Family Recipes

This past Sunday, my shopping list looked like this:

• eggs
• milk
• dish soap
• something soup-y

It had been a long day, and I didn't want to make decisions - I just wanted something warm and comforting and, well, soupy. So I called my mom from the produce section to ask her about her lentil soup.

If I had to pick one food that sums up home, it would be this soup. I'd be tempted to choose something flashier, like lobster, or more locally traditional, like a mug of thick New England clam chowder or a heaping plate of fried clams. But this soup is the quiet, steady constant. My mom has fed it to me when I was in bed with a fever, sent me off to school with a tupperware arsenal full of it, and served it up piping hot with hot chocolate on snow days. I honestly can't remember this soup ever not being a part of my life.

Improvising

In September, I moved into a new apartment. It's a lovely, tiny little place with lots of light, high ceilings, and comically slanted floors. Over the past month, my roommate and I have filled the place up with a healthy mix of Ikea and familial cast-off furniture, stuffed the bookshelf with everything from Anna Karenina to Season 9 of Friends, and, after many hours spent talking to tech support, finally got our internet up and running. Amazingly, it's starting to really feel like home.

But it's been a hell of a process. Especially in the kitchen.

Our kitchen never felt particularly empty, just rather mis-stocked. When we moved in, we brought a lot of non-essential dishes and gadgets with us. We had a crystal sugar bowl, a purple eggbeater, a viking hat cookie cutter, a couple of pastry brushes, half a cocktail shaker, and a sushi mat. We also had a grand total of two forks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's been a lot of kitchen MacGyvering over the past month: