Here we are, yet again, in the Emerald Month; it crept up on me this year rather unexpectedly. Truth be told, my sense of time isn’t so impressive these days. In part, I blame California and its lack of seasons. It’s very disconcerting for a person to live in what essentially amounts to “season-less” time–one day, sunshine, and the next, a heavy cloak of fog. Who can say if it’s spring or winter? Does it even matter? 

I also think my dissociation from time runs a little bit deeper than the mere passing of the Californian (non)seasons. Just a few weeks ago, for example, somebody asked me my age and I almost said 25. Where that came from, I really can’t say; that such a response would pop into my brain is doubly surprising when you consider that I’ve started noticing more than a few silvery strands escaping from my ponytail. While I am most definitely no longer a sprightly 25 (and for this I am nothing but grateful), I can’t say I feel almost 32 years old or any other specific passage of time either. I wonder if I’ll still feel this way in 50 years, just with more aches and pains…

Temporal concerns aside, life continues to be as demanding as ever. On the domestic front, the Greek’s parents and aunt are here from Greece, I’m in the final throes of the second and last dissertation filing I will ever be intimately familiar with (hallelujah) and in about two weeks, i.e. a mere drop in time, the Greek’s graduation and my birthday will collide in what I’m taking to be the most auspicious way possible. If that weren’t enough to fill one’s plate, there is work, too. Though there are always new daily obligations and tasks, things at the firm fortunately seem to have slowed down a bit. That said, I sense that this slowness is just as illusory as the passage of time. In reality, one case fades to the background temporarily only so that another can emerge from the back-burner to take its place. Given these shifting demands, my role is never static; and for this I am grateful, since it means that I get to play different roles and experience different aspects of the law. One recent and exciting development was when I got to hold my first phone conference with a client; I expected this to be a one-time thing only, but it now seems that I will not only be the recipient of sensitive Fed-Exed materials, but also a person who is called to the phone to field questions. Let me address this matter head on: faced with my new role, I am as befuddled as Alicia Florrick in season 1 of The Good Wife, yet equally prepared just to “go with the flow” and see what happens. Maybe this is just 32 years of wisdom speaking, but there really appears to be no better way. 

I didn’t expect to be so serious tonight, but my thoughts ran away with me. Perhaps May’s food for thought links will be somewhat more uplifting?

I’ve been baking a lot with Alice Medrich lately; her experiments with different flours are endlessly inspiring. I recently made the carrot cake from Flavor Flours, which is pure excellence, and I’ve baked buckwheat cookies that will be the subject of an upcoming post. If time were endless, I would be baking either her Kamut Pound Cake or Olive Oil and Sherry Pound Cake tonight–and just because, too.

Just to let you know what I, to a certain extent at least, deal with on a daily basis, here’s an article about the “‘nonsensical’ legal theories and ‘carnival fun house’ arguments” that big firms sometimes use to keep a case going. My favorite line, which embodies the best and worst of the law in one: “It may be entirely true that a magician ‘apparently’ sawed a lady in half, but proof of that fact will not sustain a claim for battery.”

Is it just me or does saffron-infused tomato sauce with vermouth sound too good to be true? Also, and this may really just be me, is anybody else out there interested in incorporating more sprouted grains into his/her diet?

A few fun interactive links: the first calculates your water footprint, which, for any Californian, is quite enlightening given headlines like this; the second offers a glimpse into location and the possibility of social mobility in America (I was pleasantly surprised by home county in Pennsylvania).

I just finished reading Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings for the second installment of the two-person book club I’m in with a close friend of mine. Although we saw certain flaws in the neatness of the parallel narratives that run throughout the novel, we both really enjoyed the story, as well as the education that came with reading about the imagined lives of these characters. Neither one of us had heard of Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina, both feminists and abolitionists, before reading the book and this alone seems a crime in the American education system. When you read a novel like this, you can’t help but look around you and wonder what, if anything, has changed in our society–especially when the day after finishing it, your colleague sends you an article about the blatant sexism that female scientists face on a daily basis.

On a happier note, I recently found an interesting website devoted to all things Delaware: first up, Delaware cookbooks featuring all things Delmarvalous.

 In the world of food photography, “low food” meets “high art” with the Instagram account of Jacques LaMerde. Truly, never have corn dogs, go-gurt and handi-snacks looked so appealingly good.

For all the women who loved Anne of Green Gables, this one is for you.  

Back soon with cookies and other good things; this year, the Emerald Month is going to be pure decadence and full of sweets.