Challah
September 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Yesterday in the late afternoon, I put on a sweatshirt and leggings and my Frye boots and walked the five minutes to Cortland Avenue, our little bustling main street in our little town of a neighborhood within the big city. It had warmed up over the course of the day, but now the fog was coming back in, descending on the valley from Twin Peaks across the way. It was a pretty simple errand: We were out of milk after I made ice cream, and I needed to return a movie to the neighborhood video store.
But as I made the turn onto the last side street, and dunked under a couple of branches of hanging vines with bright violet flowers, I noticed that the sense of adventure was gone. Nothing was exciting, majestic, romantic or exhilarating. There was just the moment when I was standing at the top of the stairs, looking out over the rooftops, with my view blurred white, when the world seemed to stand still. The smile and nod from the driver of the car just passing by. The pink peonies hiding behind an unruly tree streetside. The guy at the video embarrassing a high school girl at checkout by telling her how much she is starting to look like her older sister. The dry, crispy grass at the top of the hill, where, if you look closely at the very peak, by the fence around the radio transmitter, you’ll find opened condom packages and broken beer bottles. But if you sit up there in the dark, as we always did at least once every summer, you can see the Bay on all three sides and the light outline of Mission Street as it stretches across the city.
Why am I saying all of this? Because I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day about people living in San Francisco actually hating the city that really didn’t seem to get the city quite right. That’s not exactly an uncommon thing these days unfortunately — the Chronicle not exactly getting things right. Because in the midst of the people arguing that they had to leave the city to escape the trashiness, the odors that permeate certain alleys, and the skyrocketing housing prices, people arguing that the city has lost its soul, it’s still there. And it’s still here every time I come home. And it’s not going anywhere. What’s gone is opening up the Sunday issue of the Chronicle straight to the Food section and pouring over the photos with a mug of hot chocolate on the couch because that kind of journalism doesn’t seem to exist anymore. What’s gone is sitting at the counter of the neighborhood bakeshop and eating croissants that weren’t quite right and were just a wee bit heavy because now there’s a new bakery two blocks away with the perfect buttery flakes. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the Twitterverse of this new artisan chocolate truffle and that new farm-to-table restaurant, but it doesn’t quite compare to having sticky fingers from strawberry jam and the smell of buttermilk scones wafting through the house in the morning. It doesn’t quite compare to the tourist who craned his neck at the farmers market last weekend at the plate I was holding for my brother, demanding to know what it was. “It’s a crab cake sandwich,” I replied. “The one I’ve eaten every Saturday morning ever since I can remember.”
I followed this recipe for two (huge) loaves of challah to a tee. This is an oil-based version of the bread, I think next time I will try the milk-based version, which should give a richer, chewy crumb.
Děkuji, Praha
August 28, 2011 § 1 Comment
Well that’s it kids. Summer is almost over and I am on a plane back to San Francisco. It’s time to leave behind the train travel, the first pumping to deep house music, the beer (well, the real beer anyway) and most importantly, friends from around the world that somehow made their way to the same places as I did. But before it sounds like my summer was all travel and parties, let me point you in the direction of the project I have been working on in the last two months: my final article at my internship with The New Presence: Czech youth find outlet outside of political system
I could never have completed this project without the continuous help of several people I met in Prague, who went out of their way to put me in contact with their friends, family and colleagues. If at first, this project was just a story idea on a list of several, it stood out as the most interesting to me, and also the most difficult to pull off. Why? Because it required countless interviews with Czech youth, people, whom believe it or not, I did not effortlessly run into in every day life.
I am not sure why it is that whenever you go abroad, you are more likely to meet a lot of expats than actual natives — and I am not talking Americans here, I am talking Spanish, Italians, Russians, Dutch…. But the people I left behind across the ocean are lasting friends, with whom I hope to keep it touch with and whose help in writing this article was invaluable. So thank you, thank you, thank you, I hope to see you all (and Praha) again very soon.
