So here’s the thing.  I’ve been cheating on the whole plate.

I love this blog.  It’s been with me through a host of major life changes.  It’s brought me some incredible friends.  It’s helped me remember some delicious restaurant experiences and catalogue some of my favorite recipes. [...]]]> Hey there, blog world.  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

So here’s the thing.  I’ve been cheating on the whole plate.

I love this blog.  It’s been with me through a host of major life changes.  It’s brought me some incredible friends.  It’s helped me remember some delicious restaurant experiences and catalogue some of my favorite recipes.  It’s been my internet home for two and a half years.

In those two and a half years, I’ve done a lot – a lot – of growing up.  And well, in that time, I think I’ve outgrown this blog.

Recently, I’ve been posting short highlights of my days over at a simple, personal space: lesliebrandnewyork.wordpress.com.  There is some cooking and some dining and some farmers market shopping over there.  There is also theater and dance and books and writing and thrifting and moments with friends and family and much more.  It’s sort of a virtual scrapbook, and it feels like the right internet place for me to hang out, at least for now.

I won’t be shutting the whole plate down, so the words, the recipes, and the photos will still be around should anyone want to peruse the archives.

I just want to say thanks to everyone who has followed me, from day one or day 700.  I’ve been so grateful for your comments, emails, and silent support ever since I began this little blog.

I have a few food photos that never saw the light of day, and these meals were too delicious not to share.

chestnut soup with duck leg, pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin seed oil at mas [farmhouse] for mom’s birthday

chocolate hazelnut torte with sweet potato sorbet at northern spy food co on a sunday evening with anna and danielle

duck breast with sansho, fennel, and kiwi at do or dine during a crazy adventurous dinner with megan

mushroom egg toast with parmesan, chives, and arugula salad at colonie after a sunday morning hot yoga class with sofia

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I think my biggest personality fault is trying to do too much.  I have a lot of interests, and I like to indulge them all.  My relationships are important to me, which means maintaining an active social life.  I want to do [...]]]>

raw brussels sprout salad with hazelnuts and cheddar; butternut squash and cider soup.

I think my biggest personality fault is trying to do too much.  I have a lot of interests, and I like to indulge them all.  My relationships are important to me, which means maintaining an active social life.  I want to do well professionally.  I want to learn.  I need to sleep.

Every week, I try to do it all.  I try to cook and dine and read and write and see art and see my friends and do yoga and stay active and run my errands and answer my emails and go to work and keep my apartment clean and…yeah.  You get the idea.

Sometimes, however, one item on my to-do list has to take precedence.  Two weeks ago, the theater I work at reopened after the first renovation in its history – a history that dates back to 1923 – and I found myself with work-related commitments nearly every evening for two weeks straight.  In week one, my dinners ranged from an 11PM appetizer of spinach cannelloni with a glass of champagne to leftover passed hors d’oeuvres to a hummus sandwich eaten in a subway car.  Office politics grated on me.  Work stress happened at 9PM one Saturday night.  This wonderfully full and balanced life that I try to lead disappeared under special events and ticket envelopes and lists of VIPs.

And yet, one night I told myself, “You are not doing enough.  That book you are reading for pleasure hasn’t been opened in eight days.  You’ve been to two yoga classes in twelve days, and that’s been it in the way of exercise.  You paid too much money for a cab home to Brooklyn; you forgot your lunch on the kitchen counter and now you have to buy it.  You need to set up appointments at the schools you might want to attend next fall.  You also really need to get your eyebrows threaded before a Frida Kahlo situation sets in, and your laundry basket has spilled over into not one, but two piles on the floor.  And you miss your friends, and god it’d be nice to go on a date, and wouldn’t you also love to have a long phone conversation with your mom and dad?”

But at the end of another fourteen-hour day, all I could do was lay in my bed and watch the pilot episode of Felicity on Netflix.

Which is when I realized: I last watched the pilot episode of Felicity when it premiered in 1998, and I was 12 years old.  And now I’m 26, and I wasted 45 minutes of my life watching something that entertained me 14 years ago when my only responsibility was my homework and practicing the melody of my Haftorah for my upcoming Bat Mitzvah.

