fftf: I'm back! & a smattering of summer 🥭
ramps, mangos, wineberries, oh my!
Hi! I’m back to writing! I know I’ve been gone longer than I said I’d be, sorry! Granted, I knew it was a little ambitious to expect myself to write once/month this summer… so I gave myself a pass :). I’d forgotten that having a newborn meant I’d RARELY have two hands free, and that when I finally, occasionally, do, opening up the computer to write something meaningful and coherent is not exactly the first thing on my list.
But anyways, finally doing it! I did miss ya :).
I don’t really know what to write today, so just gonna start with an update and then cover a smattering of summer thoughts and fun food things.
Life update: I am now a mom of two girls (wow)! Sweet little Amal joined us on May 27, three days after her due date, which was the biggest surprise to me since Jazzy was a full week early! (Amal is pronounced like the Amal-fi Coast in Italy; it’s an Arabic name that means “hope” and we just really like it.) The birth was pretty smooth and uneventful - started having contractions around midnight, went in at 2am, she came at 7:32am (into the birthing tub again, at the Midwife Center again) and we were home by 1pm that day, kinda crazy! No stitches this time for me, which meant a fairly easy & swift recovery. All of it very lucky, and for which I am very grateful!
The first 6 weeks or so were rough for all 4 of us I would say, but after that, things are getting a little easier each day and we are always approaching a new normal. Amal slept through the night (like 9pm to 6/7am!) for 5 of the past 7 nights, so things are looking UP, currently! Jazzy is an extremely sweet and interested big sister about 99% of the time, and during the other 1%, she likes to bonk Amal on the head and then smile gleefully 🤣.
Here are two things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and then a few food-related fun things from the past few months!
Seasonality / East Coast life…
Early June marked two years since we moved to Pittsburgh from SF. In truth, I still miss California almost daily. I picture San Francisco often - the houses/sidewalks/sights on the route to my best friend’s house, which I walked multiple times weekly in the months/years before I moved. I still fantasize about the smell of the air (salt and wind and eucalyptus) and all the varieties of delicious, healthy/fresh takeout that I would be eating if I still lived there in my current not-having-much-time-to-cook state… AND… I can feel myself moving out of a “transitional” phase and into a more “settled life” phase here in Pittsburgh.
One of the biggest differences in living here is having distinct seasons again. I grew up with these, so they feel familiar to me, and I think I do prefer them. However, they’ll require some adjustment from the nearly seasonless California life that I had become used to after 10 years. I noticed this when - in June, when my local farmers market started to come alive with beautiful greens - I felt a sudden, STARK BURST of inspiration to cook. This made me realize how much my cooking motivation has been tied to inspiration from the farmers market. In moving into a more “settled” phase of life here, I want to figure out how to embrace the seasonality of life here more, as well as possibly expanding my sources of cooking inspiration so I can sustain motivation throughout the year.
Untethering from my phone
Ugh, lately I have been feeling very addicted to my phone. I hate that I find myself carrying it around the house - room to room, floor to floor - like it has me on a leash. I remember feeling like this a little bit when I first had Jazzy - partly because I have several apps that I use for the babies (although honestly none of them are that important) - which make me think I need to constantly carry my phone around the house. Slowly planning to take steps to “untether” as I like to think of it… the first of which is wearing a watch! Half the time I swear I use my phone just to see what time it is (but then get distracted by something on it), so wearing a watch seems like a simple enough solution to that… will report back on how much it helps.
Also, when was the last time you went on a walk with NO PHONE?! I was inspired to try this after listening to Elizabeth Gilbert talk about her phone-free 24 hours she is implementing once/week (she discusses it in the video in this post), and found a phone-free walk to be INCREDIBLY FREEING. (It sounds like you could have this by having a turned-off phone in your pocket, but I really think there’s something important to truly being without the device.) I noticed SO MANY NEW THINGS about my neighborhood on these phone-free walks, and even when I got home, I found myself not wanting to look at my phone for a while longer. Food for thought!
A few fun food things!
Chocolate avocado pudding - I recently remembered that when you have avocados that are going bad, a great way to use them is to make chocolate avocado pudding! It’s really so quick - just blend up the brownish avocados with some cocoa powder, maple syrup, vanilla, salt, and a dash of any kind of milk, and the result is a DELICIOUS treat, which immediately vanishes any guilt about the avocados having gone bad! Toddlers and parents both highly approve of this dessert! (I usually google “chocolate avocado pudding” and then vaguely follow the ingredient ratio of whatever top hit strikes my fancy, always tasting and adjusting until it’s just right. This chocolate peanut butter avocado pudding from minimalist baker also looks tasty!)
Foraging for ramps - in early May, my cousin took me and Jazzy foraging for ramps. Omg, it had been SO long since I’d been foraging, and it was SO FUN and exciting and made me feel like my old self again in the best way! If you don’t know ramps, they are a highly coveted (by chefs/food people), highly seasonal scallion-looking allium that grow wild around the east coast. We were late in the season so there weren’t that many and they were a little yellowed, but it was so fun to discover and I am already looking forward to being on the lookout and going again next spring!
very pregnant ramp foraging! 
all the ramps we got 
cleaned up ramps Pakistani mangoes - my husband got a hookup and splurged on ordering some special mangoes from Pakistan at the end of June. This was a serious endeavor - he had to go to the airport to pick them up! - but so fun. We shared them with some friends and neighbors to celebrate Eid. They are vastly better than mangoes you find in the US, and we got three different varieties (called Chaunsa, Anwar Ratol, and Sindhri), which had very distinct flavors and textures. Many nights I would cut up one of each variety, and then eat them “in a circle” - eat a piece of variety 1, then a piece of variety 2, then a piece of variety 3, repeat until all consumed. This was such a fun way to appreciate how different they were, each delicious in its own right!
Tea-sandwich cake at Apteka! - look at this coolest thing I ate recently from Apteka! It’s three kinds of (savory) tea sandwiches, layered up and decorated like a cake! I had seen it on their Instagram and just had to try! I would say it’s more of a visual masterpiece than a taste masterpiece, but still tasty and enjoyable to eat, and would be so fun/special to try to make for a party. (Someday, not soon 🤣.)
I discovered a new (wild) berry - the (Japanese) WINEBERRY! I was on a walk with the girls and pulled over for a minute, when I noticed a huge patch of berries. When I got closer and pulled one off its stem, it looked SO enticing that I thought “these must be edible!” even though I didn’t know for sure. A quick google search and then a taste confirmed they were, and Jazzy and I proceeded to gorge ourselves. They look like a cross between a raspberry and blackberry and are very delicious. Apparently they are an Asian variety of raspberries, native to China, Japan & Korea, but can also be invasive in the US.
That’s all for today! Going forward I will still plan to write once a month, but may pop in more often if I can swing it… so I’ll see you in September (hopefully towards the beginning of the month)!
For my next post, planning a roundup of all my favorite Pittsburgh food spots :).
Happy Friday!
Love,
Jess