You know, it’s funny—a year ago today, we spent New Year’s Eve at home, eating nachos, drinking wine and painting the living room black. And also watching Lifetime movies, even though I didn’t mention that in my post. This year we’re at home, we’re eating cookies, drinking coffee (me) and vegan white Russians (Evan), and painting the dining room black. And watching Saturday Night Fever. Progress!

Our stove has been busted for a while (the top burners were usable, but not the oven) so roasting and baking stuff has been impossible lately. This morning the repair guy came ($130 for what literally took about 5 seconds and involved tapping a knob with the back of a screwdriver…ugh), so tonight I made the most of the restored service and made a really good dinner to send off 2011.

For the main dish, I made Hottie Black Eyed Peas and Collard Greens (SO GOOD…but then every recipe Isa writes is awesome) and a side of roasted carrots. I’m usually not big on cooked carrots, but seriously, these were AMAZING. The key is cutting them thinly enough and roasting them long enough that they get tender (not mushy!) and caramelized and crispy at the edges.

ROASTED CARROTS (vegan)
Make however much you want!

You need: Carrots, olive oil, garlic, coarse salt.

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 375°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Step 2: Peel some carrots. Cut them into strips that are roughly 1/2″ thick and 2–3″ long.
Step 3. Put the carrots in a mixing bowl.
Step 4. Add a few glugs of olive oil (how much depends on the amount of carrots you’re making) and some coarse salt. Toss to coat!
Step 5: Slice a few cloves of garlic in half lengthwise. Toss into the mix.
Step 6: Spread everything out on the cookie sheet and roast for 40—50 minutes. Just keep an eye on them. You want nicely shriveled and maybe even a little charred here and there, but not burnt to a crisp.
Step 7: YUM.

For dessert, I made Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles. OMG. Like I said, everything Isa comes up with is magic, and these are no exception. They’re nice and soft and chewy, chocolatey, and just the right amount of spicy. Mine didn’t get all crackly on top like hers did (maybe because I used coconut oil instead of canola oil), but ooooooohhhhh. So good.

Alright, it’s time for me to get back to my paintbrush. Happy New Year, everybody! Best wishes for a happy and healthy and productive 2012.

This is my new affirmation banner from Secret Holiday. I haven’t found the right place to hang it yet, but it’s already making me feel good in its temporary spot. It’s pretty great, yeah? I’m not usually one for inspirational posters (I always think of the “Hang in There!” kitten), but I think this banner is exactly what I need in my life.

The word OK is hugely comforting for me. About a year ago, I wrote a post about body image and self-acceptance called “I’m OK”, and I come back to it all the time when I’m feeling down on myself. There’s a reason it wasn’t called “I’m perfect” or even “I’m fine.” The word OK implies something else—it takes into account a certain amount of shortcoming, I think, and makes it alright. OK.

I had dinner with Jenna the other night, and we talked about the practice of looking at the worst case scenario as a means to bring peace of mind. That might sound counterintuitive, but think about it—if you let yourself look at the worst possible outcome when faced with either a situation that seems beyond your control or with making a decision that feels impossible, where does that outcome actually leave you? Are you still putting one foot in front of the other? Are you still sleeping in a bed at night? Of course horribly tragic things can happen at any time, but for the most part, you’ll probably be alright—and more than likely, you won’t even have to face that worst case scenario. Accept the shortcomings, accept the negatives, and be glad that everything is pretty OK.

OK? OK!

Oh, hello there! Remember me? I’m Anna. I used to have a blog—this one right here that you’re reading, in fact! I also used to have time to do things like tile bathrooms, vacuum, go outdoors, shower, cook, think, and sleep.

I’ve written plenty here about what I do for a living, and I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I like working in-house for a publishing company. I love it, in fact. I’ve been at my job for nearly 14 years now, and I have no desire say goodbye to my 9–5 job (which is really more like 9:30–6:30, but you know what I mean). There are times, though, when I like to design something that’s not a book cover. And sometimes I also think it might be nice to have a little extra cash. More than both of those things, though, I really like to help people and make stuff look nice.

