walkin' down the aisle

Welp, it's here! I'm walking down an aisle today that will end with a priest, a rabbi, an octad of groomsmen and bridesmaids, and the man I'm going to marry. It's exciting, it's overwhelming, it's something that people do every day all around the world, and it's something I never thought I'd actually do. But I am, and it's going to be awesome. I'm sure I'll have much more to say after the fact but for now, thank you all for all your help this past year, whether in text form, email, or just listening to me yammer on for hours about whatever wedding crisis I was experiencing at that moment. Time to raise a glass and get your dance on!

xo,
M

zucchini bread

Sometimes it's a late summer afternoon and you're one month away from your wedding and even though all the pesky details and questions about those details are finally starting to come to an end, you now have an onslaught of wedding presents showing up at your door every day that you really shouldn't have registered for in the first place because where the heck are you supposed to put them in your teeny tiny new york apartment? You're tired and hot and overwhelmed and kind of just want it all to be over but instead of having yet another meltdown you see a bowl of vegetables in your kitchen from a recent CSA haul gifted to you by a friend who was going out of town and didn't see the point in picking up a bag of food she'd never be able to use. And even though you should've been at the gym ten minutes ago (because, you know, the wedding), you start to bake. Eggs, flour, sugar, a little cinnamon and a whole lot of zucchini. You shouldn't be wasting time and calories on this bread, but you're pretty sure it's going to taste good and you're really sure you need this right now. Something to focus on. Something for your hands to do. It's quiet in your kitchen, save for the crack of an egg and the scrape of the zucchini across the grater (and the construction across the street and the crying baby next door and the helicopter flying overhead, but you choose to ignore those sounds as they do not positively contribute to your afternoon). And soon you find a familiar rhythm you didn't know you missed. Measure, pour, stir. Measure, pour, stir. You don't know why (and you're certainly not going to take the time to analyze why), but you have calmed down. A bit. There is still a stack of thank you's begging to be written and a pile of towels that need to be washed and a whole wedding you need to finish planning, but right now you've got a fresh loaf of bread begging for your attention. A bit of butter, a reheated cup of coffee, and a very deep breath for reassurance: you've got this.

for the curious and hungry: my go-to zucchini bread recipe

#sobetober

I'm gonna try an experiment in October: I'm going to give up alcohol for the entire month.

Why would I do such a silly thing, you ask? Well, in exactly one year I will be walking down not just any aisle, but the aisle, and I need to start getting my body wedding-ready. I have a whole list of plans that may or may not come to fruition because they include things like "30 days unlimited hot yoga challenge" and "how to eat cauliflower for breakfast lunch and dinner," but my first step in looking Halter Top Hot is to do a bit of a detox. I figure that if this goes well and produces the results I'm expecting, I'll give up the drink again in January or February of next year, and then again right before the wedding.

I realize that there are about 58 flaws to my plan. First flaw: I really enjoy going out for drinks with friends, and I have the will power of a garden gnome. Second flaw: detoxing for a month probably won't get me any noticeable, physical results. Third flaw: It's entirely possible I'll just replace my glass of wine with a scoop of ice cream, which would directly counteract all the health benefits of giving up alcohol. Fourth flaw: I'm going to a wedding on October 3 and since I've already decided that I want to drink at both the rehearsal dinner and the actual wedding, I'm giving myself a dispensation for those days and instead starting the detox on September 29, thereby failing my experiment BEFORE IT EVEN BEGINS.

But hey, I'm not doing much else this month. Outside of the aforementioned wedding I have no other social plans, and any holiday parties won't start until November. So while I'll be missing the height of all the pumpkin-spiced beers, I'll be just in time for Leine's Snowdrift Vanilla Porter, which (let's be honest), is really the reason for the season.

But in the meantime, anyone got any good juice recipes?