Cinnamon Twists
August 26, 2011 § Leave a comment
The house is pretty silent at four in the morning. Outside it’s still dark and inside, I am sitting in bed (my very own bed, finally) wide awake. I have the kettle on for some black currant tea and I’ve already stirred together the crunchy peanut butter to slather on top of rustic baguette with a drizzle of wildflower honey. In my room, there’s my unopened bottle of Moet champagne, my Fry boots and my two teddy bears, Polar Bear and Little Bear (I was a creative youngster), right where I left them when I boarded the plane to Prague back in June. In a couple of hours, my mom will be awake, spooning peanut butter cookie dough onto trays to put in my brother’s lunch, but for the moment the kitchen is all mine. I pour oats into a ceramic mixing bowl and ladle out a quarter cup of maple syrup. Next, I chop raw almonds and hazelnuts and use a tiny spoon to stir everything together, coating the oats and nuts in syrup. I have always loved little spoons — the ones you use to stir sugar in coffee — and I use them whenever possible, even when they’re not practical. The smell of baking maple syrup wafts through the house and in half and hour there is a tray full of nutty granola sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to be topped with dried apricots and cranberries.
A few hours later, the dark sky has been replaced with a city drenched in thick fog, white mist descending on the rooftops and blurring my vision from the window of the houses across the street. Fresh coffee seeps in the press and I’m taking the yeast out of the fridge, clearing the black marble counter top of the morning’s breakfast. Whole-wheat levain toasted and spread with creamy goat cheese or honey. Tart blueberries and juicy yellow nectarines, much smaller than their European counterparts, only about the size of a baby’s fist, flesh easily pulled away from the pit. I’m pouring over what kind of bread to make, thinking about flours, dense, grey buckwheat and powdery whole-wheat. Honey or molasses.
Before I can decide, I get called away for the morning’s run, a 12-miler through Golden Gate Park, past Stow Lake, along JFK Drive, where I used to spend Sunday mornings bike riding with my parents, before I became terrified of turning on a bike. There’s no explanation for that one, no horror story of a bike accident, just me not liking operating things that move. Down by the cliffs, cold, wispy air brings in the scent of the ocean and there’s no question: I am home.
Cinnamon Twists
From All Recipes
Cinnamon twists have consistently been what my younger brother and I used to order at the neighborhood coffeeshops and bakeries. Wanting to recreate them at home, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go the yeasted brioche dough route or the puff pastry route. This recipe is like a sweet brioche dough, and it worked quite well, but I think if I made them again, I would roll the dough out into much thinner strands and make the twists much smaller, for a much higher cinnamon to bread ratio and bit more of a crunch.
Dough:
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees to 115 degrees F), divided
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup warm milk (110 to 115 degrees F)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
Filling:
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. Add 2 cups of flour, sugar, salt, milk, butter, egg and remaining water and beat on medium speed for minutes. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place the dough in a clean, greased bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until dough has doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Punch down the dough and divide into. Roll into a 16-inch by 12-inch rectangle. Brush with butter. Combine brown sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over butter. Let dough rest for 6 minutes. Cut lengthwise into three 16-inch by 4-inch strips. Cut each strip into sixteen 4-inch by 1-inch pieces. Twist and place on greased baking sheets. Cover again and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.
Bake twists at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
The Ending
August 23, 2011 § Leave a comment
I was sitting on the ground the other day, in the dirt between the rows of the vegetable patch, picking green beans and yellow peas, and talking to a guy from Australia, who is now studying in Sweden, just outside of Copenhagen, which is one of my favorite cities. As we dug underneath the leaves of the plants, searching for our small treasures, we talked about how this was this third attempt at an undergraduate degree, having started his studies twice in Sydney and consequently dropping out. The first time, he said, he was the middle of an economy lecture when he realized he didn’t want to be doing what he was doing and decided to leave the room. And so now we found ourselves all scratched up from moving wood and trimming vines and sitting in the dirt of a farm in Piemonte.