So I started taking on some freelance design work. Which turned into lots of freelance design work. Which then became lots and lots of freelance design work. Before I knew it, I was working about 100 hours a week between my full-time job and my “night shift.” My freelance hours started to outnumber my full-time hours, leaving me with the equivalent of about 2½ full-time jobs.

And that’s not alright.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you are probably well aware of ever-increasing stress levels and ever-decreasing sleeping hours, since that’s all I really talk about anymore. I’m busy, I’m tired, I’m drinking coffee, I’m still awake, I’m busy, I’m going to have another coffee…and holy mackerel, I’m so tired. Ad nauseum.

After this weekend, I’m taking a break from doing freelance work for a while. I’m not sure how long, but I need to stop, step back, and think about what I really want to be getting out of the work that I’m electing to do in my free time. I’ve learned some lessons over the past few months:

1. It is okay to say no. I know that seems obvious, and I’m sure we all think we know already, but it’s hard for me to say no to people. I think this is especially true of those of use who truly LOVE what do for a living, either because we tend to see our work as an extension of our everyday lives, or because we honestly just like to make someone happy by saying YES. Also—and I know my fellow designers with sympathize—sometimes you don’t want to say no to a project because you worry that it will wind up in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and then there will just be one more piece of bad design in the world. Yes, that is a completely self-important attitude loaded to the brim with ridiculousness, but it’s the truth.

2. Money doesn’t really motivate me. Yes, it’s great to not have to struggle to make ends meet and to be able to buy nice things every now and then, but really—I don’t care much about money. I never think about potential income in relation to the work that I do. Book publishing is a notoriously low-paying field of design, and I’m okay with that. I always have been, because I love books and I love designing the packages that contain them. The same goes for the non-book freelance work that I do. I really have to care about the project (and the person or people behind it) in order with it to be worth my time. After all, if it’s not about the money, the reason take on a job has to be a little more meaningful than “because it’s there.”

3. I am always going to be one person, and there are always going to be 24 hours in a day. Again, I know that’s obvious, but I’ve had some moments of delirium lately in which I am fully convinced that if I could only clone myself or hit my head on the bathroom sink and invent a flux capacitor, then maybe I’d be able to get my work done. This is crazy-talk. No one should elect to live their life this way just because they don’t know how to say no (see item #1).

4. There’s more to life than coffee, you know (but not much more). I make no secret about my love of coffee, but that love should really be based more on enjoying the taste, the aroma, and the ritual of the brewing process—not on a desperate need to consume as much as possible in order to avoid drooling on my keyboard at 3AM. I mean…really now.

5. I am totally in the right field of work. I love being a designer. I love taking on challenges that require me to think about structure, organization, space and hierarchy. I love making grids. I love doing font research. I love showing something I’ve done to a client and having them get excited (and sometimes even cry—you know who you are!) about seeing their words or product or music wrapped up and presented in a way that perfectly represents exactly who they are and what they do. I love finishing a project and feeling like it looks like me, too. I like making stuff look good. I love that putting two colors together can make someone feel happy. I like pretty things that work well.

I’m really looking forward to getting normal amounts of sleep, though, and having time to just be a human every now and then.

It’s been one year (and three days) since I turned thirty-five. Now I’m thirty-six.

I usually do a post on my birthday so that I have a marker of the time that’s passed, but this year it seems like that time is passing quicker than ever. I’m so, so, so busy (hence the lack of posts here—I’m sorry about that, but things just get like that sometimes!), and to be honest, it feels like I just had a birthday maybe a month or two ago. What happened to the past year?!

So. Thirty-six. That means I was eighteen years old…eighteen years ago. Which seems kind of impossible since I really still think of myself as being eighteen. (Okay, maybe nineteen. Twenty on a bad day.) Am I in my “late 30s” now? Or does that not start until thirty-nine?

It’s late at night on September 10th, 2011 as I start writing, but in truth I’ve composing this in my head for years.

My story isn’t special. It’s the same as that of thousands and thousands of other people. Everyone in the world has an answer to the perpetual question: Where where you? And everyone who was in New York City on September 11, 2001 has their own variation, too.

I was living alone in Cobble Hill at the time, just south of Brooklyn Heights—a few blocks from the waterfront that looks out across East River toward the skyline of lower Manhattan. I lived alone at the time, and I was running late for work after voting in the primary election at the school down the block. As with every other morning (then and now), I had on the New York Public Radio station, WNYC, whose broadcast center was in lower Manhattan. As the clock inched toward 9AM, the news was starting to get very weird. They had received a call from a listener who had seen what looked like a huge wheel in the street, and was it possible that it had fallen off of a plane overhead? And, in my memory, a simultaneous call that another listener had just seen a plane fly into the World Trade Center.

I don’t remember turning on the television, and I don’t remember at what point WNYC’s transmitter—located on top of the World Trade Center—went out. I just remember picturing something like a scene from King Kong and grabbing my bag to hurry off to work.

I heard the second plane hit the South Tower while I was walking to the subway. I didn’t know what it was at the time, of course, and my route to the train took me out of the line of sight of the events transpiring across the river. I continued to the subway, paid my fare, and road the train in with a car full of people who seemed to not really be concerned about much of anything. As far as I can recall, it was an ordinary commute.

By the time I got to my office in Rockefeller Center, a third plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and there was no question in anyone’s mind that the United States was under attack. This was not an accident; there was no King Kong. Over the course of the 45 minutes that I was underground en route to work in Manhattan, everything had changed.

I just had to stop writing for a few minutes and let myself cry. The clock just turned to midnight, and it is officially ten years later.

Let me just say this straight up: I love my coworkers. Some of them have moved on over the 13 years I’ve been there and some new friends have joined the team, but the core group of people has remained same—and I love them. All of us were there in the office that morning, trying to find out whatever news we could online (not as instantaneous then as it is now) and wondering where we should go or what we should do. One coworker’s girlfriend was at work in the World Trade center. He couldn’t get a hold of her by phone, so he just ran. She got out.

Word trickled in that one of the buildings had collapsed. How was that possible? What was happening? We were in the middle of Manhattan in a landmarked building in a tourist area. Were we a target? We didn’t know—we didn’t know anything. We were scared, the phone lines were down, and we could already see military vehicles on the street outside.

So we left. We took our things and we left. We walked about 20 blocks south to my coworker’s husband’s office—they had a TV there, and at least it wasn’t in a building that felt like a target. By the time we arrived, another plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. I watched the North Tower collapse on television.

To this day, I cannot reconcile the fact that what I saw on the screen was actually happening a couple of miles away from me. None of it seemed possible. I don’t know if it was a defense mechanism or just a lack of understanding of the situation, but I don’t remember crying—I was just shocked and scared. Terrified. It’s hard for me to admit that now that I know I was never in immediate danger, but at the time it didn’t feel that way. At the time, it quite literally felt as though the whole of New York City—if not the entire country—was under invasive attack.

I remember my boss checking to make sure we all had cash on us. I had to tell him, shamefully, that because my account balance was under $20, I was unable to make a withdrawal from the ATM. So he gave me $20. (Why I remember that, I don’t know.)

At some point, those of us who lived in Brooklyn decided to try to get home. After some debate about which bridge was most likely to be bombed or struck by a plane (probably the Brooklyn Bridge, since it was the most recognizable), we decided to walk to the Manhattan Bridge. It took a long time to get there. The streets were filled with people making an exodus from Manhattan in whatever direction they could—many of them covered with ash, and some with torn clothes and blood on their faces. The closer we got to lower Manhattan, the scarier it got. By the time we crossed Canal Street, we were constantly looking up at the sky. Just to make sure.

Much has been made of the camaraderie of New Yorkers in the time following the attack, but what I remember from that day was silence. Granted, it was a silence filled with sirens and bullhorns and military planes, but for the most part people all seemed to be keeping to themselves. Everyone was just moving forward.

We moved forward, too. We crossed the bridge with a great deal of trepidation. On the Brooklyn side, we were greeted by members of the Hasidic community who had loaded up vans with bottled water. That was the first time I cried.

September 12, 2001 // Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Touching ground in Brooklyn felt like reaching safety. By the time I walked all the way to my apartment it was late afternoon. I was finally able to get through on the phone to my parents and confirm that everyone in my family was safe.

Then the TV went on. And it did not go off for days and days and days. I spent all of my time alternating between watching news reports—the same things, those same horrible shots, over and over—and walking to the waterfront to watch the billowing smoke that continued to rise for weeks. I don’t think I’d ever felt so lonely before in my life. And by the time I gathered myself up enough to get out and donate blood, they didn’t want it anymore—there was no one to give it to. I am sure I was not alone in feeling utterly helpless.

The words I’ve written here so far mean nothing other than that I am very lucky.

Nearly 3,000 people died as a direct result of the attacks in New York, Arlington, and Pennsylvania. They died for no reason other than that they went to work or got on a plane. 411 emergency workers died while rushing directly into unfathomable danger to rescue others. The 33 passengers and 7 crew members on Flight 93 managed to prevent their plane from hitting the Capitol before they, too, died. Countless first responders’ lives will be cut short due to the yet-unknown effects of inhaling dust at Ground Zero.

Thousands have gone to fight in the wars that have followed, and thousands will never return. Thousands of families have lost their loved ones forever, and the number keeps increasing.

It’s now 1:26AM on September 11, 2011. Ten years have passed, and I still cannot reconcile that the Twin Towers are gone, and that something so horrible happened here, in my city. Not a day passes that I don’t think about it at some point, whether it’s fear for my safety or grief over the lives that were lost.

And I am lucky to not have a special story.

So…I’m pretty tired. Exhausted, actually. I’m doing WAY too many things at once, and while there is an end to this madness in sight, I’ve been feeling more than slightly crazed lately.

I was just in the kitchen refilling my iced coffee glass at 12:32AM (Mommy, if you’re reading this, I swear I really am alright—and don’t pretend like you don’t get the late-night work crazies just like I do!) when a single thought ran across my brain:

Oh my god, this is all JUST LIKE that episode of “Ren & Stimpy” where Ren goes insane and eats soap.

Now, I realize that even just thinking that is kind of nuts, but I immediately had to go and watch the clip to see if, in fact, I am becoming a deformed cartoon Chihuahua with SPACE MADNESS.

And yes. Yes I am.

Okay, enough about cameras and design and money and houses and STUFF. Sometimes you just need to watch a Mariachi band serenading a Beluga whale.

(And yes, I am putting this in the “four legs” category.)

When I heard the news on Saturday that Amy Winehouse had passed away, my impulse was not to write about her death…or her life. Although I am a fan of her music and have followed her over the years, I don’t know if I’m capable of deeply connecting emotionally with musicians that I’ve discovered as an adult. No, that kind of ability to attach ended for me when I left my teens, I think.

I think the saddest part of hearing that she’d died—and I’ve heard many others say the same thing—was that I didn’t have any sense of shock. I was stunned, yes, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it was inevitable.

That isn’t true, of course; it’s impossible to chart the course of a person’s life based solely on addiction or tabloid new coverage. Everyone follows their own path—no fate was etched in stone for Amy. But here we are. She’s gone, and the world doesn’t get her back.

Amid all of the belabored chatter about the (in)significance of her age (enough, already) and her last performance and all of her many troubles that played out in front of the world, there was this article, written by Rabbi Shais Taub, who works toward recovery with Jewish addicts:

There is a lesson to be learned from every death. To anybody out there going through the living hell of active addiction—whether you yourself are an addict or you are someone who loves an addict—here is my message to you. Please know that it’s not that you haven’t tried everything there is to try. It’s not that you’re not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, determined enough. You could multiply your efforts and your will power by literally a million times, you could have the whole world on your side, and still face the same heartbreaking outcome in the end.

So who knows if this was inevitable, really. We don’t know. I do think Amy wanted to live, and I do believe that if she’d managed to get herself straight again she’d have given us a whole lot more music to enjoy. Let’s remember that no person should be defined solely by a tragic death or by an addiction. As it is, though, she’s gone, and we’re left with what managed to get out of her heart before she went down.

I’ve lived in New York for my entire life, and as much I love this state all the time, I love it more than ever right now. A few hours ago, the New York Senate voted 33-29 in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, which brings this country a whole lot closer to realizing our founding ideals of equality.

To every tireless LGBT advocate who has fought for equal rights for decades; to every senator who crossed party lines to ensure the bill’s passage; to Governor Andrew Cuomo; and to everyone who wasn’t afraid to SPEAK OUT and ACT UP in order to get this done—THANK YOU.

And to all of my beloved friends who until today were denied the right to choose to marry if and who they wish, thank you for hanging in there. I never took for granted that I could do what you couldn’t without a second thought. And I love you so much.

Now go and have the BEST Pride Weekend EVER.

Hey! Look what I got! Crazy, right? Thanks to all of the amazing comments on this post, I came to (at least) two conclusions: (1) iPhones are great, and (2) I should just go ahead and buy that planner.

I feel a little weird about the iPhone, honestly. I was very late in even owning a regular cell phone, and phones in general make me uneasy. I find it hard to have verbal conversations with people when I can’t see their faces or get a read of their body language. I also really don’t want to fall into a “gadget cycle”—you know, where you start feeling like the thing you own is obsolete and you’re behind the times so you’d better throw your thing in the landfill and buy a newer, better thing. You know I love me some Apple goods, but our friend Stevie J (yeah, he lets me call him that) is really good at releasing NEWER! BETTER! FASTER! products at just the right pace that you never really feel like you’re caught up. I already feel like that about my desktop computers, my laptop, and my MP3 player. Do I really need to feel like that about my phone, too?

Apparently, the answer is now a resounding yes. I love my new white iPhone! I still kinda feel like a 3-year-old trying to handle chubby crayons, but it’s great. (And yes, of course I joined Instagram. You can find me under an unexpected username…doorsixteen.) I’m particularly excited about having constant access to maps, since I have the sense of direction of a dizzy earthworm (head for the light!).

And the planner! I’m doing this! Yes! Okay, so I just got it on Friday, but the first thing I did was write down my plans for the night—dinner and an Echo & the Bunnymen concert* (yes, they were awesome) with Jenna. And then I did both things, so it must be working already! Plans! In a planner! With dates!

No, seriously. I’m excited about this. Tonight before I go to bed I’m going to make some loose notes for things I need to do this week and appointments I have to remember. Then I’m going to put the planner in my bag (with a pen!), and remember to look at it tomorrow. And the next day. Because that’s how it works, right?

*EDIT: Want to know how the Bunnymen concert was? Jenna wrote a funny synopsis that says it better than I could!

I know, I know…posts here are few and far between. I wish that weren’t the case, but lately life has been busy. And yeah, I keep saying that, but it’s true. I know there are plenty of people (like, say, people with kids or President Obama, for example) who are busier than I am, but I guess they’re all just better at handling it. I am really bad with budgeting my time, and I’m one of those weird procrastinators who manages to mentally rearrange priorities in a way that neglects the stuff that actually matters and has a deadline attached to it but make me feel like it’s super important that I rearrange my canned goods RIGHT NOW OR ELSE.

I other words, I’m ridiculous.

I need to figure all of this out. I want to learn how to plan a schedule and get organized. I want to know how to use a calendar. I don’t want to always be feeling like nothing is done and that I have a million obligations looming over my head. For whatever reason, I wound up with one of those brains that needs to physically write something down with a pen on paper before I can remember it. Taking notes on a computer (I don’t own a smart phone) doesn’t work—I need to actually make the words with my hand in order for them to connect with my brain, it seems.

I really like these Tomorrow Planners from Poketo. I’ve kind of decided that if I buy one, it will change my life. I haven’t bought one yet, though. Maybe I’m afraid it won’t work. Or maybe I’m just horrified by the shipping fee. Whatever it is that’s stopping me, I’m still writing everything down on Post-It notes and the backs of receipts.

