Laura – Page 2 – 2nd Avenue

Comfort baking

These strange (and physically isolated) have me missing friends and family, uncertain about what’s to come, and feeling generally anxious. To help me cope, I’m making comforting, familiar, satisfying recipes that call to mind childhood memories—and don’t require any strange, hard-to-find ingredients.

These super-simple, super-delicious blueberry/lemon cornmeal muffins certainly fit the bill! And, as a bonus, they’re wonderfully high-protein and delightfully filling.

Pandemic entertainment

Keeping entertained during the novel coronavirus crisis is a balancing act.

I’m torn between wanting to stay informed about the current state of the world (physically distant, begrudgingly hyper-local with an undercurrent of pervasive anxiety) and the desire to dig my head in the sand. I don’t want to numb myself to reality, but I also know that too much awareness about the number of infections, the dangerous absurdities unfolding in the US, and the prognostications on when we’ll return to ‘normal’ (ha!) are bad for my mental health.

Virtual yoga: a corona perk?

The coronavirus lockdown means that I haven’t taught yoga to anyone other than my husband in at least six weeks—and he’s getting damn tired of me telling him to exhale and relax. While I’m missing leading yin and restorative yoga classes, I have found a major upside to everyone being stuck at home: online classes from teachers all over the world!

Moving away from studios and teachers is a big downside of our peripatetic ex-pat life—but COVID-19 erases some of that distance. I’m super grateful to be attending yoga sessions with teachers I thought I might never practice with again—and to virtually bring a handful of Zürich teachers I love home with me.

Damn bunnies can’t hold their booze

Off with their heads—and in with boozy whipped coffee!

In perhaps the funniest late night TV show segment I’ve ever seen, Seth and Rihanna go day drinking (if you haven’t seen it yet… go watch it now) and reveal the greatest Easter hack ever: beheading chocolate bunnies and using them as glasses.

Genius.

But tequila is a little intense for QuarantEaster—and I don’t have Rihanna’s skill for downing shots. My solution? Combining current Instagram-darling #WhippedCoffee with a slightly lighter white Russian.

Counting rooms

I used to think “How many rooms is your place?” had an easy answer. But living in Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland has made differing approaches on room calculus abundantly clear. And the lockdown in Switzerland to flatten the COVID-19 curve has changed the equation again.

Not a cookie catastrophe

Healthy-ish chocolate oatmeal peacan cookies on a wire cooling rack

The COVID-19 crisis has me feeling overwhelmed—so much uncertainty, anxiety, misinformation, and just plain unease.

And what makes me feel better in uneasy times? Baking, of course!

Women we’re raving about

Black and white photo of three female strikers — 14-year old striker Fola La Follette and activist Rose Livingston in New York City; from the Library of Congress digital collections.

I’m part of the Impromptue Community in Zürich, which is a platform for materialising women’s ideas into projects. To celebrate International Women’s Day 2020, the group nominated a handful of inspirational women. I collected their suggestions and transformed them into the blog post below.