This is real movement, and doing, to the time of slow jazz and birdsong on a stage of sun and damp, blooming earth.

What will be your bit of frivolity and delight and doing?

On Monday night I came home from work feeling a little more alive. It can take a surprising slap of a disaster to do that. On the sidewalk, I looked into people’s faces. When the D train traveled over the Manhattan Bridge, I looked up from my reading and out the window––at the piers stretching out into the mirrored surface of the water, the tall buildings reflecting that golden hour of the evening. When I got home, I kissed Sebastian in the doorway a little longer and moved through a yoga class as my bedroom went from warmly lit by that orange-red sun to dark. Look up, the teacher said time and again, in tree pose, in crescent. There’s an optimism there.

Did you know we are genetically wired to remember negative moments more than good? It’s our DNA’s way of keeping us alive. We’ll remember the bitter snap of winter, the terrifying snarl of a wild animal. We have to work hard against this predisposition, which is why everyone from Buddhists to psychologists suggest we keep a gratitude journal. My blog posts have felt a little heavy to me lately, and I wanted to counter that by listing what was right. In light of recent news, looking for the good took on a new weight.

Today I am 31. I know! It sounds like such a grown-up age, one that comes with a mortgage and a mid-life crisis not too far behind. I still feel like a silly girl inside, one who sings impromptu made up songs and wants to take tap dancing lessons. I have a feeling that never goes away, does it? Last week, anticipating my birthday, I felt disappointed at how much this year looks like last. I live in the same apartment, in the same neighborhood I’ve called home for nine years. But last night I went to sleep thinking how different something can feel from the inside, even when it all looks the same. And this morning I woke up. I’m looking up at the horizon and working against every ancient cell that wants me to remember what’s wrong. Here’s what’s right:

The daffodils are blooming on the hillside in the Quaker cemetery tucked inside Prospect Park. My muscles are sore, whether from the first bike ride of the season or a yoga class on Sunday. I have muscles. Right now, I’m sitting on a chair, my feet up on a matching ottoman, slip-covered by my mom in white cotton duck and driven into Brooklyn in the back of her black minivan as a surprise for my birthday last year. Next to me, on a square table salvaged from the street, is a jade plant that’s been hanging on for years, despite improper care, and my little Copenhagen coffee cup. On my left is a window that looks out on to a parking lot. There is a vine climbing across the screen with popcorn kernel-sized red buds. These are just within the little dotted circle I draw around my day, and I haven’t even mentioned the spare and beautiful first pages of the novel I began on Sunday night, or the way the morning sunlight hits our living room or the new coffee shop I’ve started visiting, where the owners are in love and punk rock and relentlessly cheerful. I haven’t mentioned this space, which is a tribe that feels more important to me than ever. I haven’t even gone outside the circle of the past few days, or out into the larger circles beyond my little life, into our communities, humanity, the universe. As Melissa wrote recently in the comments, “We are mere specks in this universe. Our only task is to put good energy into it.”

But I will leave it there, in this small, sweet little circle filled with good energy and within which there is plenty right.

“May” by 5ftinf

At the vernal equinox, I stayed with a dearest friend in two bright rooms in the rear of a bungalow in Los Angeles. The setting felt like a tropical version of The Secret Garden: just off the street, in the middle of a vibrant neighborhood, was an L-shaped garden curling around the side of her house, so that from every window and through the screen door the view was close, fragrant, and green. I kept asking her to say the name of each plant, just so I could hear the extravagant words again. Kalanchoe. Bougainvillea. Ranunculus. Honeysuckle and jasmine perfumed the air like a grande dame, and riotous pink flowers climbed over head. Waxy, dark green succulents sat in orange clay pots along the brick walkway. I’m not one to talk about the energy of a physical place, but looking out her windows in the morning at all that lush growth, I felt something special there.

We went on a couple of hikes. The view was obscured by fog one day as we scrambled up a steep, narrow path my friend had never wanted to take alone. The way down was long and dusty, our sneakers slipping on the too-smooth surface. At one point I looked up from my shoes to see how much further we had to go. It was a long way and I groaned and cursed. Don’t look, my friend said. And then she said something meant as a practical piece of advice to keep me from skidding on my ass and knocking her down in the process, but which sounds really cheesy and instructive in this context. It was something along the lines of keeping my eyes on the next step.