This is the least cohesive post I’ve ever written, but also one of the most honest. I’m not the get-it girl you think I am, you know. I’m kind of a mess.

My fellow write-it-downers: How do you keep track? Do you have a magical notebook? A special pen? Extra coffee? How can I make this happen? Help.

Okay, no, it’s not spring yet. But almost! Did you know we spring forward this weekend?! Yes, already! (I think Evan is going to be a little annoyed when he finds out, considering he finally got around to setting the kitchen clock above the refrigerator back an hour just a couple of weeks ago…)

I’ve been feeling kind of grumpy and sad lately. I think it’s mostly because of some stuff that we have going on that’s pretty cruddy and lame, but I’m also sure I’m just ready for winter to be over. I know, I know…I’m the one who looooves winter, but really, this winter has been exceptionally aggressive in its winteryness. I’d be totally fine if it were, say, 65° and sunny tomorrow. Just sayin’.

I tend not to post much when I’ve got the grumpy sads (especially when I’m also really busy with work stuff, which I am…which is good, but stressful), so I apologize if things are a little quiet around here for a bit. (I’m always on the Twitter, though!)

It’s not just me, right?

I swear I don’t mean to be turning this joint into a food blog! I do a lot more cooking in the winter than in summer, though, and a lot less in the way of house stuff.

Since we hadn’t done our weekly grocery shopping yet, I put a really simple, really delicious lunch together for Evan and I Evan and myself Evan and me (GOOD GRIEF—thanks, Kate!) today using the remainder of the vegetables we had in the fridge. It took just over an hour to get it on the table, but the prep time was only about 10 minutes. (I’m amazed I thought to start it early. Usually weekend lunch is something that starts to take shape after we’ve both realized we’re starving.)

If you’ve never had kale chips before, well…you really need to hop to it. Even if you think you don’t like kale, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone not liking kale chips. They’re like ultra-thin, nutty-tasting potato chips, only way, WAY better for you. Did you know that kale is one of the most nutritionally-dense foods in the world? Seriously, it’s like magic, and you should be eating lots and lots of it.

ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH (vegan)
Serves 2 hungry people

1 butternut squash
6 cloves garlic
2 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp agave nectar (or maple syrup)
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 tsp ground black peper
dash cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Peel squash and scoop out flesh/seeds., then cut into 1″ chunks.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until thoroughly coated, then pour into a medium casserole dish. Roast for 50-55 minutes (turn halfway through cooking), or until squash is tender.

Serve as-is, or mash up a bit with a wooden spoon. If you have leftovers, try heating them up the next day with some brown rice.

KALE CHIPS (vegan)
Makes enough for 1-4 people, depending on greediness

1 large bunch kale
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon juice
fine sea salt

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Wash and thoroughly dry kale. Cut out the thick center stalk, then cut into bite-sized pieces (I just do this with kitchen scissors—you don’t need to be precise).

In a large bowl, combine kale, olive oil, and lemon juice. Make sure the olive oil gets all over the kale.

Spread the kale in a single layer on a couple of cookie sheets. Sprinkle with salt. Bake for 20-30 minutes. The time will vary depending on the amount of moisture in your kale. You want the kale to get nice and crispy and dark. Just keep a close eye on it and make sure it doesn’t burn.

When your kale is good and crunchy, you may want to put a little more salt on it, or toss it with some nutritional yeast. Whatever you do, you’re going to want to eat all of it, trust me.

I get asked a lot for cookbook recommendations, and I usually decline to answer because I’m not really a “cookbook person”. Sure, I own a couple dozen that I’ve bought over the years, but I tend to either look for recipes online or just make stuff up (and then promptly forget what I did, so I can never make the dish exactly the same again).

