Hope that those of you who observed Thanksgiving in some way had a meaningful day. My day was nice and quiet; it was also a little melancholy. I have a feeling that this holiday season will be a tough one, but I’m trying not to turn that feeling into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I went to a mid-morning yoga class on Thanksgiving. This is basically a tradition of mine, but there are some years when I need it more badly than others. This was…

This is my second consecutive Sunday away from home. A few weeks ago, sort of spontaneously, I decided to make good on two trips I had been hoping to take for some time now. The first was to Washington, D.C., where I lived for part of grad school. The second, a one-on-one trip with my oldest friend, could have been to anywhere. But we chose Nashville, which was easy for me to fly to from D.C. and driving distance for her, from New…

In the past few days I’ve been reminded of how powerful it is to step away from things. I’m just back from Denver, where I was earlier this summer. I’m working with Ashley on cookbook photography, and we had a few big pieces of the project to finish this week. To shoot the food, we needed to cook the food. I hadn’t eaten some of the dishes in over a year, thanks to the time it has taken me to work on the…