From Lecce, we drove south, deeper into the stiletto heel of Puglia, to where the Valle d’Itria ends and the peninsula, with the Adriatic sea to the the east, the Ionian to the west, begins: the Salento.
Surrounded by azure waters, beautiful beaches, and dramatic rocky coastline on both sides, the Salento is a paradise for sea lovers. We clung to the east, to the Adriatic coastline, which tends to offer the greatest variety of karstic grottoes, chalk cliffs, sandy shores, and salt-water lagoons.
And though our home base would be inland, just outside of a small village called Spongano, we couldn’t wait to spend our first day at one of its many marvelous stretches.
This look into the apartment—the closets—of Leandra Medine (Man Repeller) was sort of fascinating to me. I wanted to know more: how often does one cycle through it all? Is there more in storage? Any rules? How much space does her partner get? I’m not sure why, but I love reading about people’s particular closet systems. I’ll never forget the first time that Martha Stewart talked about her various hangers and her middle-of-the-night steaming sessions and her dry-cleaner-sized garment press that she loves to use.
Makes me want to go clean out my closet. Do you have any quirky or clever closet tips? My favorite thing we added to ours a while back is a valet rod. I use it all the time—when packing, being lazy about hanging things up, getting purses off the floor…
Instead of attending to the mess, however, I’m going to go pick out a dress to wear to Aron’s office party at the Crocker Art Museum tonight! And then we have soccer games and photos and general house stuff to attend to this weekend—and I’m definitely finishing those Italy posts. Anything fun on the horizon for you?
Whenever I read those glowing stories about parenting in France,* the thing that really induces a bit of envy is the school lunch culture: the expectations about what constitutes a meal, about how and when children should devote time to it, and how they should behave at it seems so codified—it removes some of the burden from parents.
I’m not even the one who shoulders the burden around here. I don’t make the lunches—that credit goes to Aron—but just thinking about it exhausts me. I think back to this post on the New York Times’ blog “Motherlode,” “The Lunch You Packed was Nutritionally Inadequate,” which had us wondering at the time, ‘what would the lunch parents think of us if we just kept sending our preschooler to school with the same sandwich every day?’
But even if I don’t expect to ever receive a note judging the contents of our kids’ lunches, I imagine other adults judging it—a panopticon effect.
I do think having a diverse menu matters more to us than it does to the kids. I had chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches (with the crusts cut off) just about every day of elementary-school life and it never bothered me a bit! In fact, it was the days when a substitute that was offered that tended to stand out in a bad way.
But especially now that peanut butter (and many other nut butters) are off the menu, I wonder:
What are your go-to, packable lunches? What did you have in yours growing up?
(And while we’re at it… what sorts of boxes or bags are you packing them in? We have used Bentgos for a couple of years, now.)
Here’s the recipe for the Avocado & Egg rollup pictured above—which I’m thinking now that Skyler might enjoy!
P.S. I love learning about what people had in their lunchbox growing up. Anne Lamont has a great chapter in (the wonderful) Bird by Bird about practicing writing by talking about the funny details of school lunches. And I once heard a great NPR Marketplace Money story about kids using their fire-hot Cheetos as playground currency.
