#4 A Weekend Back Home

Apple cake, Strega Nona September, satisfying nostalgia without wallowing in it, and daydreaming in Kansas City.

⭕️ Bri DiMattina’s Spiced Apple Cake Simple, perfectly spiced, and it all comes together in a food processor. I made this on the first day of fall!¹

⭕️ Strega Nona September My life really didn’t align with brat summer, but I am very ready to have a Strega Nona fall as an old spirit hunched over a steaming vat of pasta — but in cute outfits.²

⭕️ Good Sign-Offs Planning on using “That’s that,” “Inconclusively yours,” and “Add chaos,” as soon as the occasion hopefully arrives.³

⭕️ Found Sound for September Afternoon tea on a narrowboat in the UK with Roka Brings Flowers is the coziest soundscape for folding laundry.⁴

Playing Tourist in my Hometown

I’m in Kansas City this weekend.

It’s a quick visit, for the occasion of my 20th high school reunion.

I was having a lot of feelings about that, and decided to spend most of Saturday playing tourist in parts of the city I hadn’t spent much time in.

Feeling like a tourist in my hometown isn’t new to me: I grew up in a Kansas-side suburb of the city, and only started exploring the more dynamic Missouri-side of Kansas City as a teen.

I went to a high school close to downtown my freshman year (I transferred to the school I graduated from as a sophomore), and ran cross country that fall as a way to meet people. Turns out, I really hate running, but I really loved the routes the team took through neighborhoods like Fairway and Brookside, with their cute Cape Cods and bungalows.

These neighborhoods were older and lovelier than what I knew in the suburbs; cross country practice felt like running through a Nancy Meyers film, had any of her films been set in Kansas City — and I needed that to distract me from the fact that I was running many miles.

Although I only spent one school year in that part of town, that time expanded my sense of how else a life could look. That neighborhoods could be walkable, homes could be charming, people could be all kinds of ways in the world.

When I come home to visit, I tend to make the same stops: the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Christmas lights at the Plaza, breakfast at the spot I worked at in high school. I like to drive or walk through Brookside, and daydream about what it might be like to live there.

This is something I do everywhere I go, though: any neighborhood in any city, I think, “Could I live here? What would it look like to live here? Does my life translate to this place?”

Despite living in the same place for ten years now, and feeling grounded there, I still have this curiosity about other places, and a habit of imagining myself into them.

Which is what I spent most of yesterday doing.

Could we live in a loft by the River Market? Are the backyards in Brookside big enough for Sebastian to have a studio workspace? What would my kids think of the nightlife in K.C.? Would The Chiefs become a primary component of our identity?

We have no plans of moving, but I can’t help it. When I travel, I never really feel like a tourist. I’m not interested in merely sampling the surface offerings a place serves up for guests.

I want to know what it’s like to live day-to-day in a place. What are the textures of a neighborhood, and who might I be if I were part of it?

Yesterday, I parked by the River Market and wandered the stalls thinking about what I’d buy if this were my Saturday shop (I definitely would have gotten a huge bunch of cosmos). Then I walked east, no destination in mind, just wondering what I’d see, and felt lucky to find a coffee shop I’d never visited. Then I drove and parked somewhere else, had a girl breakfast at a bakery I’d never been to and walked that neighborhood. I had lunch at a Palestinian delicatessen and noted all the pickled things I would stock in my pantry if this were my part of town.

And then I drove back to the suburbs and spent the night with high school pals I hadn’t seen in 20 years — a whole other kind of tourism.

Am I the only one who does this when traveling??

1. The recipe comes by way of Nigella Lawson, who was the first cookbook writer I was ever really aware of (beyond Martha Stewart and the women at my church who shared recipes in Cooking with Spirit). I bought How to be a Domestic Goddess when I was in high school and tried to make a chocolate pavlova without an electric mixer. The egg whites did eventually stiffen, but I think I was beating them by hand for over an hour in the summer humidity.

2. More on this here (gift link).

3. What sign-offs would you add to the list??

4. Found Sound is part of the As the Season Turns podcast. The host, Lia Leendertz, releases an episode on the first of each month about what to look for in nature in the days ahead.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve been feeling very sentimental and nostalgic about my kids lately and, you know, how quickly it all goes. When they were little, we had a nature table and books and totems we’d bring out to mark the shifting seasons.

I think I’d feel silly setting up a little tablescape with wool acorns at this phase of life, but the podcast really scratches that marking-the-cyclical-passage-of-time itch for me.