I'm calling this installation Clean Crockery in the Sink. I keep a drain rack in the left-hand side of my divided sink (if I were replacing it, I would do so with a single-bowl sink, but that's another conversation for another day), and if the dishwasher is full and I don't feel like emptying it, or if a thing simply doesn't fit, I can hand-wash it quickly and set it in the rack to dry until I'm ready to put it away, minutes or hours or weeks or months later, however long it takes.
Here you see a red baking dish I bought at Goodwill when I went with the girls after Christmas last year (the last time I set food in our Goodwill, in fact, which is some kind of record) and a bowl the husband bought me from a local potter who is not, believe it or not, the Artgirl. I thought all the colors were pretty together, so first thing this morning, as I was pouring my coffee, I snapped this still-life.
The sun has fled, and it's a grim gray day with a possibility of snow flurries. As luck would have it, I've got things hanging on the line in a state of frozen-solidity: several pairs of wool socks, one pair of tights, and a microfiber towel. I'll go out and check them directly, and if I absolutely have to, I'll bang them into the dryer to finish drying. At least this way, if there were any moths in the wool, they'd be most seriously discouraged by now.
I have dressed warmly for the day, and also put off washing my hair. Just can't cope with wet hair this morning.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Old Navy garment-dyed wide-leg cotton jeans (Size 12), bought January 2025, last worn January 17. Wears in 2025: 2.
*Thrifted teal cashmere pullover, bought September 2023, customized by me with a pair of scissors. Second season of wear.
*Thrifted Peruvian Connection aqua alpaca cardigan, bought September 2022, third season of wear.
*Snag merino tights in Silver Lining, feet cut off last year by me. Bought fall 2021, fourth season of wear. Worn today as long johns, basically. I learned my lesson walking the dog in cotton jeans the other night.
*Boody bamboo "Chunky Bed Socks" (I wore the pink pair the other day, and now I'm wearing the gray-blue pair), bought 2022 or 2023, not sure which. Let's say this is a third season of wear, because I think that's right.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Melrose boots, bought summer 2023, second season of wear.
If it gets wet and messy out there I'll change my boots, but I wanted to try this pair with these jeans. I like the way the smudgy dark gray grounds my light-colored outfit, which more or less accords with what I'd put on my outfit plan for this week.
I'll probably add a scarf to this ensemble when I go out, but I am enjoying the soft spring colors on a distinctly wintry day.
I'm getting used to myself as a Person in Trousers again. Jeans used to be my default mode, from high school forward, but for the last four years I've worn mostly dresses and cultivated a kind of energy that feels good to me, associated with the freer movement of a dress or skirt around my body. Of course, that can turn into a way of hiding your body --- though I largely don't think I've swamped myself in the dresses I wear, though many of them do fit loosely or skim the lines of my body. But the growing realization that I feel good in a fit-and-flare shape, as opposed to an unstructured A-line (although I do still love my remaining Willow dress), coupled with the availability of high-waisted trousers in wider or tapered shapes, made me think I might try jeans again.
What I like about these:
1. They're comfortable and non-constricting.
2. They're not completely shapeless. The higher rise means that they follow the whole curve of my body from waist to thigh before widening out, so that they are, in a way, another iteration of the fit-and-flare shape I've come to like.
3. This makes them feel like a well-proportioned choice for my body type: short-waisted, petite but curvy, carrying weight largely through my abdomen, hips, and thighs.
I like that I can wear a fairly cropped top (or tuck my top in), for a silhouette that echoes a silhouette I like in my dresses. I do really love the tapered shape of my Levis, which takes me right back to high school and college, but with far less self-hatred and body dysmorphia --- but I appreciate the easier, more flowy line of these jeans. They're insanely comfortable, especially over a thin merino layer, but because they're pink, they look elevated. I'd totally wear this outfit to teach a class.
I hadn't ever thought before about layering this aqua alpaca cardigan over this cashmere sweater, but they work wonderfully together, and I'm surprised the combination had never occurred to me before.