Now, though, I have a recommendation: Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’m one of those people who loves vegetables. I crave broccoli the way that some crave chocolate. (I crave all kinds of garbage, too, so don’t go thinking I’m being all foodlier-than-thou here or anything.) I can honestly say that despite taking a “vegetarian rumspringa” before deciding to fully vegan, I don’t miss meat. All at. Or milk, or eggs, or cheese. (Okay, that’s a lie. I do miss stinky cheese sometimes. But then I think about where it comes from, and I don’t miss it anymore.) Blah, blah, blah…I love vegetables. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

I think a lot of people get weirded out and worried by the thought of going vegetarian or vegan because they think that means they need to eat a bunch of processed meat-substitutes, many of which are really not very good for you. Sure, that stuff is fine here and there, but veggies and grains and legumes are really where it’s at. Appetite for Reduction excels in making those whole foods the stars of the plate. I like that. I have a few of Moskowitz’s other books, but I think this one is the best.

All of the recipes in the book are between 200 and 400 calories, and full nutritional information is listed for each. I try not to worry too much about that stuff, but it’s a nice side bonus. Aside from the yummy results I’ve had from every recipe I’ve tried, the best part is that the recipes are simple and fast and don’t require 8 billion ingredients or tons of prep time. That’s key for me, because if I foresee 90 minutes of cooking and a sinkful of dishes in my future, I’m all the more likely to just say, “Screw it, let’s order Chinese”.

(Oh my god, WHY am I so bad at reviewing books? I’m sorry. Just trust me, it’s a great cookbook, even if you’re not vegan.)

From me, Evan, Bruno and Fritz: Happy New Year! Here’s to 2011 being a year of health, wellness, snacks, Moomins, organized closets, laughter, good design, good movies, good books, friends old and new, family, piles of blankets next to the radiator, and a decent cup of coffee whenever you need one.

Party animals that we are, we’re spending the night at home eating nachos, drinking wine and…painting the living room! Of course.

If you live in a region where the weather is cold right now, that means it’s root vegetable season! Since the roots are “storage organs” (I know, ewww!) for a plant’s nutrients, root veggies are loaded with vitamins and antioxidants that are really good for you. They’re also easy to keep and store in the winter, and you can usually buy a whole host of varieties locally—something that can be tricky if you live in a part of the world where temperatures drop to points that are inhospitable to growing a lot of other types of vegetables year-round.

There’s a pretty concise list of root vegetables here, and you can see how many options there are to choose from. You can mix and match as much as you like; I’ve never had a problem with root veggies clashing in a dish. It’s nice to combine at least one item from each category (true root, stem, and bulb), though—for example, you might use parsnips and carrots with ginger and fennel together. Don’t be afraid to try different combinations! The best and most flavorful choice is usually what you can find locally grown.

Here’s a soup recipe that I made over the weekend. I used all of the root vegetables in the photo (three pounds!). It’s very basic, and that’s intentional—you should feel free to add herbs, ginger, greens (kale would be perfect!), or whatever you like to make the soup your own. It’s lovely as-is, too, especially with a sandwich or some crusty bread and a salad on the side.

Whether or not you peel your root vegetables is up to you, but they should be scrubbed well if not. And if you get a rutabaga that’s been waxed, you really need to peel it, obviously. (Try to get unwaxed, if possible!)

ROOT VEGETABLE SOUP (vegan)
Serves 6-8
Adapted from Harmony Valley Farm

1 small onion, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
3 pounds assorted true root vegetables, cut into 1″ chunks
8 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups vegetable stock
3/4 cup soy (or almond) cream

• In a large stock pot, sautée onion in olive oil over medium heat until translucent, stirring to prevent sticking.

• Add root vegetables and garlic (and ginger, if you want). Reduce heat slightly, cover pot. Let cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

• Add vegetable stock and any herbs/spices you’d like. Increase temperature and bring to a simmer. Cover partially, and let simmer for 30 minutes.

• Allow soup to cool a bit until there’s no risk of it burning you. In batches, purée the soup in a blender or food processor until smooth.

• Reheat soup. If you want, add greens at this time and allow them to cook until they reach tenderness. Gently stir in the cream at the very end, and heat just until the soup is hot. Serve with freshly-cracked pepper!