We sat later in her garden with frozen pineapple vodka drinks (hello, California!), and  I thought again of that passage from Bird by Bird I had just excerpted recently on the blog:

E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.

I have been exhausting myself with thinking lately. If I see another article about 10 ways to live your passion or 5 steps to embracing abundance, or if I make another list of what makes me feel most alive, or write a mission statement, or craft a 5-year plan, I might just pack it up. This happens sometimes. I’m comfortable in my inner world, but sometimes it starts to get a little claustrophobic in here. It is too plush and confined, with way too many thoughts and feelings not acted upon. It’s like a Victorian drawing room.

And so it is spring! What a perfect time to get out of thinking and into doing! Only not so much. An encouraging April horoscope had me frozen in my tracks. Wait, what new path am I supposed to be forging? I am (and you, too, Aries sisters!), apparently, unstoppable during our “cosmic birthday” April 10. But for what purpose? Circulate, put it out into the universe, make those dreams manifest! I can’t take the pressure. That, too, feels exhausting.

Here’s the thing: I’m not sure I can think myself out of every problem. Lists are helpful to a point, but I keep forgetting the two bits that come after brainstorming: surrendering (full stop here to really think about that one) and putting one foot in front of the other. I get stuck in a giant, swirling whirlpool of ideas and plots about how to scale the mountain ahead of me, when what I need to do is close the notebook, and feel my way. Put one foot in front of the other.

On Tuesday night, another friend told me about the Taoist concept of wu wei, which she described as the action of non-action. It’s not doing nothing like a purposeless layabout; it’s “the cultivation of a state of being in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the elemental cycles of the natural world. It is a kind of ‘going with the flow’ that is characterized by great ease and awake-ness, in which––without even trying––we’re able to respond perfectly to whatever situations arise.”

I think this concept is hard for a lot of us. We are goal-oriented doers, achievers, and list-makers. If I gave all that up, how would I get anywhere? Tara Brach’s recent podcast on self-compassion broke this same wall down in such a startling way, I couldn’t embrace the basic idea. What would it mean to be OK just as we are? What the hell would happen if we gave up all the busyness of improving ourselves and our lives? I mean, honestly: can you even imagine? I’m afraid that releasing a vise grip of what looks like control will plunge me into complacency. But complacency is a far cry from “effortless alignment” or “great ease and awake-ness.”

I don’t have answers, but I hope asking the questions counts for something. I do know that perhaps more than ever, this spring feels like an opening. Not to leading with intellectual force, but taking a cue from subtler models, like the neighborhood crocuses who had a false start in mild January and are back for good this time. We just have to hold out hope for how natural the process of blooming really is.

First, I have to tell you about Amy. We met she when she was very pregnant and I was interviewing for some freelance work at Domino. Soon after, the magazine had folded, and I kept bumping into her in the neighborhood. I also kept lingering longer each time. I just liked her, and that doesn’t happen that often. She’s the kind of person you trust implicitly, whose own warmth and comfort with herself instantly puts you at ease. Plus, she’s very funny in a sweet, self-deprecating way that’s pretty much impossible to resist. Running into each other at coffee shops turned into meeting for walks around Prospect Park on hot afternoons. She’s probably one of the most natural friends I’ve made in my adult life.

I read her new book, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, in those dark days of January when I wanted to climb into bed and forget the realities of my life. The book didn’t take me far away (it takes place in Park Slope), but it managed to help me forget my troubles while simultaneously soothing them. I was intoxicated by the idea–that a gutsy mermaid slips into the body of a despairingly depressed mom. Who among us hasn’t ever wished some fiercer version of ourselves would take the reins? But that’s only one aspect of a book that ended up telling a more story more captivating and real than any fairy tale: that there is goodness in the world and fullness all around us, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

One very lucky Pink of Perfection reader will win a copy. Leave a comment by 11:59PM EST 4/4 to be eligible. Happy spring reading!

Update 4/5: And the winner is Mallory! Thanks to all for entering. Hope you’ll still go out and buy a copy or get on the library waiting list. It’s worth it!