Welcome to my brain since October 24th.

Halfway through the craziness, I got one day – a Sunday – to take a breather.  In the afternoon, I met my friend Shayne for a cup of tea and a couple hours with our respective writing assignments for the fiction class we are both taking.  The next day I would have to work, but the theater would mercifully be dark, so I’d have the evening off.  I planned to finally go to a yoga class that night.

As I complained to Shayne that I can’t seem to get a handle on life when work is so busy, she said to me, “You need to take a night off.  Go home tomorrow night.  Make soup.”

The next night, I didn’t go to yoga.  I went home, opened a bottle of wine, and covered my kitchen counters with vegetables from end to end.  I ate a beautiful meal, and I went to sleep early.

For the rest of the week, I had this soup.  Work was still crazy and I never got to yoga and I didn’t read my book and my to-do list didn’t get shorter.  But I felt better.  And I think, now that life is calm again, I am beginning to learn that every week, I don’t need to do it all.

♦♦♦

butternut squash and apple cider soup [serves 4]

• 2 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and chopped into 1″ cubes
• 1 T extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 t curry powder
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1.5 c apple cider
• 1.5 c low sodium vegetable broth
• 1/2 c whole milk
• 2 T lemon juice
• few pinches sea salt

1) In large pot, heat oil over medium heat.  Add onion and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes.  Add garlic and saute 30 seconds.  Add curry powder and cinnamon and sauté 30 seconds.

2) Add squash, apple cider, and vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes.  Squash should be very tender.  Remove from heat and let cool.

3) In batches, pureé soup in blender or food processor.  Return to pot.

4) Stir in whole milk, lemon juice, and sea salt to taste.  Simmer 5 minutes.  If necessary, add water to reach desired consistency.  Serve warm.

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first helpings on rosh hashanah day one:  chickpeas in star anise and date masala; roasted carrots and parsnips with thyme; challah; green beans with ground almonds, garlic, and butter; quinoa-walnut pilaf

homemade baklava for dessert

rosh hashanah day two: halibut with red pepper and olive tapenade; quinoa-walnut pilaf; green beans [...]]]>

first helpings on rosh hashanah day one:  chickpeas in star anise and date masala; roasted carrots and parsnips with thyme; challah; green beans with ground almonds, garlic, and butter; quinoa-walnut pilaf

homemade baklava for dessert

rosh hashanah day two: halibut with red pepper and olive tapenade; quinoa-walnut pilaf; green beans with ground almonds, garlic, and butter; roasted carrots and parsnips with thyme; snow peas with lemon-tarragon butter.

first helpings of yom kippur break-fast dinner: mom’s famous cheese blintzes, honey-glazed wax beans, arugula salad with a mustard vinaigrette, mark west pinot noir.

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah this year, a friend of mine gave birth to her first child.  She is the first of my real friends to be a mother.  When I received the photograph, I could barely believe that my middle school cafeteria buddy had officially started her own family.

Whenever I receive news such as this – someone from high school is engaged, pregnant, married, promoted, published, a PhD – the statement is generally accompanied by the exclamation, “God, we’re getting old!”

I’d like to know: if we twentysomethings are already old, what will we be in 20 years?  In 30?  In 50?

Last week was my 26th birthday.  I don’t feel old.  Actually, I feel quite young.  I was given an excellent bill of health on a recent doctor’s visit.  I like to think I’m pretty strong.  Most of the time I have tons of energy, keeping me going through long and full days.  Three weeks ago I started a 10-week writing course, and I was just as alert and engaged in class as I had been at work during the day.  I was out celebrating my 26th year past 4 AM, and yet somehow I still rallied myself to meet my Brooklyn neighbor Megan for a late morning run in Prospect Park.

I am not old.  Old is my grandma, whose hands always shake, who can no longer walk her dog past the end of her street.  Old is the recipe for my mom’s blintzes, a part of our family for generations.  Old is my apartment building, with its chipped paint, its cracked countertops, its creaking doors.

Back in my first semester studying abroad, my classmates and I used to discuss in awe the ancient European cities we visited throughout those four months.  Their histories went back hundreds and hundreds of years, while our native United States was barely more than two centuries old.  And then I went to Turkey and to Israel, and I saw landmarks that had been around for millennia, and even Europe seemed young.

