Settling In...

Three weeks in, and I'm finally getting settled into the new place. It feels like a palace compared to the tiny studio apartment I came from. I like that I can fold my laundry on a surface other than a bed. I can sit on the couch and stare out a window (with a fairly decent view I might add) while I sip my morning coffee.

And I love being able to sit at an actual table while I eat dinner. No room for a table in my last place, so I ate at my desk, which usually led to me pulling out my laptop and multi-tasking over dinner the same way I do at lunch. I was eating pretty much every meal in front of a screen. Depressing.

Setting and sitting at a table feels good. It makes dinner feel like a meal and a time to stop, take some time for me and actually enjoy it. The table, while small, makes me feel like more of a grown up and makes the food taste and look better for a reason I can't quite explain. The first meal at the table started with smoked cod with comte cheese and crostini and oysters on the half shell (they're kind of becoming a weekly thing). A blood orange and avocado salad with red jalapeno (yes, a blatant rip off of the one I had at Chez Panisse) came next. And the main attraction was a piece of pan fried sole with a creamy hedgehog sauce coupled with roasted rainbow carrots followed.

That photo doesn't do anything for the fish dish. It looks brown and bland but wasn't. It was savory. And crispy. And juicy. And flaky. And superb. The carrots were simple, tender and salted well. Their color made me happy. Almost as happy as when I cleaned my plate, stopped to look around the new place and realized it was starting to feel a little bit like a home.