If you told me a year ago I would be spending the last two weeks of my summer on an Italian farm, waking up at 5 a.m. with the crowing of the rooster, running at the sunrise to the next town over — where you might find another corner store and bar — and tossing and turning in bed in the scorching heat of midday before the evening shift of work started, I would have laughed in your face. As I type, I am sitting in the back of a rickety old caravan, driving up the twisting roads into the mountains, on our way to tomorrow’s market. This morning, I was setting out jams and honeys at another market in Alba, going around to the other stalls to taste pungent organic goat cheeses, slurping out the middles of stringy green figs from sticky hands while walking down the alleys of Alba, white truffle country. My forefingers are red, cut and bloody from hours of cutting out the rotting spots of apples, fallen before they could be picked, and my legs are covered in long red stripes from where blackberry branches have been ripped across them. But there are four containers fill of tiny, sweet blackberries to sell at the market, and a blackberry clafoutis sitting in the kitchen cupboard leftover from dinner last night.
Maybe it doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time. Maybe it’s not really mine either. But there are moments when, covered in sweat, you feel like it might be worth the effort; brief, small moments when it seems like the world has turned itself right side up again. Sitting in the back of a tractor, after three long hours of moving chopped wood close to the house in preparation for the winter, with the wind in my face, my body jumping with every dip in the dirt and gravel road, just might make it worth it. The bite of half a purple fig, the very first one off of the tree, handed to me by the grandmother of my new “Italian family” while berry picking at noon and a spoon of hazelnut goat milk yogurt while sitting on the hammock after driving home from the market. The minute you walk into the one bar in town, a twenty minute uphill walk from the farm, and grab a beer from the fridge, imported from Germany, and ignore the strange looks from men who have spent their entire lives on a stool in that bar. Dipping your hands in the washing basin next to the grocery store, where you can pick up the bare necessities (many types of sausages, milk, and chocolate hazelnut cream filled cookies to name a few) and watching the German and Swiss motor bikers cruise by, the bikes practically parallel to the ground as they round the curves in the road. Scavenging for wild blackberries on the walk home from town, hoping they really are wild, or that at least the neighbors won’t notice us. The red sun rising and falling and collapsing into bed at 10 p.m., exhausted and drunk from the two liters of wine plunked down on the table at dinner. Or maybe it was the spoonful of hazelnut gelato, made from fresh cream and hazelnut cream, the specialty of the area for which there is an entire festival next weekend, from a small teacup at the end of a drawn-out dinner, that seemed to emerge from the storeroom out of nowhere, that really got to me.
The farm makes you crazy, crazy from the heat and the exhaustion, and the never-ending lists of tasks to be completed, and the feeling that you could never shower enough times in one day, or ever escape the sounds of the roosters and the dogs barking and jumping on you and licking your sweat, crazy from the need to get out. It might be the hardest thing this city girl has ever done, committing to two weeks in the middle of fucking nowhere. And strangely, it’s not the work that’s getting to me, not the long hours spent weeding in the sun and the repetition of tossing large branches, some covered in thorns, into the back of the tractor. It’s not the fact that this house is filled with strange smells — most not all that enticing — or that I have been turned off of apple butter forever after seeing the state of the apples that are used to make it, let’s say the cast-offs of better times. Rather the hardest part of this place is feeling like I have been thrown into the work without being welcomed into the home, that they smile and say you are part of the family and then get angry when you don’t understand vague instructions given in halting French, or worse, instructions in Italian to which you can only stare back blankly. The hardest part is hearing the woman tear into her husband after every little thing that goes wrong (and even just when he is slow on the uptake) and having to choke back a second piece of the blackberry clafoutis, which is, after all that, far too cloyingly sweet and made with even the hardest, dried-up berries, because she couldn’t bear to sacrifice any.
So yes, I had an alternate ending to this story, and this post. I had a couple of paragraphs written about not quitting despite being far out of my element. I had paragraphs written about the golden sun setting as I sat in the back of the caravan and about the universal language of the kitchen. But the people and the shouting and the snapping got to me. It’s a beautiful region, filled with mountains and valleys and cresses and rows of grape vines that stretch as far as the eye can see, but I’m leaving. Sometimes you just have to pick up and leave.
Gypsy Soul
August 15, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’m sitting on a regional train heading up the west coast of Italy and kicking myself because I don’t know why I ever thought eight hours spent on a train would be a good idea. And then two hours spent in the train station. And then another one and a half on a bus to Alba. The little boy sitting diagonal from me has long since finished his panino and exhausted the possibilities of playing with the kids in the compartment next to us. The man across from me has removed himself for about ten cigarette breaks since our departure in Formia. My train ticket has been checked five times. And still there’s two hours to go.