Feel free to share your own favorite root vegetable recipes in the comments!

It’s been one year since thirty-four.

I still think it’s weird that I’m not a teenager, frankly. I always thought that being a “grown-up” would feel more, well, grown-up.

Thank you for all of the thoughtful comments on this post. I have a hard time writing personal posts sometimes (well, everything I write is personal—that’s hard to avoid—but you know what I mean), but it’s never as scary when I read replies from other people who have felt the same way.

If you have a blog, what post was the hardest for you to write? Did you feel any sense of relief after making your thoughts and experiences public?

p.s. I took the above photo this morning. And yes, Fritz was there, too.

I’ve written before about the idea that at a certain point you have to accept that sometimes “good enough” is good enough when it comes to houses, but what about ourselves? What about our bodies? Is it OK to look at ourselves through the same kind of lens of reality and acceptance, or do we always have to strive for improvement?

I’m not one of those people who is super-comfortable talking about body image and weight and such, and I think my discomfort comes from not wanting to fall into that trap of narcissism and self-celebration that often follows those kinds of discussions—particularly among women. Honestly, I don’t want to care about that stuff. I’d like to be above it. I wish I could just roll my eyes when I overhear women talking about their thighs or their weight or whatever and just get on with more important things.

The truth, though, is that I do care. I think most people do, even though some of us pretend not to.

The phrase “real women have curves” never fails to make me cringe. It’s a horrible, demeaning thing to say, and the sad thing is that it seems to be used most often as a battle cry of solidarity among women who are, in fact, “curvy”, and who believe that making this kind of proclamation is empowering. But what does it really mean? Does it mean that women who are thin or built with straight frames or have small breasts are somehow less “real”? The last time I checked, the qualification for being a woman is having two X chromosomes (and even that is up for debate, but that’s another subject altogether).

Guess what? ALL women are “real” women. Even women with eating disorders or illnesses or glandular problems or fast metabolisms or depression or anything else than can change the shapes and sizes of our bodies in either direction. Making declarations about “curviness” being more “womanly” and telling thin women to “eat a burger/cookie/etc” (another phrase that makes me incredibly angry) does nothing other than further alienation and continue the cycle of making us all—regardless of size—more emotionally attached to the idea that our size determines our validity as human beings. In turn, it makes food, something meant to bring us pleasure and nourishment, into the deciding factor for whether or not we’ve met a certain standard of self-control.

So let’s stop that, please.

I’m 5′6″, I weigh 150 pounds, and I usually wear a size 8 or 10. This is the size that I am when I am eating healthy, well-balanced foods in normal quantities. I have weighed as much as 40 pounds more when I was eating enormous portions of unhealthy, prepared foods, and I have weighed as little as 30 pounds less when I was meticulously measuring every morsel of food that entered my body and obsessing over calories and fat grams and fiber content to the point that I wound up not really getting much pleasure out of what I was eating. Neither option was healthy, but not because of my weight at either end of the spectrum—it was unhealthy because my body wasn’t getting the things it needs in the right amounts to function properly.

Do I have to think about this every single morning when I get dressed, wondering if I’ve failed miserably at being exactly “perfect” in every way? Do I ever get to stop criticizing myself? Or is it maybe alright to trust the fact that I am smart enough to understand what it means to be truly healthy, and to prepare foods for myself and for Evan that are nutritious, satisfying, and enjoyable…without second-guessing myself the moment I step on a scale? Am I “good enough”? Am I OK?

This isn’t a post about obesity or anorexia or even what constitutes a healthy diet. It’s about stepping away from comparing ourselves to other people and using what we imagine to be “perfect” as a benchmark for accepting (and maybe even liking) what we already have. It doesn’t mean you need to gaze at yourself in the mirror and give daily affirmations to your reflection and blather on about loving yourself. There is a middle ground of OK-ness, and that’s a good spot to aim for.

If I can be alright with a missing piece of baseboard molding in my house, maybe I can also be alright with my turnip-legs and my Christmas ham-arms, too. Maybe.