I cannot find color in a beige box or where is my creative energy?

Darlings,

Lately I feel strangled by my lack of creativity.

Back in Maine, I was working a lot, but I came home almost every night and made a meal that I could have served to any guest that popped by with pleasure and delight.

That was my outlet in Maine.

Here, I cook - but the express, the feeling of craft has left me. I cook, I am not cooking. I am trying to get to the crux of the matter - perhaps it's because there won't be someone knocking on the door at any given moment to say hello and drop in for a quick glass of wine and stay for dinner. Maybe it's because I am depressed by the kitchen with which I have to work - which is not to say that I'm blaming it for my inability to feel good about what comes out of it, just that it could be a factor in what I have come to call "passive cooking," cooking without action, without passion - being able to do what you are doing with your eyes closed.

As I work through this inability to present craft and ingenuity in the kitchen (which darlings, is more frustrating than I can really articulate), I want to see if the universe is asking me to switch mediums, or rather to revert back to a medium. Maybe the universe is asking me to write more. And I'm not just talking about here - although, as I always do, would like to try to write here more often - I'm talking about writing. Setting time aside every day to put something on paper - to open up my world a little bit more and to engage with myself.For me, it's always easier to stay on top of writing when I am actively reading as well. I have to admit that I haven't been reading nearly as much as I used to in this the age of endless good content and the need to be able to reference anything within the pop culture zeitgeist at the drop of a hat. But I have to start again and perhaps categorize time better in my life. Schedule my off time like it is on time? Do you do that? An hour in the morning to write, an hour after work to sweat, an hour after that to decompress, an hour after that to read? But it is so much easier said than done to follow a self imposed structure when all you want to do after a 10/12 hour day is go home and watch re-runs of the office. But maybe it's time to start being more disciplined. Stay tuned to see how that turns out, darlings. In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you some of the books that are on my bedside table (or are in the ether getting to me via drone or something) that I am eager to begin reading.

"Out of Line" by Barabara Lynch is on pre-order, but I am dying to get my hands on it. Darlings, there are few genres I love more than culinary memoirs, but I especially love culinary memoirs written by women. I find that as someone who has worked for the majority of her professional career in a male dominated industry, there is something (#unpopularopinion) refreshing about the way women in a kitchen are able to let things roll off their backs, engage in often crude discourse with their male colleagues and get shit done. In order to be present, you have to stand up and I guess, not care so much about boob jokes, it's all anatomy after all, right? Anyway, Barbara Lynch is a force in the culinary scene - I remember walking by No.9 Park on my way to class every day in college just dreaming of the day that someone would take me there (I've been to a lot of great restaurants, but still have yet to dine here!) She's a James Beard winning, hospitality group owning, at risk children helping badass and I can't wait to read her memoir about all of it.I have such high hopes for "South and West" by Joan Didion. Didion pushes my buttons. To me - her ability to write about how culture and grief dance with one another is one of the greatest talents in the world. She constantly pulls you in from page one to the world seen through her eyes. This "notebook" promises to be no less sardonic than all of her other work - full of interviews and overheards as she travels through the deep south, and onward to the west coast where she takes great interest in the Patty Hearst trial. I'll report back on this one, darlings.

I heard an interview with Ayelet Waldman, author of "A Really Good Day," on NPR and was struck by how much this idea of "microdosing" changed her life. I've never really been one for psychedelics myself, darlings - there was a man in Rittenhouse Square who thought he was Jesus and would rap the bible, and the lore was that he just never came back from a trip - but this book (and just the state of the state) could quite possibly change that. As someone who has endured emotional instability (read: I'm an entitled Jewish girl and nothing is ever as good as it could or should be) for her entire life, the idea that someone, a public defender no less, would go to the extreme of assessing the potential therapeutic properties of LSD through a self imposed experiment to help quash some of these imbalances seems like a crazy idea, but a good one if you've got the time and desire. I guess I'm just into the idea of making the idea of talking about the good qualities of drugs a normal conversation. Open up the doors to a new world, remember the past, but engage in what could be, and all of that.Darlings, you know I love ettiquette books - but I left most of mine in the basement of the craftsman we left behind in Maine. Sometimes on Sunday mornings, all I want to do is flip through an etiquette book (see: need a more rigorous Sunday schedule above), and this as a new edition might do the trick. In "Table Manners," Jeremiah Tower talks about the prevailing presence of technology at the table and how to handle it. Although my emotions around it are jumbled - at a weekday lunch, I will check my email no less than 20 times, at a weekend brunch, perhaps I'll put my phone away all together - I appreciate that people are still taking the time to think on these things.I recently finished "When we Rise," by Cleve Jones. This one deserves it's own blog space for a review, but here's what I'll leave you with: You and I need to be good to our neighbors, to treat human beings as equals and to stop caring about what goes on inside someone else's house. Let them love who they love, let them light candles on their sabbath, let them say the prayers they want to. We will never have peace until we can live and let live. Jones memoir traces his life in the movement, and I dare you to read this without shedding a tear every 5 pages. How far we've come and how much is at stake.I have no idea what I'm getting myself into with "Valley Fever" by Katherine Taylor. All I know is that it's a coming of age piece about a woman who returns home. Her home happens to be the Central Coast, out here. I love reading about women who return home, because I can't wait to do the same, someday. Darlings, what are you reading? What is inspiring you?

Tell me.

xoxo lcf