I have tried watching the Italian countryside out the window, fields upon fields of sunflowers, the Mediterranean Sea glistening on the other side, children’s clothes and dishcloths hanging out the windows to dry. I’m starving, and already missing the home cooking I had gotten used to, but the rickety cart that bangs down the aisle selling panini and chocolate bars has little appeal.
About an hour ago, we passed the five towns of Cinque Terre, where I spent a weekend at the beginning of July. It was a lazy weekend that somehow managed to jam-pack clubbing in Milano, swimming, sun-bathing and uphill hiking and eating a few too many gelatos and breadcrumb stuffed mussels from high perches overlooking the sea. Now from the train window, I see the rocky shore where we stopped for our first swim in Corniglia and the steep set of stairs that brings you from the Manarola train station to the center of town.
As we arrive in Genova, many of the passengers disembark and I finally have space to put my feet up. Only an hour to go. I start thinking about getting on a plane and going home. It wouldn’t take much longer than this train trip. The little boy is passed out with his mouth and eyes half-open, but I’m pretty sure he’s asleep. His father sitting next to me is reading some inane book in English, very slowly. I’m listening to Colder Weather, and while I’m pretty sure it’s warmer here than it is anywhere else, it seems to fairly accurately reflect this journey. Except instead of road-side diners, I’m seeing a lot of beach town sandwich joints called bars. That is, when I am not seeing someone’s clean underwear hanging out the window. Now both parents are passed out too and I’m trapped in this compartment, right as I was considering tracking down that pitiful food cart and trying to score a Kinder bar.
The famous gelato shop in Gaeta had Kinder flavored gelato. And Snickers gelato, only they called it Mr. Nico. And Nutella of course, only for some strange reason that was one of the flavors they rotated out over the course of the week. Damn, the cart just passed and the man didn’t even look up so I could ask it to stop. Though, it might take me a little while to figure out how to ask that. Maybe I’ll be ready by the next time it passes by.
Sono andata a Gaeta
August 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
When I stumbled into the kitchen this morning at 6:15, early enough for a long run before the sun started beating down hard at 8 a.m., I was surprised to find nonna already awake, with a couple of whole fish in her hands by the stove. She didn’t seem surprised at all to see me though, as she seems keenly aware of all movements in her apartment, just steps from the Mediterranean Sea. I made a gesture to indicate “running” and she replied “caffe?” without skipping a beat. Si grazie.
The caffe is dark and smooth, pressing a jolt of energy into just a small tip of the pot. She heats the water over the flame of gas stove and then pours me perhaps the equivalent of three espresso shots. Sugar is provided, just for me, though I even admit it is unneeded and often opt for just a small splash of milk. Ten minutes later, I am running up the hill to the Mausoleum, and back down around the Aragonese-Angevine Castle, through the old town and along the wharf side of the peninsula. Along the way, stray cats scamper down alleys that are just a flight of stairs, an older woman with a shaggy dog more than half her size gestures at me to stop and curiously asks a question, which I do not understand and for which I have no answer. Along the water, middle-aged men gather near the edges of the parking lots, tanned and pruned from the sun. One or two people take a caffe at the nearby bars, but for the most part the town of Gaeta is barely awake, lazily tossing and turning in the rising heat.
Back home now, nonna sets out the rest of the crostata, filled with strawberry jam, that she made a few days earlier, and a bowl of fresh fruit — green figs, stringy and sweet, small, ripe pears the size of a baby’s fist, and huge, fuzzy peaches. She teaches me how to cut off the top of a fig and peel back the skin, and starts peeling all the other fruits…the peaches, the plums, the pears all become skinless in seconds in her unwavering hands. On the stovetop, brilliant red tomatoes is already roasting with garlic and basil for the lunch she will set on the table at one.