In the past few weeks, I’ve been reading a book about Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda that had a bit of advice that’s stuck with me: the more complicated life is, the simpler your meals should be. It was such a lovely reminder that even when much of life feels out of our control, there are small ways we can take back the reins each day.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of simplicity lately. There are scores and scores of great blogs devoted to it (and its cousin minimalism), and even still, I don’t have a clear sense of what it would actually look or feel like in my life. How to live more simply came up when chatting with a friend recently, and it felt as mysterious and out of reach to both of us as a nighttime ride on Falcor. We both knew we wanted it, but we didn’t know how to go about introducing more of it into our lives.

When I asked my mom recently what she thought a simple life looked like and how I could create more of it, she encouraged me to think about the roles I wanted to play in my life. It flies in the face of what Eckhart Tolle writes about, but I think it’s kind of a clever, side-door way of getting at the heart of the question. What do you want to occupy the most space in your life? Artist, friend, mother, breadwinner, athlete, advocate, leader? You can keep your life simple, she suggested, by keeping those primary roles top of mind in the choices you make each day.

What would a simpler life look like to you? This is not a rhetorical question. Because while I feel drawn to the concept, I also feel unsure of what its real-life application looks like in a busy, messy, full, and super-connected world. I’m still working it out myself, but a simple life to me is tidy and organized, lived within my means, and low-stress. I have stream-lined systems that provide ready answers to what to wear and what to make for dinner. I have a regular routine, with time carved out for creativity and exercise, weekends filled with friends, family and nature. A simple life also has to have some whimsy and bouts of adventurous fun, or else it may start to feel too spartan. And that wouldn’t do.

My sister swears by ruthless purging and small space living, the latter requiring the former. Her husband has been known to live at times by a strict one-in, two-out principle, and they are experts at unsentimentally disposing of belongings. They check-out library books instead of buying everything they want to read, and my sister’s closet rail is lined with slim, matching hangers holding only items she loves. That makes life simple.

Image: A Well Traveled Woman

I’m Day 4 into Oprah and Deepak Chopra’s 21-Day Meditation Challenge. It’s a wonderful free online program, filled with journal exercises, mantra, thoughts of the day, and Deepak’s wise and soothing voice. But if it’s brought up one recurring theme for me thus far it’s my need for a regular routine. As is, I wake up in some 2 to 3 hour window, exercise on the days it’s convenient, move through a few gentle yoga poses when I’m feeling especially worn in the evenings. The day of the week with the most reliable routine also happens to be my favorite.

On Sundays, I drink coffee on my way to a morning yoga class. After a class that invariably leaves me more cheerful than when I arrived,  I walk toward the farmer’s market and call my mom or sister on the way to chat. Once there, I fill my tote bag with greens, apples, and eggs, and maybe buy a cider donut for Sebastian before slipping into a nearby restaurant where he will meet me for lunch. That’s my most regular and beloved routine. Otherwise, I make room for things that are important to me when I can (read: when it’s easy). More often than not, this leads to life feeling like it’s being lived behind the eight ball in a game of catch-as-catch-can. A daily routine seems like a really grounding way to simplify, even if it means waking up significantly earlier (no small task for someone who can hit the snooze button seven times in the morning, no problem).

Then again, some part of me says to enjoy it. There will come a time when babies and school days and dinner times will require a day that runs like clockwork. I should enjoy the malleability while I have it. But when the roles you want to inhabit are that of healthy creative person who lives with a sense of balance and vitality, making room for expressing that each day feels important.

These aren’t real problems, of course, just a way of refining the day-to-day so it feels most supportive. Making each day simpler feels like a good way to do that. But now I defer to all of you wise ladies to share how simplicity takes form in your life. What does a simple life mean, look like, and feel like to you? What have you given up? What have you introduced? What discoveries do you swear by? And how, help me, can I become a morning person?

In the dining room (the only place the stove was lit) and in Lucile’s room, where she sometimes took the liberty of lighting a small fire in the evening, you could smell the smoky perfume of sweet wood, chestnut bark. The dining-room doors opened out on to the garden. It looked its saddest at this time of the year: the pear trees stretched out their arms, crucified on wires; the apple trees had been cut back, and their branches were rough, twisted and bristling with spiky twigs; there was nothing left on the vine but some bare shoots. But with just a few more days of sunshine, the early little peach tree in front of the church would not be the only one covered with flowers: every tree would blossom. While brushing her hair before going to bed, Lucile looked out of her window at the garden bathed in moonlight. On the low wall some cats were howling. Beyond was the countryside, its secret, fertile valleys thick with deep woods, and pearl-grey under the moonlight.

