The Lemonade Stand
When you're living an ordinary Sunday and realize you're home.
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On July 4, we got home after almost a month away: an absolutely breathtaking stay at the Nobu Los Cabos where we had our first kids’ club experience (10/10, highly recommend), lots of time in Frenchtown, New Jersey with friends and family, swimming in pools and creeks, and for me, a whirlwind few days in New York for the Fancy Food Show, the Cheesemongers Invitational, too many wonderful meals to count, and long conversations with cheese people and other people I love.
Family selfie @Nobu
It was joyful. It was full. It was also a lot.
It’s been a little less than a year since we moved to Chicago. We had heard so many good things about the city, but we’d spent very, very little time here. Packing up our lives and heading west felt, in many ways, like a leap. We hoped it would become home. We couldn’t know.
Last weekend was the Bucktown Garden Walk. Nearly 200 homes in our neighborhood opened their gates, fences, and patios to show off gardens that people have clearly spent years tending. Walking around felt like wandering through dozens of tiny worlds, each one lovingly cultivated.
Like so many other neighborhood kids, Simone and Julius decided this was the perfect occasion for a lemonade stand.
It was their first lemonade stand—and their first entrepreneurial venture. We gathered supplies, debated the menu (regular lemonade, strawberry lemonade, cookies, and dog treats that Ace enthusiastically taste-tested), taped together signs, and gathered a sweet crew of neighborhood kids.
The lemonade itself was almost beside the point.
The kids were frequently distracted from selling by bubbles, scooters, chasing one another down the sidewalk, and taking turns lounging dramatically in a neighbor’s hammock. The grown-ups chatted over spritzes in Solo cups. People stopped because they wanted lemonade, but they lingered because that’s what neighbors do. Someone always knew someone else. Someone waved from across the street. Someone borrowed a marker. Someone needed change.
I was telling a friend about the afternoon afterward, and I unexpectedly got a little emotional.
Because when I imagined becoming a mother, this is somehow what I pictured—not any one specific milestone or achievement, but this feeling. The eruption of laughter. Friends under dappled shade. Bubble wands scattered across the patio. Kids disappearing and reappearing in packs while adults keep half an eye on them and finish a conversation. The ordinary magic of everyone being outside together.
I’ve become something of a Chicago evangelist over the past year.
I think we live in the best neighborhood in the best city. It has so many of the things I love and care about: wonderful independent coffee shops, restaurants that make an ordinary Tuesday feel exciting, the 606 stretching through the neighborhood like Chicago’s answer to the High Line, public transit that lets us leave the car behind, the walk to school and camp, and neighbors who have, in less than a year, become something that feels an awful lot like a village.
A year ago, all of that was hypothetical. We were hoping we’d made the right decision.
Now, without quite realizing when it happened, this has become the place we come home to.
The month away reminded me how lucky we are to have people we love in so many places. But standing behind that folding table with paper cups of lemonade, watching my kids run barefoot between our patio and the neighbors’, I realized something else.
Sometimes you don’t notice you’ve put down roots until you look around and realize you’re already living inside the life you once hoped to build.
A few Chicago restaurant highlights
This cheesy goodness @NADU was a sort of Indian fondue, Crumbled paneer cooked with tomato, onion and young garlic, creamy Amul cheese, and ladi pav—BIG YUM.
OMG. Our neighbors liked the vibrant artwork here—giant oil paintings by local artist Abhay Sehgal—so much they bought sa print for their home. It has a vibe that manages to be both cheerful and sexy. The food was just impeccable, every dish more delicious than the next. There is a marigold theme, the servers wear marigold aprons and I had a marigold in my phool cocktail, with gin, cream soda, marigold and apple verjus (like a very fancy floral gin and tonic). Don’t sleep on the tangra chili fish or the cultured butter dosa stuffed with potatoes and served with this cooling, ethereal coconut chutney. This is a more casual spot from Chef Sujan Sarkar, who has a Michelin star at Indienne, and I would go back in a heartbeat.
(dressed up kids on their way to “a fancy restraunaut",” as they call it, The Radicle!)
Why doesn’t every restaurant feature crunchy shrimp heads in their frito misto? We took our kids AND a friend’s kid here and it was the sort of place that’s perfect for a family: excellent cocktails that are just $10 (again this is not a thing you see in NYC), Neapolitan-style pizzas with perfect crispy-meets-pillowy crust (the funky Italian cheese blend on the mushroom pizza was brilliant) and a big bowl of mussels with ‘gnuda that Simone devoured. It’s from the folks from Daisies so you just know everything is going to be spot-on. We went to Jeni’s after for ice cream.
What I’ve read
Short but deeply satisfying! This is a novel in three acts, and I especially loved the third in which a father grapples with his young daughter’s eating disorder and the fear and complexities and nuance and pain is so beautifully rendered.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
I didn’t want to read this book because it seemed to be everywhere and then for about a chapter or two I hated it and then I became obsessed and couldn’t put it down. I found it propulsive and fascinating and sad and fun to read. My big takehome was how impossible it is for women to “win.”
What I wrote
My first byline for National Geographic! I’m proud of this one, on how pregnancy changes your brain, but not necessarily the way people assume.
In May, I visited Cincinnati for a wine and food festival. I wrote about one of the regional foods I learned about there, goetta, for Food & Wine.
I DID NOT like Indiana but I DID fall in love with this charming town, Zionsville. I wrote about it for Travel + Leisure.
When I worked at Fairway, I discovered this delicious condiment called saba. I wrote about it for Food & Wine.
Upcoming classes and events
July 22: A lunch and learn all about pitching with Les Dames d’Escoffier Chicago. It’s free!
Our next Book Proposal Intensive starts September 9 and you can get an early bird discount of $350 through July 31! You can sign up here. Use code EARLIESTBIRD!
July 31: Need some writing time and accountability? We host monthly co-writing sessions over at Write Up.
August 4: Wondering how to book press trips? I’m teaching a class all about this! Join us!
xo,
Hannah
Motherhood is such a blessing and these moments are fleeting. I wish I could have bottled up this moments so I could pull them out for whenever my day felt hard or overwhelming. Drink up the fun!