I am as the weather // no knead bread

OKAY, time for some light to cut this interminable ice state we're in. I'm sitting by my bedroom window, next to a verilux solar lamp that I dug out of a box last week. everyone I know is getting had by the cold and I am too. it sits on my shoulders and furrows my face. what good is winter if you're not near the woods??


IMPORTANT:  
to melt ice:
bake bread* and share it with friends in your living room. slather it with jam. toast it and eat it with a fried egg. use it to sop up soup. hold the loaf to your ear and hear it crackle on the inside after you take it out of the oven.


do people in other cities use umbrellas when it snows? people here lean into their tiny-boned umbrellas like shields. Like the umbrellas won't immediately be inverted and broken and shoved into the nearest metal trashcan. (maybe new york is a bird city, with all of the pigeons and the umbrellas and that obsession with the hawks in Washington Square Park, and the tall, tall buildings. lots of wings all around considering we're so often underground or walking with heavy, quick, earthbound steps.)

* jim lahey's no knead bread. 

 bake it and commune with your ancestors.


it's a wonderful recipe, super easy, and this week has provided a hearth equivalency, warming my hands and reminding me of wholeness. the only thing I'd say about the recipe used by the new york times is that you can substitute active yeast for instant, you just have to dissolve it in warm water for a few minutes before you mix it with the flour, sugar and salt. the rest is just a matter of time.    
 
(isn't that how it always goes.)


be warm and be well. draw something instead of doing laundry. massage your jaw. wear the winter hat your grandma gave you!