Vanilla {31 days}
The Barefoot Contessa always says, “be sure to use really good vanilla” in her recipes, as though any buyer of her cookbooks would ever think of some imitation flavor as good enough. I love the smell of vanilla, bright and sweet in summer, creamy and warm in winter.
It’s dropped into a fluffy angel food cake, standing tall and proud on the kitchen counter, begging for strawberries to attend it. It’s drizzled into the whipped-cream-maker, then artfully swirled atop fresh pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, probably more whipped cream than you really need, but it’s Thanksgiving and who’s counting? It’s carefully measured into cookie batter, and when they are scooped out and placed on the baking sheet like a line of delicious soldiers, the scent of vanilla and chocolate and sugar and butter mixes together and begs the oven to work faster.
Vanilla is the smell of a good candle, of comforting lotion, of coffee creamer and afternoon snacks. It tastes like the cookies we used to eat after long afternoons on the ranch, the chunky, fresh cookie engulfed in our boss’ massive hands, held less impressively in our own small, not-quite-clean fingers. It tastes like home, like having a mom who had time to make you feel warm and special and well-fed, with care and concern for your belly and your being. It tells us that everything is OK, that someone bigger than us is holding our future and we needn’t fret. It is a taste that is not easy, it doesn’t just spring into being, someone has to care enough to give it the perfect palate to do its work. But someone does, and always has, in those moments when I feel incapable of mixing together ingredients or measuring extract, when my life is confusing and difficult and the simplicity of a cookie seems out of reach.
I’m longing to feel safe and held. I’m yearning for vanilla.