My grandmother Della spent her life being terrified of smelling bad. She was born in 1915, when daily bathing still wasn’t a common practice and effective underarm deodorants was nothing more than a glimmer in some R&D man’s eye. As a teenager, she shared a bed with her own grandmother, a woman who would spend the moments before sleep farting in a most musical and odorous fashion. Della took to painting on a little strip of perfume under her noise each night before going to bed, in an attempt to ward away the fumes.

When I knew her, Della never smelled bad. Each morning she showered, powered, lotioned and perfumed herself into a cloud of fragrance. She brushed her teeth multiple times a day and stashed rolls of Certs in every handbag she owned. And her apartment always smelled fresh, clean and welcoming.

Ever since inheriting her apartment, I’ve felt responsible for maintaining a space that always smells pleasing (although, on occasion, I’ve settled simple for unoffensive). However, recently, there’ve been some singularly unpleasant smells wafting from the bathroom, a stink that deserved the kinds of wiggly lines only seen in Peanuts cartoons. Unfortunately, even after scrubbing the bathroom from top to bottom (including swabbing out the inside of the toilet tank) and treating both drains with a cocktail of baking soda, lemon juice and boiling water, the funk remains. I actually began to wonder if the lady next door had died in her bathtub and was slowly decomposing on the other side of the wall (I saw her two days ago, tottered towards the elevator with her cane and badly dyed hair, so that theory is thankfully untrue). I know it’s morbid, but when you live in a building such as ours, it’s not an impossible thought.

Then, last night, as I was leaning down to spit out my toothpaste, I noticed that the smell was stronger. Toothbrush still in hand, I bent down again and poked my nose towards the drainage hole on the far side of the sink. It offered a sewer-like stink. I straighted up and cheered, delighted to have found the source (I tried to get Scott to come over and check it out, but he declined). I’ve since discovered, in my recent cleaning process, a whole world of moldering stink has been hiding in there. I’ve doused it with a number of cleaners and this weekend am planning on getting in there with some scrubbers I’m improvising out of rags and chopsticks.

It’s an exciting life I lead, isn’t it.

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Goodness, it’s been, what? Two and a half months since we posted a new episode of Fork You? Scott’s had a little break from his most recent writing project and so decided to use that time productively to get a new episode up for your viewing pleasure. We filmed this particular show during Philly’s Beer Week and made sure to include at least one bottle of brew in every recipe. The brisket recipe I demo in this one is my preferred way of braising that particular cut of beef and is amazingly flavorful. While we’re not exactly heading into the season for slow braises, I recommend that you bookmark this one for the fall. It’s that good.

For the last few months, I’ve had it in my head to paint the back wall of the kitchen in chalkboard paint. About a month ago, I got myself to Lowe’s to buy a can of paint. Once home, I moved it from desk to table, counter to cabinet, always finding ways to avoid tackling the project. Last Friday night, I decided to paint a patch of the wall as motivation to get it finished this weekend.

When I was halfway through, I was suddenly gripped with worry that I had made a horrible mistake painting an entire wall of my diminutive, windowless kitchen a light-swallowing black. However, a pep-talk from Scott kept me going and I finished the job. Now that the tape is removed and the space put back together, I am quite delighted with the effect. I’m looking forward to using the wall for notes, reminders and recipes.

Last Friday at this time, I was racing around the apartment, tossing shoes, clothes and toiletries into a little black duffle bag and mentally running through my morning and evening routines, to ensure that I didn’t leave behind some essential cream or tube of lip balm. A few minutes before 12 noon, Thad and Angie called to say that they were moments from pulling up to the back of our building and that we should head down to meet them. By 12:03 pm, we were driving west, through University City and the Main Line, out to Lancaster County.

It was a lovely weekend, full of good food, sleep, books, jar shopping and time spent splayed out in thick, plush grass. My only regret was that it had to end, as I was just beginning to feel truly relaxed when it was time to turn around and return home.

Part of what made the trip so particularly idyllic was the B & B in which we stayed. Called Musser’s Bed and Breakfast, it is located in the original general store and post office of New Providence, PA. The Musser family has lived there for more than 20 years now and have lovingly restored the entire structure from top to bottom. Over the years, they ripped out all the indignities done to the house during the mid-century, including some particularly horrible green shag carpet. Barb Musser is the primary innkeeper, and she is friendly, warm, outgoing and a wonderful cook. She happily accommodated our food preferences, serving Scott quiche on the morning when the rest of us ate oatmeal (Scott is not a fan of hot cereals).

We stayed in the Shopkeeper’s Suite, which is essentially a beautifully furnished two-bedroom apartment. It was the perfect home away from home. Another nice thing about Musser’s was that our suite had a full kitchen (both suites do, actually). Food lover that I am, I appreciated having the opportunity cook once or twice instead of always eating out, particularly since we made the trek into Lancaster City to visit Central Market.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation and I already am plotting ways to go back and explore more corners of Lancaster County. If you want to see the rest of the pictures from the trip, you can find the set here. If you want to see even more, Scott’s are here, Thad’s are here and Angie’s are here.

They say that a dearth of blogging indicates a full and happy life (and really, isn’t that what we’re all striving for?). That’s certainly been the case in my book, at least when it comes to this site. I have been blogging with some regularity over at Food in Jars, so the internet hasn’t been totally bereft of me (although, somehow I don’t think the internet would even notice if I were to entirely cease my additions to the discourse).

Much has happened in the last few weeks. I turned 30 on May 14th, much to my amazement. It boggles me to think that I’ve been knocking around this life for a full three decades. When I was younger, my grandma Bunny would often comment that her first reaction upon looking at herself in the mirror each morning was surprise. Her initial, fleeting thought was always, “Who is that old lady?” Inside herself, she didn’t feel any different than she had when she was young and so it was jarring to see that each day her outsides were changing while her essence remained the same.

When she’d tell me this as a child, I’d nod my head with great understanding, while thinking her crazy. I knew that I felt older with each passing year. Didn’t every number come with greater freedom and responsibility? Of course your insides changed and aged.

Now I understand what she meant. I look at myself and know that I don’t feel different in any essential way from how I knew myself to be five or six years ago. I know that I’ve adopted more of the trappings of adulthood over the last few years; the home, the possessions, the job, the degrees, the life partner. And yet.

I am not unhappy to be here. In fact, I’m quite pleased to have finally shaken off the uncertainty and struggle that graced my 20’s. I am grateful to be refining my path towards work that I love and I am filled with delight that I am marrying Scott, the guy who was my most wonderful friend, long before I slowly slid into love with him. So I recognize these grown-up things in my life, while noticing that I don’t feel any older. It’s a strange and miraculous thing.

We’ve been having an incessently rainy spring here in Philadelphia. It feels like it’s been raining for months (the only time out from the grey drizzle being the three-day heat wave we had in April). Having grown up in Portland, I try to remain outwardly unaffected when it comes to the rain, mostly because I still harbor a embryonic desire to live there again someday, and I don’t want to give this man I live with any further ammunition against the place (the chances, however, of us moving to Portland are narrow to none, so no one freak out). It is starting to get to me though.

I am grateful for one thing that this drizzle brings with it, and that is the return of the local salad greens. They love these cool, wet days and so have been turning up in abundance at local farmers markets. I bought two bags last Saturday at the Rittenhouse Market and I desperately wanted to purchase more Sunday at the Headhouse Market (I wisely refrained as even when salad greens are delightful, there is still a limit to how much we can eat before they turn slimy).

Tonight’s dinner was a simple one, that took all of two minutes to throw together (once the chicken was cooked). It was two big handfuls of salad greens (the farmers I buy from pre-wash their greens before bagging, so they are ready to go, just like the ones you buy from the regular grocery store), three inches of chopped English cucumber, some slivered red onion, a few spoonfuls of garbanzo beans, some feta cheese and a few chopped chicken tenders that I cooked on a countertop grill (like a George Foreman, only bigger).

I predict many more meals such as this one before the salad green season is out.

More than once, I’ve ruminated on the power of smell to send a person hurtling back through memories and into a moment of life that is far removed from the one that they’re actually standing in. There was the time with the nectarine, and other when a peach crisp impersonated my grandfather’s pancakes. The scent of the hallway leading to my apartment takes me back to childhood whenever one of my neighbors cooks a pot roast.

Yesterday, it was a cup of tea that sent me reeling. Yogi Tea’s Tahitian Vanilla Hazelnut, to be exact. In the fall of 2007, when I was frantically trying to finish my master’s thesis, I spent a couple of days holed up in a one-room cabin owned by an order of nuns, hoping that by removing myself from the distractions of life, I’d be able to finish the thing. I spent those two days sitting on the back porch of my little cabin, wrapped up in a blanket against the October chill, pounding away on my old laptop and drinking mug upon mug of tea.

I established a ritual that I repeated four or five times a day. After my brain started to give out, I’d put the computer aside and boil up a bit of water in a saucepan atop the built-in, two-burner hot plate. After six dunks of the teabag, I’d slowly stir a spoonful of honey in and add a dollop of milk. It was enough of a break to get me to return to the computer and start writing again, fueled by the tea and the ritual.

Over the weekend, I rearranged my tea collection, in the hopes of paring it down a bit and finding some treasures that had become buried under boxes of mint and Earl Grey. While sifting, I found the last remaining bag of Tahitian Vanilla Hazelnut in a stack of Masala Spice. I brought it to work with me and brewed it up in my office kitchen. The smell of it just wiped me out, yanked me instantly back to those two days of frantic writing. I could feel the satisfaction of writing in flow and the damning irritation of slippery words. The general feeling of that period of my life flashed by as well, those waning days of grad school, just before Scott and I finally got together, when I was so uncertain of what was next.

Recently, I’ve been on the hunt for some new spring/summer shoes for work. When the weather intermittently started to warm up a few weeks ago, I dug into my closet to take stock of what I had for the coming months. Sadly, the shoes that had carried me through last season were pretty darn broken down, including my very favorite pair of black flats that I got at Loehmann’s about four years ago, before they up and left Center City Philly (why do the great discount stores always leave my neighborhood? We once had a Filene’s Basement down the street as well).

Thing is, I don’t really do heels, so my work shoes have to be cute, comfortable and flat, which isn’t always the easiest thing to find, particularly when you’re trying not to spend too much money. I’ve been scouring various websites, looking for things that might fit the bill and I’ve been coming up unusually short (I normally have fairly good shoe luck too, so it’s been strange to be so stymied).

However, everything changed tonight. I left work a little early to pick up my car from my new mechanic. I trying out a shop at 2nd and Christian as I got tired of dragging myself back and forth from Germantown for repairs and my yearly inspection (not to mention the fact that I’m pretty certain that my old mechanic thought I was a bit crazy). One of the nice things about the location of this garage is that it puts me halfway to one of my favorite Philly Goodwill locations. And when you’re halfway there, there’s really no point in just going home.

I picked up a random assortment of stuff at the thrift store, including a very nice, hardly worn pair of Joan and David brown flats, for the very nice price of $4. Feeling good about the purchase, I got back in the car with the intention of heading home. Instead, the car seemed to magically steer itself towards the S. Philly Ross. Wandering in, I headed over to the shoe section and found myself confronted with the most amazing selection of cute, comfortable and inexpensive flats. It was everything I’d been searching for. I ended up buying five more pairs, ranging in price from $6.49 (clearance) to $24.99 (a really appealing and comfy pair of Pumas that would have been much, much more anywhere else).

It is such a delight to now have all the shoes I need for the rest of the spring and summer (and hopefully some of them will last through next year as well)!

I used my lunch hour today to run a few errands. In my last 15 minutes, I flew into my apartment to grab some lunch (I hate buying food when I know I have the makings for a wonderful salad in the fridge, all ready to be combined). Standing in front of the elevator, munching a piece of toast, the salad neatly packed into a plastic container, I saw my neighbor Lucille at the far of the hall. Just at that moment, the elevator came and I hopped on, frantically pushing the ‘door close’ button.

The reason I hurriedly ducked my neighbor? That damned piece of toast. You see, it’s Passover, the Jewish holiday during which leavened products are forbidden. While I’ve never been much of a Jew (although officially, by birth I am completely Jewish), Lucille practices and believes that I should too. She’s the one who lambasted me two summers ago when my mezuzah went missing. And I just knew that if she caught me eating toast (delicious, artisanal sourdough), I would be in for a lecture. So I didn’t hold the elevator for her.

Despite the fact that I’ve lived in my apartment building for seven years, I realized recently that I’ve never allowed myself to feel totally comfortable in the community of the building. In the beginning, it was because I was so much younger than the other people living around me (in some cases fifty or sixty years younger). Later, I kept myself a little removed, thinking that I couldn’t possibly be there more than another year and so why should I get involved or get to know people. While I longed for the kind of neighborhood community that my friends who lived in houses enjoyed, I was in denial that I could have anything like it in my Center City highrise, because how could we commune when no one had a garden to tend or kids to watch play?

I’ve only recently realized that my time in William Penn House is far from over and that it might actually be good to really start getting to know my neighbors more and become a bit more active in the life of the building. When Scott and I had his birthday/engagement party back in February, I put a note in the hallway by the elevators, inviting my fellow floormates to drop by. Several did, delighted to have been invited. A few weeks ago, it was time to pick floor representatives. For the first time ever, I attended the small meeting held in front of the elevators (all the better to catch people as they came and went) during which the floor reps were picked. When Lucille asked who would be willing to do it, I raised my hand and said, “I think it’s my turn.”

Everyone was happy to let me have a go at it and so now, June from down the hall and I take turns picking up and distributing notices about water shut-offs and monthly newsletters.

I’ve also found that I’ve been more interested in chatting with my neighbors than ever before, offering jars of jam to a couple of people here and there (I’m experiencing something of a glut now that my canning blog is well under way) and saying sure when Charlie asks for a favor.

What I’ve realized from all this is that I kept myself removed from the community of the building because I had it in my head that it wasn’t the neighborhood experience I wanted (wishing for a house and all). However, as I’ve gotten more comfortable with the idea of being in the apartment for the unknown future, I’m understanding that the neighborhood was here all along.