Old is not 22 or 26 or 29.  We’re babies.  We’re just getting started.

All around me, my peers are knee-deep in post-baccs that will lead them to grad school, beginning to study for the GRE, or wrangling with their first jobs post-grad school.  People are moving in with significant others, getting engaged, or even having children.  This doesn’t mean we’re old.  It means we’re old enough.  Old enough to do all of this and more.

I recently made a rather big decision [hint: it starts with "g" and ends with debt].  It was just two years ago that I realized I wanted to switch my career path and go back to the performing arts, and now I am confident in saying that I want to devote my life to them.  If I were old, I would be nearing the end.  But my life and my career are just beginning.

As I work towards my professional goals, my friend that is now a mother will see her daughter say her first word and take her first step.  Her little girl will go to first grade, write her first essay, have her first kiss, take her first college class.  That doesn’t sound like an end to me.  It sounds like a lifetime of beginnings.

On my dad’s 61st birthday last year, he made the comment that with every decade, his life has gotten better and better.  I love that perspective.  It means we can’t ever really be old, because there is always something undiscovered ahead.

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Last weekend, my friend Danielle and I took a drive up north to visit our friend Anna in coastal Massachusetts.  After nearly four hours, we found our GPS directing us off the paved main road and onto a path made of dirt.

Signs perched [...]]]>

Last weekend, my friend Danielle and I took a drive up north to visit our friend Anna in coastal Massachusetts.  After nearly four hours, we found our GPS directing us off the paved main road and onto a path made of dirt.

Signs perched between the trees and marked with Anna’s family name guided our car along at just a few miles per hour.  A few cautious minutes passed, and the trees opened into a clearing, revealing her house, her porch, and a pond off in the distance.  Danielle and I looked at each other, our eyes lighting up.  Serene didn’t begin to describe this northeastern oasis.  It was going to be a good weekend.

Over the next 36 hours, we three ate meals on the porch, a canopy of trees above, the quiet water below.  We hiked through the woods, stopping to gaze out at the water and snap a handful of silly photos of ourselves.  We sipped wine as we cruised across the pond on a motorboat, fleece coats protecting us from the chill in the wind.  We filled our hearty appetites at a new restaurant, ending with spoons digging into a gooey chocolate chip cookie and melting vanilla ice cream.  We stopped to gaze at the Mayflower and that famous rock, and we inhaled the scent of salty ocean air.  We devoured a large pizza as we talked and talked and talked.

I’ve long been fascinated by the places different people come from.  I first met Anna in Boston, and we have since dined together in New York and DC, but this was my first true experience on her turf.  Like the town itself, her home is full of history.  You can’t help but feel the presence of the generations that have survived winters and enjoyed summers on land that the first colonists called their new home.

Anna mentioned that Danielle and I seemed to really “get” Long Pond, and I’m sure my Connecticut childhood – my New England roots – played a role.  I am a city girl at heart, but spending a weekend in this area of the country always feels like coming home.

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Meal: An oldie but goodie – I never shared photos from my last meal at Northern Spy last month.  If there’s one restaurant in the universe that I feel truly [...]]]> Highlights from mid-September and a bit before.  Last week mostly involved a lot of drinking and ended with a bad cold.  It’s unfortunate when that happens.

Meal: An oldie but goodie – I never shared photos from my last meal at Northern Spy last month.  If there’s one restaurant in the universe that I feel truly “gets” me, this one is most definitely it.  For starters, they shop at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets, just like me.

two salads: white peaches, padron pepper, mint, and honey; purslane, corn, blueberries, and ricotta salata.

mussels in white wine-tomato broth with grilled bread

duck fat fries with malted spiced yogurt

vanilla roasted peaches with dark chocolate sorbet and shortbread

goat cheese cheesecake with blueberry sorbet

Book: One True Thing
This is one of those books that is wonderfully written and hits a little too close to home when you realize, “Whoa, you never know, this could be me.”  Twentysomething overambitious New Yorker drops everything and moves home when her mom is diagnosed with cancer.  A good read.

