I can’t remember when I had as much fun as we had sledding in Prospect Park yesterday. The park was as beautiful as I’ve ever remembered it and as Mia would say “it’s like a magical winter wonderland!!” Indeed. The snow kept falling as we frolicked around, keeping everything pristinely white and powdery soft. No wind, and the temps were in the mid-30s so it was actually quite comfortable to be out sledding and rolling around in the snow for hours till the setting sun started to turn everything a dusty purple. It seemed like all our neighbors and friends were out and it’s moments like this one, standing in the middle of the meadow with nothing but monochrome white except for the stark tree-scapes around me, that I am really happy to live right here, in Brooklyn.

I’m not sure if I can think of anything better to eat on a cold winter morning than a dim sum brunch. While our go-to place is usually Dim Sum Go Go, I was in the mood for the large banquet/dim sum cart experience, so we bundled up the kids on yet another snowy morning and met our friends Melissa, Brendan and their kids at Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street. I haven’t been there in years since I used to go fairly regularly with my NYU grad school asian posse friends, and I think it was the first time I went with the kids, but it’s the perfect place for rambunctious 2 and 4 year olds who, for some reason, thought it would be okay to go hide under the table and dance in the aisles even though they don’t normally do this in other restaurants. It’s probably because Jing Fong is loud, bustling and huge. The carts come right away even before you have time to sit down. Mia’s favorite dish has always been the fried taro (pictured above) and she expertly waved a cart down and pointed to a bamboo steamer full of dumplings that she wanted, even though she’s never done this before. The babies didn’t eat anything except peanut butter pretzels and banana (“blahnahs”, as Claudine calls them), but that wasn’t a surprise. We left the table an hour and a half later with full stomachs, though once home, Mark and I both revealed that we could have eaten so much more.

The kids and I stayed indoors all day. Really, it was too cold and there was nowhere to go, so why bother? I’m not sure what we did to fill the entire day, but it crept along and now it’s evening and the day is almost done.

It saids volumes about how cold it’s been if we’re looking forward to tomorrow when temperatures will break 30 degrees. It might even feel downright mild, but at least I’ll finally feel prepared to face the cold from now on. For years I promised myself I would buy a serious down coat and 2 years ago I did, but here’s some advice: never EVER buy a coat a few weeks after you’ve given birth, especially a full length, puffy down coat. What was I thinking?? Granted, even I was surprised that I lost most of the baby weight in a few weeks (quicker than the first time around). Even so, I found myself swimming in that coat after a few weeks of wear and I really did end up looking like I was wearing a sleeping bag, so I gave it away. I’ve been hunting around online for a coat ever since the weather became brutal and it was clear that my everyday coat of 10 years wasn’t cutting it, so I was pleasantly surprised that I found the North Face Arctic Parka that I was considering in a neighborhood store on sale. It isn’t perfect – I wish it were longer and I wish it didn’t have a big-ass North Face logo right in the front AND the back, but this coat is serious business and I look forward to testing it out tomorrow. My feet, on the other hand, have been downright toasty since I invested in a pair of waterproof shearling-lined boots by Aquatalia 2 years ago. They aren’t pretty, and yeah, you can argue that they are almost Ugg-like, but at least they don’t have that weird “shoe blends into sole” thing that I hate about Uggs. They are downright WARM though and I wear them when it’s too cold and slushy to wear the flat black riding boots that I usually wear everyday (another worthwhile purchase this year). And if I knew about this hat before it sold out, I might have been tempted by it too. That’s the dangerous thing about being stuck indoors – the temptations of online shopping…and there are all these sales! And not to mention all the Spring stuff that’s starting to trickle in and tempt us with warmer days and lighter clothes. Seriously, I need to step away from the computer when I am in a weak moment of thinking that everything in my closet is tired and so blah.

From your comments and emails, sounds like there are quite a few of us suffering from January doldrums. To get through this miserably cold weather, I’m trying to think of little ways to brighten up the long winter days. Like eating oranges. This is the season to buy clementines in a bag or box. It’s surprising how many little clementines you can go through in one sitting, but they are like little bursts of sunshine that remind you of warmer days even though they are technically a winter fruit.

Or getting hugs from little people. I don’t know what it is, but kids give hugs with as much warmth and presence as a bigger person 2 or 3 times their size. Plus I love when they hug you and simultaneously pat your back with their tiny hands.

And of course, any bit of good news helps. Last week Dean & Deluca called us and requested some samples. So we gave them some. Today they said yes. Our shortbreads and chocolate gingersnaps will be on the shelves in both Manhattan stores by Valentine’s Day. Yay (though if you saw Mark’s reaction you wouldn’t be able to tell that we are actually happy about this – he’s feeling the pressure and haven’t had a free moment since our Christmas break). But let me rewind and tell you a little story. When we were conceiving of the idea of the business back in March last year, Mark’s sister and I went into Dean & Deluca to do some market research and see what was on the shelves. We actually did talk to an employee (for a long time as I recall), and I vaguely mentioned that we were starting a company somewhere in our conversation. I got the card of the baked goods buyer which I tucked into my planner and to this day remains. We thought that we might eventually approach Dean and Deluca someday. We just didn’t think that it would happen this way.

It’s hit me. It’s bitterly cold and unpleasant outside and this is the time of year when all those outdoor neighborhood Christmas decorations, which have been battered by time and weather, start to get annoying and you wish they were taken down already. Now that the holidays are over, winter has lost some of its charm and I feel like we’re biding our time waiting for Spring. So maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s because I’ve talked to a few of my friends who’ve been laid off recently and it’s just sounding grim out there as the recession seems to be finally trickling down to our industry. I go through alternating periods of feeling fine and optimistic about the state of things and being really scared for all of us. Mark and I are keeping busy for now, but as independent workers, there’s always that general overhanging fear that work and business will slow down. I think I need to stop reading the news for a while so I can be blissfully unaware of what’s going on, at least for a few days, to shake off the gloom. How is everyone else feeling these days?