Nonna refuses help with everything but setting the table, you have to fight her to be able to clear it. Her movements in the kitchen, if slow, are deliberate. As she speaks no English, she and I get along mostly with gestures, or her granddaughters translating, though the early morning provides the time to practice the few thoughts I can string together in Italian, pertaining to how long I expect to be gone running that morning. In the afternoons she stays at home when we walk the two minutes to the beach. Long lines of pre-paid umbrellas line the white sand, and the turquoise water is filled with jumping children and guys playing water volleyball, who stop and stare. The girls laugh because they know what the guys are saying, and it usually goes something like “look, she has blond hair!”
We come home, sticky and sandy, skin crusted with salt, in the early afternoon. Lunch is a long, drawn out affair: grilled strips of eggplant folded over melted fresh mozzarella and topped with slow roasted cherry tomatoes from the garden, spaghetti with calamari and tomato sauce. The cheese as a rule, is set out on clean plates only after the rest of the table has been cleared, and then comes huge (and mandatory) slices of watermelon, which are the size of a massive, egg-shaped pumpkin. When, at long last, the table is empty, we are sent back to the beach before dinner.
In Italia
August 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Last night, I started thinking about home. Really, it was one of those nights when I felt like being in the kitchen, wanted my hands in the dough, wanted to be pulling cookie sheets out of the oven, one by one. Craved the slow, repetitive process, the Norah Jones soundtrack that has become a mainstay in our kitchen, and my little brother crooning along. But since I am living on my own right now, the kitchen is, quite typically, devoid of groceries. The flour bin is empty, the fridge is barren. So no baking was to happen last night.
But it got me thinking about making dinner, something that rarely happens when I am alone. It got me thinking about pizza dough, and fresh pasta, and my dad fussing over my food pictures (the top one is his work by the way), and shopping at Bi-Rite every couple of days, pulling ripe melons from the shelves, skirting around people similarly excited about the produce. It got me thinking about standing in ice cream lines with my brother and some of my favorite places in San Francisco, feeling like I should go through the archives of everything I made in the days leading up to my departure, and about how long we have been talking about taking a family vacation to Italy only to have it come down to me going alone for the whole month of August.
And even though my little brother likes to hold it over my head that his Italian is so much better than mine, it would have been nice to have him along. At least then he could order gelato for me! As it is, it looks like I am landing in Rome and making my way up the western shore to Gaeta and then on through Torino to my farming adventure. After so much time spent surrounded by people here in Prague and the last two weeks with some of my best friends from home, it will be interesting to go back to traveling on my own.
Blueberry Boy Bait
August 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
There’s a funny story behind this cake, one that has nothing to do with me making it for a dinner party at an Italian friend’s flat in Prague. We sat around the table eating caprese and pasta and drinking wines he selected from the downstairs cellar, listening to him play American classics on the guitar, and then had this cake before heading out. But really, this cake is from the days at Princeton, sitting around the common room when we were supposed to be doing work, flipping through pages and pages of foodporndaily.com and stalking Smitten Kitchen.
One girl on my team had a particularly unhealthy obsession with blueberries (or healthy as we liked to say because blueberries are a good recovery food) and I had a truly unhealthy obsession with blueberry muffins, so this cake was the perfect match. I can’t remember the day one of us stumbled upon it on Smitten Kitchen but it has been a must-make since then, particularly due to its catchy name “Blueberry Boy Bait.” You could have two possible questions at this point and they would be a.) How is a bait different than a cake? And b.) Does it really rope in boys as the name implies?
Apparently in a 1954 Pillburg Bake-Off, a 15-year-old girl won second place in the junior division with this cake. She said that the cake was named due to its effect on boys. Now, I have no idea whether that is true or not, needless to say I didn’t try it out, but the story in itself makes the cake that much more exciting. I mean, I couldn’t imagine myself at 15 having the savvy to win boys over with cake. But I guess some people are more advanced than others….
I guess try it out sometime on a boy of your choosing. Hey, if a 15-year-old girl can do it, I think you might be successful. Though, beware, there is a ton of butter in this cake. As in, it tastes like butter. You can decide for yourself whether or not that is a good thing, but I will say that the tartness of the blueberries helps balance it out.
Vanilla Ice Cream
August 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Yesterday I tried ice cream for the first time in the Czech Republic, arguably one of their main food groups (alongside bread, meat and potatoes). It was light and fluffy, unlike any other ice cream I have tasted. It has the texture of whipped cream in a frozen state and came in flavors such as whiskey cream and sour berry. A single scoop cost 20 crowns, just over a dollar.
