What a year!

2024 in reading, traveling, and learning to nap

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2024 was a whirlwind.

In my eating disorder days, Jan 1 meant the ideal opportunity to starve myself more effectively because that was what the world was doing. In early recovery, every day was a great day to start anew (still is!) so I put resolutions in the no thank you box. These days, I feel like I can tap into what feels good about new year energy and leave the rest. But first, a look back on an overflowing year:

In life skills, I embraced napping. I’ve always been a terrible napper, even during those hazy postpartum days and nights that all blurred together. Mainly because I wake up feeling all groggy and discombobulated. But I still feel like I’m catching up from years of pregnancy, postpartum, baby, and toddler sleep deprivation and I now see a chance to sleep as a very worthy luxury/necessity. In my 37th year, I’m wholeheartedly embracing the nap.

In family, Julius feels like so much of a bigger kid now. On our England trip in spring, sleep/jet lag was a serious struggle and we were all foggy and exhausted the whole time. On our holiday England trip last week, he slept pretty great. A revelation! Six months and a whole new experience. Time really is such a magical and wild ingredient in life and parenting. Everything changes, and then keeps changing. In the summer, we did some big kid transitions - potty training (potty learning, as our Montessori preschool calls it. I’m always in trouble with them for using the wrong terminology.) He also graduated to a big kid bed and now shares a BUNK BED with Simone.

Simone started preschool at the local elementary school. She proclaimed the orientation hour as the best thing ever and her first day the best day of her life. Not all the days can live up to this level of amazing but, generally, she is thriving. She is loving ballet and always has a plan and vision. As the kids get older, I’m finding parenting to be slightly less so-hard-it’s-painful and more fun, although it’s always a mix of both, and I worry that even by writing that I’m jinxing myself.

At this stage in life, I feel like Tony and I take a lot of turns having small adventures, travels, dinners, etc, while the other one holds down the fort at home. I’m trying to savor the time we do have together and carve out more of it - we had a few dates, like one to the movies, which is a total treat, we had a trip to Spain (!!), we had a weekend away in Asbury Park, and these things felt extra meaningful

NYC, another big life thing (longer story coming soon) is that we sold our Brooklyn apartment where we thought our life would unfold but was thwarted by the pandemic, when our few weeks move to Frenchtown, NJ, this gorgeous town where my parents live, became, well, now four years later, our home. A few weeks ago, we used the money we made selling our Brooklyn apartment to buy a Manhattan apartment, which is absolutely a dream come true, and sort of surreal. And also, of course, sometimes stressful. We still plan to do most of our life in Frenchtown but also have a city family HQ. It’s right by the Morgan Library, across the street from the Polish Consulate, which is quite grand, on a really pretty block.

In friendship, when we moved to Frenchtown, it was the pandemic, I was a new mom, and I felt isolated and lonely. It took longer than I wanted to find my people here, and, well, good things often take time. These days, I have a great crew of friends, a real community, and that feels HUGE in terms of my quality of life, the texture of my days. I spent a lot of moments this year in the playground watching my kids run around, having a chat and coffee with a friend I genuinely love, feeling lucky and heart-full.

In travel, we took two family trips to spend time with our English family, one to the Isle of Wight (which I fell in love with) in springtime for my father-in-law’s 80th and one to Tony’s hometown, outside of Birmingham, for Christmas. Tony and I headed to Spain’s Costa Brava for a friend’s absolutely magical wedding, and the kids stayed with my parents, and it miraculously went well. We spent a beautiful summer week at my aunt and uncle’s beach house in Rhode Island. I took work trips to Atlanta and LA, plus Switzerland to learn about Gruyere and the Aosta Valley of Italy. I also solo parented for a bunch of stretches while Tony took his own work trips.

In work, I launched Write Up, and led an amazing group of seven writers through an eight week sprint of stepping up our careers. I’m planning a new Write Up for spring, even better, stay tuned. I taught a lot of classes with Hannah Selinger, everything from Food Writing to Money for Writers, and we launched our newsletter, The Inkwell. Follow along if you want to read about all tips and tricks freelance writing.

In writing, I had two cover stories for print magazines, which I’m really proud of, especially this one about Perrystead Dairy and how cheese can change the world for Edible Philly. I’m also proud of this story for Culture on country ham. I loved writing profiles of food people for DoorDash, especially Caroline Chambers and Jet Tila. It’s been up and down and all around, new assignments, rejections, regular things ending, new things blossoming, may seeds planted…the rollercoaster of freelance life. I’ve stalled and stalled and stalled again on a new book, which is top of my list for 2025.

In client work, I said goodbye to a retainer client which felt hard at the time but was the right thing, as it usually is! I just signed on a new big project with a food organization that I admire. I’m proud of the work I’ve done editing Parent.com.

In reading, once upon a time, I used to read on the subway. These days, I read before bed. My challenge is - I’m usually exhausted, and after somewhere between 4 and 11 minutes, I fall asleep, regardless of how juicy the book is. So these days, I’m heading to bed just a little earlier to curl up with my book, which is one of my favorite times of my day. I might even read for a half an hour! Some books I loved reading this year:

• Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO

• Paul Murray’s THE BEE STING

• Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE

• Oliver Burkeman’s FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS

• Sarah Manguso's LIARS

• Tana French’s THE HUNTER (also reread THE SEARCHER, so good)

• I wanted some long novels I could just hang out in during my trips so I revisited Jonathan Franzen, and re-read CROSSROADS and THE CORRECTIONS, and now am halfway through PURITY, and deeply enjoying all of them.

In cheese, I got to visit so many brilliant New Jersey cheesemakers for a story I wrote about Garden State cheese at Culture. I’m especially smitten with Cherry Grove and Gorgeous Goat. I taught cheese classes in Doylestown, PA (at Wheat & Vine Provisions) and outside Philly (at Saddlehill Winery). I got to walk the Fancy Food Show with cheese friends and taste our hearts out. I learned so much about Grueyere on a Le Greyere AOP trip to Switzerland and visited a Fontina cheese cave in the Valle d’Aosta. Cheese nerd highlight: they opened the Fontina Valle d’Aosta Museum, which was closed when I visited, just for me!

In cooking, I’ve gotten into a pretty good flow. Some of the favorite dishes in our nightly rotation: crunchy salmon bowls, sheet pan chicken shawarma, Yasmin’s chicken with mushrooms and caramelized onions, quick shrimp scampi orzo, and my go-to leftover veggies with pasta and sausages. Always down for trying new recipes, serious bonus points if they’re quick and don’t require a million pots and pans to clean up.

My word for 2025: ABUNDANCE.

When I worked at Fairway, we used to throw this around a lot in terms of our displays - oranges up the ceiling! a cheese counter bursting the brim with wheels and wedges! - and the general vibe of walking into our stores. I can feel constricted, scared, and anxious and abundance feels like a wonderful contrast to all that. I’m hoping for a year of abundant creativity, joy, love, health, opportunity, growth, fun, and connection.

I wish that for you, too!

Happy New Year! See you on the other side.

xo,

Hannah