Movie: Midnight in Paris
Ok.  Every now and then a movie comes along that is so perfect, I can’t stop thinking about it for days, nights, weeks on end.  This was one of those movies.  The characters, the story, the costumes, the setting, the writing – it all just came together and made magic.  Please go see it.  I’m going to own it the second it comes out on DVD.

Play: Sweet and Sad
To anyone who thinks theater is unaffordable: every ticket in the house for this play was $15.  The action takes place on September 11, 2011, and while the story was about much more, seeing this was the best thing I could have possibly done to grapple with the gravity of the past ten years.  The run apparently sold out, so I’m glad we were smart and snagged tickets when we did.

Other Stuff: Brooklyn Book Festival and The Cloisters
I wrote about the book festival earlier, and I’m still on a literary high.  The Cloisters visit was a Saturday afternoon family activity, and while the medieval art on display at the museum isn’t my favorite period [by a longshot], the views of Manhattan and the beauty of the surrounding park were incredible.  I rarely go uptown [and by uptown I mean no farther than my office below Central Park], but this trip brought us all the way to 190th Street.  Uncharted territory that was well worth the trip north.

Share with me what you did this week!

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epic ice cream: chocolate with balsamic vinegar and fleur de sel from blue marble

Recently, during an all-too-common conversation in which I proclaimed my obsession with living in Brooklyn, somebody told me that she didn’t think she was “cool enough” [...]]]> epic sandwich: roasted eggplant and tomato with goat cheese on focaccia from tazza

epic ice cream: chocolate with balsamic vinegar and fleur de sel from blue marble

Recently, during an all-too-common conversation in which I proclaimed my obsession with living in Brooklyn, somebody told me that she didn’t think she was “cool enough” to live in this borough.  I quickly responded, “Well I’m not cool.  I’m actually a huge nerd.”

I really am.  I mean, people.  I take pictures of food.  I listen to musicals on my ipod.  I was on the yearbook staff in high school.  For starters.

Last Sunday, I spent the afternoon at the Brooklyn Book Festival.  The mostly outdoor event was slightly chaotic and seriously crowded, but I loved it.  Imagine: hundreds of book nerds swarming Borough Hall, congregating in a single place to be nerdy together.

We all thumbed through dozens of books.  We all read back covers and gazed at front cover artwork.  We all wanted to see Jonathan Safran Foer and Joyce Carol Oates read, and we were all sad when only a handful of lucky people got in to that panel.  We all meandered book stalls and entered contests for things like a free writing workshop and a subscription to Poets and Writers and a getaway writing weekend.

In the midst of the day, my friends Shayne and Daniel and I took a break to eat monster-sized sandwiches on perfect focaccia and lick ice cream from the best shop in Brooklyn [trust me, guys, I've eaten a lot of ice cream this summer].  We waxed on about the deliciousness of buttery focaccia and cheese and roasted vegetables as we finished every last bite.  Then we spent more time with the books.

At the Festival, I bought an anthology titled Readings for Writers, and I’ve been reading one piece from it each night before bed [you know, for the two days since I've owned it].  That day, I wore navy blue and black together [I also wore white yesterday, two weeks post-Labor Day]. The strong wind blew my thick curls into a bird’s nest over the course of the day, and a glance in a bathroom mirror was a rather amusing sight.

I’m pretty sure all of these things should place me in the running to teach Nerdiness 101.  And yet, looking around, I felt that I fit right in.  It’s funny to hear that living here makes me “cool.”   Apparently someone decided that being a nerd is all the rage.

Three days before the Book Fest, NYC’s biannual Fashion Week came to an end.  I was there, inside the Bryant Park tent, three years ago.  I love fashion, but I did not fit in.  Fashion people are cool.  I’m a nerd.

Good thing I prefer the latter.

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This is a DC edition of the new blog series, including a good-but-not-great book and a similar movie, a free play, and historical museums.  Plus an unbelievable brunch back in New York.

Meal: Incredible brunch with the family at Hundred Acres [...]]]> Ok, apologies for not actually blogging this week.  A Friday afternoon post is better than nothing, yes?

