Home Comforts

One of the greatest benefits of spending so much time away from home is how much I appreciate home when I am back. I love my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I love my pumpkin wood floors, I love my uber-comfortable bed and how the quiet and calm of my home allows me to sleep like the dead and dream like a surrealist--but what I love, more than anything else, is having my kitchen back.

It's not that I have a lot of fancy tools, but they are all my tools, my spices, and I know exactly how to use them. Chopping vegetables, sauteeing garlic, listing to WNYC's "Evening Music" and "New Sounds"--heaven.

This morning: a whole wheat bagel from the best bagelier in all of NYC, "Bagels by the Park," a convenient 2 blocks away. I took that bagel home, sliced and toasted it, then put Dalmatian Fig-Orange jam on one half, and half a sliced up avocado with lemon and fresh pepper and a pinch of kosher salt on the other. Superb. I would have taken a picture, but I couldn't bear to delay eating.