Sweet Amandine Friends and Faves

How we gather

2011-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

A baby lives with us now, which means that I get less sleeping time. Less sleeping time, though, means more thinking time, and that feels like a fair trade. Today, I’ve been thinking about how we gather.

My parents are divorced, so how we gather, the “we” that gathers, changes each year.

Last year, we joined my step-mom Amy’s family for Thanksgiving in Toledo, Ohio. These photos are from that trip. With guitars, and buckeyes, and elbows on the table is how we gathered there.

With borrowed sweatshirts, a football, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (he’s back!), and three kinds of pie.

Before the meal, we joined hands around the table. Each of us had to say out loud why we were thankful for the person on our left. I like that we gather that way. A person who loves me very much was standing on my right, and when her turn came, she said simply that she was thankful that I was here. I had had my fourth and final surgery five and a half months earlier, a surgery that we hadn’t expected, but that had felt like a finish line, of sorts. That’s why she said it, I know, because my being almost gone, but then here, was still on everyone’s mind. The thing is, it had only just recently stopped being always on my mind, so being thanked for being “here” felt hard. “Is that the bar, for me? Not dead?” I asked Eli before bed that night. I want to be more than just “here.”

We’re staying put in Cambridge this year for Thanksgiving. My mother is with us, and we’re going to my friend Julia’s parents’ house tomorrow. I’m bringing apple cake. Maybe something chocolate, too.

Happy Thanksgiving. See you next week, with soup.

How we gather

2009-03-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

My parents are divorced, so how we gather, the “we” that gathers, changes each year.

Last year, we joined my step-mom Amy’s family for Thanksgiving in Toledo, Ohio. These photos are from that trip. With guitars, and buckeyes, and elbows on the table is how we gathered there.

With borrowed sweatshirts, a football, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (he’s back!), and three kinds of pie.

2009-03-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

There's so much good stuff out there. Here are some of my favorites.

more food-inspired bloggery
101 cookbooks
bella eats
blue jean gourmet
culinerapy
david lebovitz
dinner with julie
dorie greenspan
eggbeater
everybody likes sandwiches
food loves writing
gluten-free girl
happy jack eats
kiss my spatula
the kitchen sink
not derby pie
orangette
pink of perfection
pithy and cleaver
sassy radish
savour fare
seven spoons
simmer till done
simply recipes
smitten kitchen
sprouted kitchen
tartelette
TBD
tea and cookies
the traveler's lunchbox
the wednesday chef

boston local
adventures in dessert
anali's first amendment
cake and commerce
cooking 4 the week
darbyoshea
double portion
erin cooks
fresh365
fresh new england
from ketchup to chutney
hungry bruno
my madeleine
poor girl gourmet
public radio kitchen
red ramekin
siena farms (our farm share)
we are not martha
wicked tasty harvest

non-edible inspiration
the baker's daughter
the blue hour
forty-sixth at grace
habit
hei astrid
holgarific
huffmania
little miss twig
oh happy day
sandra juto
this joy + ride

listen
the moth
on point
radio lab
spilled milk
the splendid table
this american life
wait wait... don't tell me

some people i know
citymonkey
the catch
color of palo alto
credstyle
less is mohrer
maya at the lilith blog
megan metcalf