This is a DC edition of the new blog series, including a good-but-not-great book and a similar movie, a free play, and historical museums.  Plus an unbelievable brunch back in New York.

Meal: Incredible brunch with the family at Hundred Acres in the West Village.

shared appetizers:

ricotta fritters, cider syrup, powdered sugar

sliced heirloom tomatoes, salt

black kale salad with lemon-anchovy dressing, toasted breadcrumbs, pecorino, poached egg

warm cream biscuits and banana walnut bread with strawberry jam, blackberry marmalade, and honey butter

my entree: goat cheese-thyme bread pudding with poached eggs, warm spinach salad, and lemon butter

Book: Sarah’s Key
My parents’ genes afflicted me with terrible motion sickness that appears in cars and on boats, but thanks to a double dose of Bonine, I was able to read during the 4.5 hour bus ride to and from DC over Labor Day weekend.  I read this book in transit, and I liked it, but I think I had built it up too much from everyone’s excellent reviews.  It was fine and worth reading, but not a life-changer.

Movie: The Help
I think I’m one of the few that thought the book was overrated [good and a page-turner, but overrated].  The movie was a nice adaptation.  It’s got these nice moments that make you smile or grimace or shake your head about humanity in general.  I wasn’t so sure about the casting of Emma Stone, but that’s Hollywood for you.

Play: The Heir Apparent
My friend that I visited in DC is a forensic scientist who likes Shakespeare just as much as she likes dead things.  So we tried to see a free performance of Julius Caesar but ultimately arrived at the line too late.  Instead, everyone who couldn’t get in was offered a free pass to the first dress rehearsal of this world premiere English translation of the French play.  We gladly accepted and got a lot of laughs – just try and imagine very modern language written in rhyming iambic pentameter.

Other Stuff: US Holocaust Memorial Museum and International Spy Museum
I had never been to the Holocaust Museum and felt I needed to go.  We stayed there until the doors closed behind us.  The Spy Museum started out hokey [e.g. "Think this is lipstick?  Psyche!  It's a camera!"], but turned out to be incredibly educational, telling stories from the Civil War to Vietnam to the Cold War to modern times.  I only wish I had had more time to read the dozens of stories from Eastern Europe.  Living over there and teaching students who survived that time period will forever draw me to those tales.

Also, I went to an acrobatics class this week, during which I climbed up a rope and hung upside down from a trapeze.  Then Sofia and I proceeded to wander 20 blocks in pursuit of nutella gelato.  Don’t ask.

What did you do, see, and read this week?

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A classmate of ours raised [...]]]> I was in English class when my friend Mallory sat down next to me and told me what had happened.  It was fifth period, and I had spent my morning unaware of the horror occurring just an hour drive away.  By the time I found out, both towers had already collapsed.

A classmate of ours raised his hand and asked our teacher, “Mr. Smith, do you think there’s going to be a war?”  Teachers had been told not to discuss the events.  Some ignored the instruction, shut their classroom doors, and turned on the news anyway.  Mr. Smith answered his student.  He said he didn’t know.

At lunch, the pay phones near the cafeteria were suddenly off-limits.  No one had cell phones back then, and kids in my Connecticut town had parents who worked in Manhattan.  To prevent chaos, I suppose, they weren’t permitted to insert a quarter into the machines and find out if their parents were ok.  Later, I’d learn that the families of my classmates were safe.  A few weeks later, I met a girl who lived 30 minutes south of my town.  Her dad had worked in Tower 1.

I walked the half mile home from school that afternoon, as I did every day.  My thoughts were usually full of teenage daydreams: my future life in college, stories for films I wanted to someday make, the places I couldn’t wait to be old and independent enough to go.  But on this Tuesday, I thought only of reality.  I thought of my uncle, who worked in Queens.  I thought of the dinner my family had had at Windows on the World on August 11th, 2001.  I thought of the university I wanted to attend, located 40 blocks north of what everyone was suddenly calling “ground zero.”

I turned on the news when I got home.  My mom walked in from work an hour later.  She was crying.  We hugged.  She said something about Israel, about all the terror that happened there every other day.  I nodded.  After that, we didn’t know what to say.