“Dear, sweet Mabel,” she said. “We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That’s where the adventure is. Not knowing where you’ll end or how you’ll fare. It’s all a mystery, and when we say any different, we’re just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?”

 E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.

And you?

“When there is a crisis,” a friend told me Tuesday night (before the pizza), “there’s enormous potential for change.” I find that true for myself in the past couple months as I’ve been met with emotional upheaval and stress, the specifics of which I’ll save for another day. But we all know what that feels like, in whatever form it’s taken in your own life, to be rocked to your core.

What I find so perverse about my own situation is how much I love its thick silver lining. A crisis can put everything into relief. What I care about, what’s important, what truly matters–those things stay. Connecting in meaningful ways. Cooking good, simple food. Taking thoughtful care of myself, my life, and the people in it. But whatever is toxic, draining, and inconsequential I just don’t have the energy or patience for. There’s no room for it right now. Even those words don’t quite capture the black and white sense that drives my life right now. Let me try again: life’s been edited down to my own version of the essentials. All that matters is what matters.

So what does that look like? I try a little harder to keep the house tidy so that in the evenings, when I light the taper candles in the windows and on the coffee table, there’s a real sense of calm in our home, a needed foil to whatever the day has served. I say no to social things sometimes, when I know what I need is to not spend $70 on a night out, but to make a big pot of grains for the week and climb into bed a little early. I wonder with one breath if my friends think I’ve gone boring, and with the next breath I let it go. There’s no room right now for that kind of worrying.  “It’s extremely clarifying,” my mom said to me one sunny morning on the phone. It was the word I’d been looking for.

There are times in my life when I’ve successfully done what’s best for me. As I get older, it seems a little easier (at times!) to not be quite so self-defeating. I find myself struggling a little less with the question that’s long plagued me: why is it so hard to do what’s good for you? But there’s something a little deeper going on right now. The choices I’m making feel important. I think what I’m talking about is life at its most nourishing. A walk in the park on a cold afternoon isn’t just me, squinting in the sun and navigating around slicks of mud. It feels like something more, like embodying my best self, or stepping into the flow, or doing what some part deep within me, beneath the shoe choice and the hair style and stretchy jeans, wants to be doing.

Sometimes I feel like this blog tracks my journeys as an Odysseus-like traveler, out into the world of distractions and proving oneself, and then home again to something more meaningful. I circle back to the same ideas over and over and declare “aha!” each time. But maybe that’s just the nature of navigating through this world looking for meaning. We remember what’s important, have moments of clarity, and then over time, forget again. Tara Brach said recently that there are moments of extreme clarity in life: when a baby is born, when someone is dying, when we say our wedding vows. But there are smaller moments too, like when we are chopping vegetables for a meal with friends, or when we allow ourselves a few moments before we launch into the day to sit quietly with our breath, or when we are riding the bus and look out the window and can hardly fathom the brightness of the blue sky. We remember.

There have been quite a few moments recently when standing at the cutting board in our poorly-lit kitchen I had such a contented feeling. One of those times was a couple weeks ago, when I had Monday off and spent the morning baking a cake for old friends coming over who we hadn’t seen in much too long. Peeling the apples, chopping them, listening to the low hum of the mixer beating eggs, oil, and sugar into a rich, sweet batter kissed with cinnamon–there was a sweet, steadying rhythm to it, not unlike how I felt on that walk in the bright and muddy park. Something inside our body knows, even before our heads do, when we’re on the right track.

Apple Cake
adapted from Food52
Serves 8

There are many things to love about this cake, like its chewy, crackling, almost-caramelized top, or how it feels like it might be an acceptable breakfast food. You can hack your own tube pan by baking this in two 8-inch cake pants with a ramekin in the middle. I skipped the raisins, since our salad that night had a golden raisin vinaigrette, and subbed in one cup of whole wheat pastry flour. I also felt more drawn to chopping the apples up into small pieces rather than cutting them into thick wedges, but of course feel free to be faithful to the original.

Butter for greasing pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting pan
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups peeled, cored, and chopped apples (I used Honeycrisp)
1 cup chopped walnuts
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch tube pan. Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) while assembling the remaining ingredients. After about 5 minutes, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.

Sift together 3 cups of flour, the salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Stir into the batter. Add the vanilla, apples, walnuts and raisins and stir until combined.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan before lifting out. Serve at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, if desired.

Let me first set the mood: the sky is gray and the air is cold. Not bitterly so, but you’d be wise to plunge your hands into your pocket as you walk the cobblestone streets in search of a coffee shop. Even before noon, restaurants and cafes, no matter their caliber, have candles burning in the windows.

Be careful when you cross the street. There is a wide bike line between cars and pedestrians on almost every street. It is filled with stylish women wearing versions of a similar outfit: flat black ankle boots, slim trousers, a shapeless, voluminous, vaguely arty coat, and a huge, nubby knit scarf looped and framing a wide, pink-cheeked, barely made-up face. Her hair is in a messy-cool top-knot. She might be toting a yoga mat or a child. I kept thinking I saw Michelle Williams.

You hustle across the street and settle into a coffee shop just slightly below street-level. On each table are small candles sitting next to little pots of herbs or a few fresh flowers. The music is good, and you drink a cappuccino and eat thick, rich yogurt out of a Duralex glass topped with oats and chopped apple. Aside from the sense in the back of your mind of a train that will carry you out of town to a castle or a cathedral or a viking ship, you feel you have all time in the world.

This is what I wrote on the sixth day of our vacation: “Why is it that vacation feels like wiping the slate clean? It feels like I have the energy and perspective to go back home and start again: not eat lunch at my desk, bring more warmth and beauty into our home, cook good, simple food.”

That was the heart of my Life Design Inspiration Trip. I kept my eyes open for the sights and flavors that, forgive me if this sounds a tad melodramatic, made me excited about living again. Even the most treasured routines can turn into ruts. In Denmark, far out of my element, I felt my senses slide wide open. I felt inspired and wildly free. In my little red notebook, I kept a running list of ideas we could import back home: a sheepskin rug on a chair, charcuterie at brunch, pillar candles on fresh-cut birch rounds. The very facts of the place became marvels to me, like the red tile roofs of Roskilde sloping down to the sea, or an allée of trees flanking a walking path that wound down to a fjord, or the dark, loamy moss-green grass of a park in the humid afternoon cold. I see now that all those feelings of inspiration came from paying attention. It can strike us, of course, in everyday life, often in more quiet, nudging ways. But there it was an onslaught; I was gobsmacked. I was overstimulated in the best way possible.

One of my favorite moments was in Sweden. I had been fantasizing about visiting a 19th-century sauna perched at the end of a pier in the Øresund Strait. We arrived on  a cold, gray Friday afternoon. It was not a place tourists visit often, I would guess, so it didn’t have those built-in reassurances foreigners love, like signs that make everything from where to find the bathrooms to what to do next abundantly clear. A warm, creaking wood restaurant served as an entry point. A man at the cafe counter handed me a 12-inch square towel and pointed around the corner. I pushed through the door marked “Damer” and was outside on a wide wooden pier that stretched out further still into the water. Wooden dressing rooms flanked the sides and in the middle of the pier were wide square cut-outs and ladders that led down into the water making mini salt water pools. I knew vaguely what I was in for, and still felt startled to see naked wet bodies ambling in the cold, and a pink-cheeked woman, looking completely spent, wrapped in a towel and sitting on a bench. I felt awkward and conspicious in that way you do when doing something the first time around people for whom it is habit, like carrying your tray through the cafeteria on the first day of high school. I poked my head through doors trying to find where to go.

And then, I don’t know what happened–I just decided to not be such a scaredy cat. It felt tedious and exhausting to be so self-conscious about doing the right thing. Here I was, after all, at my pier into the ocean, the one I had been looking at online for weeks. I felt my backbone grow a little taller. I found where women were undressing. I left my desire to blend in tucked under a bench with my boots and wool socks. I stood naked in the communal shower, trying to figure out how to turn on the damn thing, and finally just looked helplessly at the woman next to me. (Ah, push!) I walked, dripping, my tiny towel in my hand, and opened another wooden door. Inside the small, cozy sauna was a woman with the body of a film star, stretched out on her back, and an older woman with gray close-cropped hair. There was a huge picture window, and the three of us looked out it onto a choppy, gray sea. It started to snow. Believe me when I tell you a swan drifted by. I laid back on my little towel, the hot wood planks on my shoulder blades, and smiled from ear to ear.

