Winter Solstice

A magical day.

From our home to yours, may your winter be blessed!

-L.

Looking Back

We left Hong Kong a week ago and came home to this:

the Japanese maple has dropped its leaves and the air is cold and wet. Because I am missing my family in Hong Kong I am cooking lots of Chinese soup and ginger tea to keep us all warm and sound. The ginger tea recipe is my mom's: it is much better than the one I used to make on my own. The key is that it should be: "tasty, like an after- dinner dessert drink!" Drink if you feel a dry throat, nausea, or as if you are feeling susceptible...

Hot Ginger Drink

Peel and pound a couple of big pieces of ginger (about 2 inches)

Add boiling water, enough for another cup later

Add brown sugar or rock candy sugar to your taste--it should be yummy!

Boil uncovered for about ten minutes. Taste. It should be warming and spicy, but only to your taste. If it is too much for you, add more hot water. Not spicy enough, boil, reducing for longer, or add more ginger.

Stay warm!

Love,

-L.

something to collect...

there is something i find incredibly appealing about vintage bags like these. there is passion, mystery and sophistication in their designs and style. i like to daydream where it was first spotted - in a window of a fine department store a few weeks before the holidays started, a little boutique where the sweet smelling owner always wore a tight bun and buttoned sweaters....- and who it was who carried it clutched in hand or under arm. they are gorgeous and they inspire me to find some of my own to give new life to. have a blessed friday.

paz, k

pretties here

Helen

Thank you to those who have left notes.

Warmly,

-L.

More Postcards from Hong Kong

1. My favorite breakfast here: a mug of warm, fresh, black sesame soymilk, ripe pomelo, papaya, and banana, and delicious, soft sesame raisin toast. (The softness comes from a special Japanese flour.)
2. Totoro, the movie. I am probably letting my eldest daughter watch it a bit too much.
3. Vacation reading.
4. The gentleman upstairs likes to garden on the roof. I am assuming these are his gardening shoes.
5. Our beautiful kitchen maiden.
6. Garden fellows: tea, a pipe, and conversation.
7. A view.

My youngest still naps twice a day. In turn, this trip has been about exploring the world closer to home: sort of a domestic tourism, seeing how everyday things can still be totally new and different. Like spying on the French family downstairs as they eat at their outdoor table, or photographing the postboxes, or venturing a taste of a Japanese kiwi: yellow and red inside.

At first, it was a bit hard to adjust. My oldest, when offered the chance to ride in the grocery "cart" at a local food emporium, turned pale and unreadable when she saw that it meant riding toward the bottom of the cart in a little chair that faced my legs. She wanted out of that right away: the world had suddenly turned completely unrecognizable for her. I thought it was funny when same daughter, a ballet enthusiast, attended a ballet class at a local school, and received a report card. Straight Bs the first day and a proper "thank you, Miss Kim" expected for the effort.

Still, it is nice (and a bit of a relief!) to see them adjusting and carrying on--same kid rhythms, almost as if being halfway around the world is merely incidental. Absorbed for a moment in something new, and then off into their interior worlds, their hungers, their alternating distress and laughter.

Thanks for visiting.

Warmly,

-L.

tessa...

maybe tessa kiros is old news for you but I just bought my first kiros cookbook apples for jam. heavenly reading. now, if i could write a cookbook this would be it - some magic, tasty love and lots of fun. have a dreamy thursday.

paz, k

Postcard from Hong Kong

We are in Hong Kong visiting my mother and aging grandparents.

I am struck again by the incredible natural beauty of this place, especially the endless green mountains and the sea. When we go to visit my grandparents, the girls stand on the veranda letting the sea breeze ruffle their damp little heads.

I am once again struck by the importance of place. How without it our memories simply drift, unanchored. To see one's children perched on this same balcony I spent so many summers myself, mesmerized in similar fashion by the sparkling sea, is to feel something brimming and aching. Sameness and striking change jostle one another at this feast table of Moment.

What place calls to mind a similar experience for you?

In beauty,

-L.