Later in the day, we walked a couple more blocks to the Mysak pastry shop. After a bit of fussing around with the guy behind the counter — who we are certain now, was attempting to ask us back for coffee sometime, but couldn’t quite phrase the question correctly and then got nervous when we didn’t understand — we made our (single) order: a white sponge cake topped with a layer of fluffed cream and a tall layer of jellied sour berries, all covered in a sheet of marzipan. It got wrapped up so extensively that we stood on the sidewalk for a good five minutes, spoons at the ready, battling sheets of paper out of the way to get at the slice.
Standing on the street, I realized this was probably the first real food adventuring I have done in Prague, not counting the first time I tried fried Camembert with cranberry relish. Here, I’ve been more obsessed with the people, the people from all over the world (though mostly Europe) that flock here. Not the people that are scrambling into pictures on the Charles Bridge, but the people who have come here and somehow ended up staying. The people you find sitting on the curb in the middle of the night, tying their metallic gold kicks, who jump at a conversation when you compliment their shoes. The French tourists you can convince from going to one of the snazziest clubs in town to one of the grungiest, and they don’t even bat an eye. The Dutch kids, and oh there are a lot of them — I think I’ve heard “I’m from Holland” more than any other country combined in the past few weeks — who arrive in huge packs (think 11).
Which is sort of how I came here. But it’s funny now, as I am talking to a bunch of Czech youth for an article I am finishing up, how similar the atmosphere here is, at least politically — the frustration with feeling like the government rarely does what it promises on the campaign trail, the apathy of the youth towards voting because they feel it will not make a difference, the feeling that the country’s money is not going where it should. The article has been a reminder that a lot of political and economic problems traverse national and cultural borders, that a lot of the world’s issues are the same no matter where you go. So while I may talk a lot about food, and what you can learn about a culture through it, nothing really beats getting out there and talking to people.
Bonus points if the talking occurs over a bowl of this ice cream.
I followed this recipe to a tee, except I used these instructions for making ice cream by hand. Yes, you read that correctly. You do not need an ice cream maker. Get in the kitchen and make this, your view of ice cream will never be the same again.
Speculoos Biscuits
July 31, 2011 § Leave a comment
In the middle of July, the air turns frigid and the clouds open up their pearly gates and outside the living room window, the sky darkens and I no longer feel the urge to crawl up onto the roof. The rain followed us through Paris and Ghent, to Amsterdam, and after a brief let-up, came down with us to Prague. So instead of casually wandering the canals of Amsterdam, I sprinted from store to store, doing shopping that I really didn’t need to do. We managed a brief, but rewarding picnic of baguette, goat cheese and rosé (plus Nutella, were you really expecting otherwise?) on the Seine, but otherwise sought shelter in the corner cafés. Being in Paris was disconcerting, my fingers remembered the code to the courtyard outside of my old flat and we ran in one day and peered at my old front door.
Something about seeing Paris made the homesick bug set in a bit. I have one and a half weeks left in Prague (crazy right) and then it’s off to Italy. Despite the quickly closing time period in this city, I am not consumed with the desperate realization that I have seen nothing of it, as I felt as I was about to leave Paris. When people ask me if Prague is like how I imagined it would be before coming here, I really struggle to come up with a reply; no one seems to believe me when I say I arrived here with zero expectations, but I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything specific. When people ask how I came to Prague of all places, the honest response is that it was random. I wanted to be abroad and I ended up in the most beautiful city I have ever been to in Europe.
But after a week of traveling and a week of entertaining, the exhaustion has set in. Our sleeping schedule has basically become 6 a.m. to noon, with a tired zone out around 5 p.m. It’s time to sit still, lie in bed, stare out the window, and process, process, process. As this whole year is coming to an end, it’s strange to think about going back to the U.S. for good, going back to school and leaving this part of me behind. But it’s also been good for me to accept that parts of your life come to an end, people come and go and a lack of expectations is actually a good thing to carry with you.
So here’s to a million loads of laundry and packing up my Eurotrip backpack!
Soufflé Days 