Vermont is medicine!

2 years of The Dish, a Green Mountain Labor Day weekend, wood-fired pizza, and soulmate friends

Dad tending the bonfire

Hi, friends —

I started writing The Dish two years ago this month, and this edition is #93…wowee! I’m proud of myself for keeping up this practice, even on days where writing about my life feels truly silly/unnecessary. On those doubtful days, I look to one of my all-time favorite books: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy. It’s not just about songwriting (although the songwriting-specific parts inspire me, too), but also about creativity as a whole. Tweedy’s book is a permission slip to create stuff and love both the process and the result. He argues that “showing up with a reliably open heart and a will to share whatever spirit you can muster is what resonates and transcends technical perfection.” I agree. Consistency and vulnerability are half, if not three-quarters, of the battle, and I’d always prefer to read heartfelt sentences than grammatically flawless ones.

To begin my third year of Dish-writing, I’m considering changing my routine to 2 free monthly life updates in my normal style, plus a super-fun extra food-centric post every month for those of you who’d like to pay for a subscription. I’m open to feedback/suggestions/thoughts if you have them! If you reply directly to this email, I’ll receive it in my inbox. Keep an eye out for more information on the paid offering soon, but for now I’m still in the brainstorming phase. Back to regularly scheduled programming…

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Although I’m no longer a student (at least for now), I still think of September as the beginning of the year. The other day I bought a fresh planner, a pink pencil case, and a pack of Paper Mate mechanical pencils for the occasion. This September marks a fresh start for me; I’m moving back to New York for real after spending the past month traipsing up and down the East Coast, which means I need to find an apartment *and* a job, because somehow I have to pay NYC rent. Otherwise, I’m just trying to get my life on track: catching up on doctors’ appointments, exercising regularly again, returning to therapy, and so on. By now, it’s well-documented that I struggle with transitions, and the same is true today. While I’m doing fine on the outside, my brain is buzzing from morning to night and I can easily veer into an over-productive, manic side of myself. Life can take time to iron out, and my body doesn’t seem to like that reality very much.

A trip to my family’s house in Vermont for Labor Day weekend was just what the doctor ordered. We had a whole crew: my parents, our dog Remy, Teo, Eliza, Eliza’s boyfriend Andrew, our long-time family friends Nina and John, and their dog Nelly. Our house isn’t huge, but it’s purposefully full of beds because my parents love hosting and want it to be a gathering place for family and friends. The space is at its best when full of people and music and food and speed scrabble games and ping-pong matches. September in Vermont is a precious thing: days still long, farm stands still flooded with juicy tomatoes, trees still adorned with leaves. It’s as if the earth knows that you’re mourning summer and mercifully eases you into fall. 

Remy, the queen of the house!

I adore these silly geese

One evening, our friends Eric and Dina drove up from Montpelier with a portable wood-burning oven and 8 balls of homemade pizza dough for dinner. True friends! Nina made a gorgeous green salad and a peach cobbler, and I was tasked with pizza toppings. I began in the morning by making tomato sauce with butter, olive oil, smashed garlic cloves, and salt. Then, I caramelized onions with a pinch of sugar to nudge them along, roasted mushrooms with sprigs of thyme, and sautéed corn with scallions (I’ve been digging corn on pizza lately). Last but not least, I sliced off the top ½-inch of a garlic head, submerged the exposed garlic in olive oil in the smallest saucepan I could find, and let it bubble away on the lowest possible heat until the cloves were jammy and as soft as room-temperature butter. The result? Sweet, mellow, squeezable garlic cloves and a cup or so of liquid gold, otherwise known as confit garlic oil.

Tomato sauce in the works

By the afternoon, most of the legwork for dinner was done, and all I had to do was wait until showtime, then assemble the pies with Eric as my co-pizzaiolo. I spread tomato sauce in circular swooshes, tore mozzarella by hand, arranged anchovies in dapper horizontal stripes, and so forth. My favorite pizza was the first: confit garlic oil, mozzarella, loads of herby corn, and parsley-and-chive confetti to finish.

Eliza on the herb assist

Eric and his oven!

Ending the night with a Jonathan Edwards singalong led by John and Nina? PINCH ME!

While I’m glad to live in a city for this stretch of my life, Vermont is my spirit place. When I’m there, I just want to wear an old t-shirt, trudge around the woods, read books, play guitar, hang out on the porch, and cook, and I don’t feel like I should be doing anything else. 

With Tessa (Nina & John’s daughter) in Vermont back in the day. I love this photo. We look so happy!

Lots of love to all of you,

Phoebe