And I really just try not to think of the days when I wore Size 6 jeans. The last time I fit into that size was 2005-2006, and I was not healthy: stressed out by continual financial worry, in an emotional free-fall after my dad's sudden death (20 years ago this coming July), in intense perimenopause with no access to good health care to unravel what my body was doing.
I went through a phase of what, in hindsight, I think was hyperthyroidism: heart palpitations and racing heartbeat, coupled with dramatic weight loss, which at the time I welcomed, because it got rid of my last baby weight, but which in hindsight I see as a sign of my largely unaddressed poor health. I'm three sizes larger now --- 5'4, fairly petite in proportion, 148.4 lbs. when I weighed myself this morning. In the fall of 2005 I weighed about 125, a weight I really don't want to see again. The distribution of my weight on my body means that depending on what I'm wearing, I can get away with an Extra Small (my Iris Blue Sierra dress) OR a Large.
I'm okay with the fact that skirts and jeans are going to trend large, and I don't see that changing much. I might go down a size, but the proportions are going to stay the same. The main thing is that I see my body as balanced and in proportion --- that I don't carry an image in my mind of myself as grotesquely out of proportion (huge hips, tiny torso), because that image is really not in focus at all. Years of photos of myself at various weight points now reinforce to me that while I might be heavier or lighter, my body is not some weird caricature.
And while I try not to think in terms of words like "flattering" and "unflattering," I know when what I'm wearing feels balanced and in sync with my physical and metaphysical self. I find that balance much easier to achieve with a dress than I do with separates, but this year I have felt confident enough to try again with separates like what I'm wearing today. The lines of this outfit feel good to me, not grating. The colors feel good, not jarring.
And I'm plenty warm, which is good, because the dog is ready to venture out into the frozen world, and she cannot go alone.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
So far today I have:
*walked the dog almost a mile
*jumped for 5 minutes on my trampoline
*lifted some little weights briefly
*finished and uploaded a Substack essay
*worked on poem revisions, including a new installment in the sonnet crown I'm writing
*added a new paragraph to my short story
*eaten a grilled goat-cheese-and-mango/habanero-jam-on-sourdough sandwich for lunch
*brought in my frozen laundry to finish drying on the indoor rack (still trying not to use the dryer if I don't have to, interested to see what, if any, impact this makes on our utility bill for the month), which I have moved into the study in front of the fire
*put away dry laundry
*made my bed
It's good to list these things, because I can see that however I feel about the day so far, I have been productive and accomplished a number of things I wanted to accomplish. I still need to start putting together materials for the classes I'm teaching in two weeks' time, as well as picking out poems to read and fiction to talk about at the readings/colloquia I'm also giving while I'm in New Hampshire. AND I should give some more focused thought to this book chapter due at the end of March.
A lot to do --- but I have in fact done a good bit today, and it's nice to take a little break. I think I might make some tea, then turn my hand again to the writing (which writing? I don't know . . . ).
Dora is keeping my comfy chair warm for me, a noble gesture on her part.
EVENING UPDATE:
Awaiting the husband's return from school. Here's what's for dinner:
These are braised great Northern beans --- you could also use cannellini. I cooked these overnight in the crockpot, turning the heat from high to low when I went to bed and straining them and replacing the water this morning, to cook them on high through the day. When I was ready to make dinner, I poured them into a colander, rinsed them well, then set them aside to add when I was ready.
You could just use canned beans, rinsed, and begin at the next step. I'd probably use two cans for this, maybe 3, if I were cooking for multiple people or wanted leftovers. No idea how many dried beans I used, but I wound up with about a half-gallon of them, cooked.
If you're just cooking for you and don't want a lot of leftovers, you could use one apple, half an onion, and one can of beans.
1. Dice a medium onion and two small apples (or one large one).
2. Sautee onion and apples in a skillet with a good knob of butter, until onion is translucent.
3. Add beans plus broth of some kind, about a cup and a half. I used my own turkey stock from Thanksgiving. You can make this vegetarian by using vegetable stock (available in stores) or even water. Water mixed with some white wine would also be nice.