My parents and I ate dinner in front of the television.  We watched in silence as President Bush spoke.  It was the first time we had listened to him without rolling our eyes.

We watched the news late into the evening.  I had a biology quiz the next day, but I didn’t touch my notes.  The teacher still gave us the exam.  My score was one of the only average grades I ever received.

Six weeks after September 11, 2001, I turned 16 years old.  Later that school year, we began talking with guidance counselors, teachers, and peers about college.  I had had my mind set on NYU for years, and yet people asked me if maybe now, something had changed.

Everything had changed.  And as I watched this city rise up on the very evening of the attacks, as I saw the spirit of the millions who lived here on my television screen, as I rode the subway on a day trip with my sister later that fall, I knew that New York was no longer the option I wanted the most.  It was the only option.

Every decision I made in high school, every honors or AP class, every good grade, every after-school activity, every bit of extra credit was a means to an end.  It was all for NYU, so I could live here like my grandparents, my great-grandparents before them, and all of the incredible people who make this city the most resilient, powerful, inspiring, artistic, multicultural, intelligent, surprising, delicious, ambitious, beautiful city on earth.

No act of terror will ever be able to take that soul of New York away.  Six weeks from tomorrow, I will turn 26.  I’m still in New York.  And I’m still fiercely proud of it every single day.

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I spent Labor Day weekend visiting my oldest friend in the world just outside of DC.

I first met Mallory at the age of nine.  A friendship founded on bites of a brownie grew into [...]]]> breakfast at first watch in rockville, md: muesli with strawberries, raisins, pecans, and almonds; vanilla yogurt; extra cinnamon; black coffee.

I spent Labor Day weekend visiting my oldest friend in the world just outside of DC.

I first met Mallory at the age of nine.  A friendship founded on bites of a brownie grew into endless elementary school sleepovers, shared obsessions with the Olsen twins, matching pairs of overalls, and magazine cutouts of Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  It took us through middle school, through bad haircuts, bullies, and boy bands.  It took us to high school, to college, and for Mallory, to graduate school.  It’s been with us in many new states and more new countries.  Last weekend, I visited my friend in the newest state she is calling home.

We two are very different people from very different backgrounds: her parents met in high school and began working upon graduation; mine met in their late twenties, after college and grad school, travel, and first full-time jobs.  Her father is a hunter who would bring home elk meat for a family dinner; my mother cooked vegetables and chicken breasts in a hundred different flavors.  As a teen, she adored science and Roman history; I liked to dance and make movies and couldn’t pick just one country that fascinated me the most.  She chose a university with an arboretum on campus; I took the path of concrete and subway tracks.

And yet, our differences have never mattered much.  She’s always supported me as I’ve gone after my dreams.  I’ve always tried to encourage her to go after hers as well.

This weekend, we talked of our separate lives.  I spoke of the ups and downs of coexisting with new roommates as she confessed her struggle to adjust to living alone.   She told me about leaving her apartment 5 minutes before work and still arriving on time; I considered how 5 minutes from my office would put me in the heart of Manhattan’s tourist central, a place I couldn’t imagine calling home.  I responded with my 40 minute commute: a walk, a subway ride with a book, a shorter walk.

My friend told me how she doesn’t like to be in the city alone at night; I thought of how I walk alone in the late hours – with some street smarts, of course – and feel safe.  I mentioned that I don’t have cable or even a TV; she said she likes the hum of the television to fill up her quiet apartment.

And yet…

When we laid on the beach overlooking the Bay Bridge last Sunday, it was as comfortable as the days we spent together on the beaches of southern Croatia.  When we somehow scored free passes to the first dress rehearsal of a world premiere play, our position next to one another in the theater was as familiar as the first time we saw Rent together in our teens.  When we purchased tickets for a late night movie, it felt just like all those summers in Connecticut when we’d see every film playing at the local Crown Marquis.

As we talked this weekend, I realized that difference has been the defining element of our friendship all these years.  We’re different people, but for a few weekends every year, we share experiences together.  We bring our dissimilar lives together and enjoy the comfort of being with someone who has known you since you were nine years old.  I think that kind of friendship is pretty rare.  I feel lucky that I have it.

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