When I first started contemplating what I'd write about this past week, I wasn't sure I could find much "good." It wasn't a bad week, necessarily. I mean, Kin was out of town for half of it, so that sucked. Kaia left too; she's up in Oregon visiting her mom and her friends. I can't help but worry about how travel introduces the possibility of COVID into our household — worries that are exacerbated since COVID arrived in my immediate family this week, with Amelia, Emmett, and Emily (my brother's partner) all testing positive.

[Deleted a paragraph here because ugh, I do not want to write about or think about ed-tech.]

ANYWAY.

What's good?

Well, dammit, my dal is not. Dal is one of my favorite foods, and I just haven't been able to make a version of it that I love. I always experiment with a different recipe when Kin's on the road. It's sort of silly, because as a recipe usually serves, like, eight, I'm stuck eating a very mediocre pot of beans for the entire time he's gone. I need to get a good vegetarian Indian cookbook. (I have the Dishoom restaurant's, but its dal recipe takes about 8 hours — which is perhaps part of my problem: I'm not letting the spices really develop long enough.)

So, what's good?

Our Saturday ritual of hiking the Berkeley hills before picking up a dozen bagels at Boichik. The frangipane tart I made with the delicious King Pluots from Frog Hollow Farm. Alexandra Stafford's Farm Share newsletter that, as the name suggests, helps me come up with ideas on how to use the stuff in our CSA. The Golden Milk powder from Oaktown Spice Shop, which I restocked this week. (Love the taste; love the anti-inflammatory health benefits of turmeric, particularly as I ramp up my running; and love Oaktown Spice Shop.) I made a gochuchang sourdough bread, and it was phenomenal. The first few chapters of David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything (not to imply that only the first few chapters are good; rather, I just cracked it open this week).

And then yesterday, Kin and I bought an RV trailer, which is very exciting. We really enjoy road trips and hiking, and it's been sort of a pain to find places that will accommodate Poppy. It's going to be a challenge — a good challenge — learning to live (and cook and shit and shower) in one. But I think it'll open up a lot more places and a lot more hikes for us. California is such an amazing state, and we have a lot to see here. I'm hoping too to start trail running, and perhaps having the door open up into the woods will help me start that.

And that's good.