4. Stir the beans, onion bits and apple chunks in the liquid until the whole thing is pretty slushy --- white beans are good for slushing up any kind of liquid. You don't want too much liquid --- this isn't soup. Just enough for a thick, rich bean sauce.
5. At this point I cooked eight pieces of applewood-smoked bacon in the air fryer, drained them on a plate covered with a good thickness of paper towels, and when they were cool enough to handle, snipped them into bits and stirred them into the beans. Obviously for a vegetarian option you can skip the bacon.
6. Stir in about 1/4 cup of grated cheddar. The cheddar, onion, and apple are delicious together with the white beans, with or without added bacon. Season with salt, pepper, and a dash of nutmeg.
7. You could just serve the dish now, maybe with some cornbread on the side (we are actually having little bowls of stewed spiced mango --- cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, dash of cayenne --- on the side). OR if your dinner companion won't be home for another hour, you can opt to let your skillet dinner keep warm and bake a little in a medium-hot oven.
8. Serve in generous bowls --- even though this isn't soup, it's pretty stew-like and nice to eat in a bowl. As I say, we are having little bowls of stewed mango on the side.
The apples are a surprise ingredient in this dish, but don't leave them out! They are delicious! I forget where I first found this recipe (it wasn't in the cookbook where I thought I'd first run across it, years ago), and it's been ages since I made it, but it seemed like a good thing to do on a cold night. It uses up some more of my dried beans, plus some bacon that's been hanging out in the fridge for a while, plus the apples I bought last week that aren't getting eaten up as fast as I had anticipated.
Again, you can easily make a totally vegetarian version, even vegan if you leave out the cheese. I just put in enough for a little flavor, not a ton, because cheese loads you up with calories fast, with not a whole lot of nutritional value --- it's not a great protein source, for example, relative to the calorie load.
I like real onion in this dish, because you sautee it in the butter, and the smell and taste are so good. BUT you could use onion powder if you don't have onions.
Shelf-stable pantry staples that make it easy to make dinners like this:
1. Beans, canned or dried.
2. Onion powder (in case you don't have onions, or don't like buying them because they go bad before you use them --- it's happened to all of us). You can also buy frozen pre-diced onion. I've never used that and don't know how it tastes, but butter covers a multitude of sins, including weird freezer tastes.
3. Packaged broth: chicken or vegetable broths are readily available and will last a long time on your shelf.
4. Dried apples are actually great, if again you don't buy a lot of fresh fruit because it goes bad before you eat it --- or if you do buy it, but it gets eaten up before you can cook with it. HIDE THE DRIED APPLES behind other stuff on the shelf, make a note to yourself that they are there, and you'll always have them when you want to make something with apples.
So, this is a really filling, delicious, simple meal, and you can make it with nothing but shelf-stable pantry staples if you need to.
If you want to make stewed mango (basically like applesauce, but it's mango, and I'm serving it warm, though you could chill it): I keep bags of frozen mango chunks in my freezer at all times. I just filled a small saucepan with mango chunks, put some water in the bottom to keep the mango from burning to the bottom of the saucepan, and let it simmer until the frozen fruit more or less dissolves. You do have to keep an eye on it to make sure the bottom doesn't scorch, but basically the frozen fruit will release a lot of water as it cooks, so you don't need to put in much water to begin with.
This seemed to me like a nice, warm, light accompaniment to a meal where a bowl is going to take up all the room on the plate. I'll fill up small bowls with mango sauce and put them to the left of the plate (glasses go to the right, bowls to the left, on the same side as the fork and napkin), and it will all be delicious.
These instructions, by the way, might seem a bit much to those of you who cook routinely, but for anyone who doesn't cook routinely or feel confident in the kitchen, I figure it's better to over-explain basic things. I'm also such a make-it-up-as-I-go cook that it helps me to try to solidify for myself what I am actually doing, so that I have a prayer of ever being able to replicate it. If I write it, I remember it.
Time to check the mango again.