After a relatively mild fall, I feel like this has been a cold winter. It’s supposed to get even colder in the next few days. Hard to motivate to get out, I must admit, but after the snowfall on Saturday I bundled the girls up the next day and walked to Prospect Park with the intention of playing in the snow and making snowmen. When we got there, we discovered that the snow was too hard and crunchy to even pick up as the temperatures dropped enough to make them little crystals of ice. Claudine enjoyed the newfound texture of the crunch underneath her feet (and don’t even ask me what Mia was doing laying on the ice) so it wasn’t a wasted trip. On our way home, we watched all the discarded Christmas trees being mulched by this huge machine at the entrance of the park. The loud sound, the fresh and still lovely smell of pine, and neighbors dropping off trees and congregating with hot chocolate to watch the mulchfest – not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

We went to a really great one on Saturday at a restaurant/bar. Tables were cleared aside and blankets and pillows were placed on the floor for the kids to get comfy to watch short animated films projected on a wall from a laptop for a kiddie film fest birthday party. Adults drank champagne. Pretty cool, huh? During the party, the snow that was forecast fell in earnest and the streets were blanketed in fresh snow. You know how there sometimes is this orange cast to the sky when it snows? We missed our bus, but it was so pretty out that we decided to walk the 14 or so blocks home – even Claudine, who, I guess, got over her fear of walking on snow.

I decided to make some gravlax the other day with a piece of salmon fillet that I never got around to cooking for dinner. It’s a great way to preserve fish and Mia has always been known as a smoked salmon fiend. At any party with smoked salmon she would park herself in front of the buffet until it was gone. It takes three days to cure the fish so I started it Saturday night. I made the mistake of telling Mia that I was making it, but it wouldn’t be ready for a few days. “But I want some salmon noooow!”, she would say every day until it was finally done. Well, it turns out that she didn’t like it, strangely enough. “Not smoky enough”, or “I like the white parts, with crispy bits”, she would say. No problem, it’s just more for me and Jenna.

Gravlax

One fresh salmon fillet, about 2 pounds (center cut is best)
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons dried dill, or 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1 Tablespoon ground black pepper

Cut the salmon into two equal sized pieces, leaving the skin on. Mix the remaining ingredients together. Sprinkle a bit on the bottom of a pan big enough to hold the salmon. Put one piece of salmon skin side down in the dish. Coat it liberally with more of the mixture, and place the other piece of salmon on the top, skin side up, making sort of a sandwich. Put the remaining mixture on the top. Cover it with plastic wrap. Put something heavy on top of the salmon to weigh it down – another pan, or a plate with something else on top of it. Refrigerate it for three days, flipping it over once a day. After three days, rinse off the sugar-salt mixture, and slice and serve as needed.

If you feel like experimenting, try using different herbs and spices to flavor the gravlax. A restaurant where I used to work made a delicious curry gravlax, where they would mix a generous amount of curry powder into the sugar and salt mixture.

…and your 2 year old is suddenly talking in these complex, sophisticated sentences and your 4 year old is drawing all these pictures that actually look like the objects that she’s intending to draw – you know, trees that look like trees, people that look like people, and kitchens that really look like kitchens (yeah, she likes to draw kitchens). Mia is turning 5 in a month and for the last few months now, she’s been talking about her birthday, planning her party and telling EVERYONE. Since she doesn’t know how to spell many words, she’s been planning her party by drawing them and coming up with different themes. I think the last thing that she came up with was that we were going to have a subway party, with all the subway lines represented somehow. But the thing is, I don’t even know if we will have a party. I have to say, I find having a birthday party every year (x2, though we haven’t really had a party for Claudine yet) really exhausting. We’ve done it low-key for the past 4 years, electing to have gatherings of friends over at our place, but one year for her 3rd birthday, we did have 3 different birthday parties for her 3 different group of friends since we couldn’t host that many people all at once in one big party. By the time we brought out that 3rd birthday cake and sang happy birthday for probably the 7th time, I think maybe even Mia was over it. I know there is no pressure to have a spectacular party every year, but it does make you think about your own plans when you’re going to all these neighborhood birthdays held at various venues like restaurants, public playspaces and children’s museums with hired entertainment. That’s not in the cards for us, so whatever we decide to do, we need to decide fast. I want to keep it low-key, but Mia wants to invite everyone she knows and have a theme with theme-appropriate decorations and food. Since when did we become event planners to a 4 year old client?

And not because I want to, but because it’s fast approaching and we have to. Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that I never really thought about. It’s pretty cute when you have kids, I guess, but when you’re in high school and your school has this thing where you can purchase a flower for somebody and then it gets publicly delivered to all the recipients during homeroom on Valentine’s Day for all to see, whether you get 1 flower or 5 or 10 or NONE, then yeah, it kinda sucks. In any case, here we are, thinking about hearts and flowers and flavors that are red and pink. This is a pink peppercorn linzer cookie that we’re experimenting on with different jams and Mark’s been trying out marshmallows in the shape of a heart. I also really want to get this idea going that I have for our etsy shop. Now that we sell across 3 different venues online, I’d like to experiment with our etsy store and try listing some non-food things (but still food-related), but it’s just a matter of finding the time. We’ve gotten quite busy again, and this week has unfolded much drama that we are mulling over and still trying to figure out. Can’t say much more about it here except to say, we just want to sell cookies, why does it have to be more complicated than that?