When I’d had quite enough of the heat, I hung my towel up on a little hook and opened the door back out onto the pier. I walked out to its farthest point where a ladder descended down into the open strait. Seaweed clung to the rails, as I held tight and walked in up to my chin. I felt the sweetest moment of brave triumph–I was in Nordic waters on the first day of February! It was snowing!––before I felt shockingly, breathlessly freezing. I grabbed the rails and climbed back onto the wooden pier and nearly felt reborn. If I had been smiling before, now I beamed.

I love this picture Sebastian snapped after I put my clothes back on and met him in the restaurant. I don’t look especially beautiful–my hair is wet, I’m not wearing a stitch of makeup–but I remember just how deeply, ecstatically happy I felt. I love it for that reason.

When I think back on my trip, now already growing smaller as weeks pass, I think of a few things. The warm, clean design I so love and the golden light in winter windows; the space that cushioned my life so that I could see with a new gratitude and love what, or rather who, was right in front of me; and that wonderful wide-eyed sense of freedom. It’s either a relative or another word for one of my most beloved feelings on earth: expansiveness.

When did you last feel that way? What brought it on? Is it something we can summon, right here, on a Friday?

I have felt it on wind-whipped coastlines, driving on dark roads with the windows open, and floating, weightless, on a Pennsylvania lake in August. Maybe it’s being fully present in the moment that is and loving it deeply. Maybe it’s when our hearts feel wholly aligned with, in that very instant, the life we are living. Whatever it is, I think it is one of the finest feelings on earth. I want to live like a monkey, swinging from one of those sweet moments to another, pausing for bananas and mischievious fun in between.

I am also blowing my nose into oblivion. But I was enormously grateful to open the freezer and find I had the foresight to freeze a bit of this soup before our trip. It has bunches and bunches of greens in it, dill and a lively squeeze of lemon. It’s soup at its best: filled with the kind of clean, bright flavors you long for in the dark of winter or after too much indulgence or when you are sniffling endlessly. It feels nourishing, as if just breathing its lightly-scented steam will put you right again. It’s the kind of food we need when we’ve had major upheaval: it’s grounding, sure-footed, and simple. It’s what I was craving before I set off on what I called my Life Design Inspiration Trip, and what I’m wanting even more now that I’m home.

For all of you with mid-winter colds, heartaches, or who are just experiencing the dull, panging ennui that February so often brings on–this one’s for you.

I very much liked cooking the barley separately in this soup. Whereas cooking in the soup itself can often lead to bloated, supersaturated grains, here the barley is cooked on its own until just tender. Then the rest of the slow-cooked onions, broth, and finally, the quick-cooking greens, are added. One more pot to clean, but in my book, worth it. My grocery store’s chard looked nasty, so I subbed escarole. Of course any host of greens will do.

Barley Soup with Greens, Lemon and Dill
adapted from Epicurious, by Anna Thomas

4 cups water
8 cups (or more) vegetable broth, chicken stock or water, divided
1 scant cup pearl barley (about 6 ounces)
1 teaspoon fine sea salt plus additional for sprinkling
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil plus additional for drizzling
3 cups chopped onions
8 cups coarsely chopped stemmed kale leaves (about one 7-ounce bunch)
6 cups coarsely chopped stemmed chard leaves (about one 7-ounce bunch)
5 cups spinach leaves (about 5 ounces)
3/4 cup sliced scallions
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Bring 4 cups water, 2 cups broth, barley, and 1 scant teaspoon sea salt to boil in large pot. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until tender, about 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions, sprinkle with sea salt, and sauté until golden brown, stirring often, about 15 minutes. Add sautéed onions and remaining 6 cups broth to pot with barley. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool, cover, and chill. Rewarm before continuing.

Add kale and chard to soup. Simmer until greens are tender, about 15 minutes. Add spinach, scallions, dill, and mint; simmer 5 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Season soup with sea salt, pepper, and additional lemon juice, thinning with more broth, if desired.

Divide soup among bowls. Drizzle with oil, and serve.