I’m a pisces, the zodiac sign symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions. I take this to mean that I come by indecision honestly. Commitment has never been natural for me. I usually have more than one home because I just cannot decide where I want to live. And although I’ve had my share of opportunities, I’ve never been married. By committing to one option, I’ve feared I was depriving myself of the others. I feel the same way about dessert.

This time last year, I wrote a story for The Los Angeles Times about baked apple crisps, crumbles, and cobblers. The apple filling was a mixture of chopped apples baked with cinnamon and vanilla until they were soft and suspended in warm, jammy, caramelly goo. For the topping, readers were invited to choose from a selection of four. They were all so good. I decided to let the reader choose their own (topping) adventure!

I had started out touting apple crisp as the easy alternative to apple pie — one that skips the subtle art and potential fails of pie dough, and deals instead with some variation of a crunchy, carby, sweet and easy topping situation. Over the years, countless friends have asked me to help them with their Thanksgiving pies. But there’s so much going on at Thanksgiving. All that shopping. Often we’re traveling. Nowadays, people are even launching their Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. Trust me when I tell you it is not the time to learn to make a pie. So I tell them — and I’m telling you — to make a crisp (oat-laced topping), crumble (crumbly coffee cake-like topping), or cobbler (biscuit or cookie topping) instead.

One of the options, a cookie cobbler topping, was sent to me by my friend Trisha, from her book, Life at the Dumpling. Trisha has a life something like the life I imagined I’d have — house on a hill, kind and funny husband, smart and beautiful daughters. But that would have required a lot of commitment, and I can’t even choose a dessert topping! She did all the things I imagined I would have done had I had kids: planted a garden; forbade devices at the table; bought her older daughter a typewriter when she requested a laptop; sent hand-made Christmas cards to a long list of not-lost friends; made crafts on rainy days; made ice cream on summer days; gathered round homemade meals and gave thanks on ordinary days. And baked — and baked and baked.

Trisha’s topping, which she uses to top many baked fruits, is a sweet, crisp and chewy cookie-like baked cobbled rooftop over the fruit. It could not be easier to make. (Dump a few ingredients in a bowl and stir.) It’s unexpected. (Who makes a cobbler topping out of cookie dough?) And you never know how it’s going to turn out. (It bakes up slightly differently every time.)

It’s everything I want in an adventure. And that — adventure — is something I have most definitely committed to.

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An Apple Snickerdoodle Cookie Cobbler To Commit To

I’ve made this in a 9-inch Emile Henry pie dish, a 10-inch cast iron skillet, an 11-inch Apilco ceramic oval, and a rectangular lasagna dish. Trisha makes hers in a Oaxacan barro negro (black clay) cazuela. (How chic is that!) It’s flexible; the only thing I don’t recommend are individual cobblers. This is a a dessert that is best scooped out into a bowl, giving it room for ice cream to melt around it. It’s a flexible and free-spirited dessert, and the confines of a baking dish don’t add anything to the experience. It’s meant to be rustic and friendly, and it’s meant to be shared. Cobblers (crisps and crumbles) in individual baking dishes are clever and cute but IMO, kind of sad.

If you know me, then you know I’m going to suggest you to go to a farmer’s market for your apples. Ask the person selling them what varieties they recommend; the variety offered will be different from region to region. If you’re using supermarket apples, try Opals and Honeycrisps. Both hold their shape and have lots of flavor. I like to use a mix of apples to give the crisp the benefit of those subtly different flavors and textures.

Serves at least 8.

For the Apple Filling

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

3½ pounds apples (look for whatever variety of baking apples are available where you are)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

¼ cup packed (light or dark) brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon booze (Jack Daniels or brandy) or water

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

For the Topping

Cream of tartar adds a bit of chewiness to what is otherwise a cinnamon-laced sugar cookie; it’s what makes a Snickerdoodle a Snickerdoodle.

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 egg, beaten

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted or browned

1 tablespoon demerara (or turbinado sugar), optional

Make brown butter: Melt the butter in a small light-colored skillet or saucepan over medium-high heat and cook it for about 7 minutes, until the foam that forms on the top of the melted butter begins to subside, and the milk solids (which separate from the melted butter) are deep golden brown, tilting the pan often and scraping the brown bits from the bottom of the pan so the butter browns evenly. Turn off the heat and stir for another minute while the butter cooks from the residual heat in the pan. Add the vanilla and set aside.

Peel the apples: Working one at a time, stand the apples upright on your cutting board and cut four slabs from around the core, so you’re left holding just the core. Discard the cores and cut the slabs of apple into ¾- to 1-inch chunks. (A size that will fit nicely on a spoon when cooked.)

Mix the apples: Put the apples in a large bowl. Add the lemon juice and toss to coat the apples with it. Add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt. Drizzle the brown butter and vanilla over the apples, making sure to get the brown bits out of the pan. Toss to combine the ingredients and coat the apples evenly with the additions. Set aside to macerate the apples for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.

Make the topping: While the apples are doing their thing, make the topping, stir the flour, granulated sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, cream of tartar, and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the egg and mix with a fork until the dry ingredients are damp. Add the butter and stir with the fork until the mixture is combined but still grainy. Refrigerate until you’re ready to assemble the cobbler.

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Assemble the cobbler: Dump the apple chunks into the baking dish, making sure to get all the goop out of the bowl and into the dish, and use your hands to arrange the chunks so the top is as flat as possible. Scatter the topping in random-shaped pingpong ball size chunks over the apples, leaving a bit of the apple mixture peeking through here and there. Sprinkle the demerara or turbinado sugar over the dough. (Highly optional; don’t go out and buy sugar for this!)

Bake the cobbler: Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, if you have it (this isn’t crucial; it’s just to catch the juices that will bubble up and out of the dish and make your clean-up easier) and put the baking dish on the baking sheet.

Put the cobbler on the center rack of the oven and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, until the top is deep golden brown in places, the filling is bubbling and caramelly looking, and the apples are soft, juicy, and translucent. (The best way to test

for doneness is to sneak a fork in between the cobble stones and grab an apple. You want it cooked enough that you can smash it with the back of your fork. Nothing crunchy here, but also not cooked so long that it is applesauce.) Remove the cobbler from the oven and set aside to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. (If you’ve made it in advance, reheat the cobbler in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, until it’s warmed through. The perfect time to do this is while you’re eating dinner.)

I don’t think you need me to tell you to serve this warm, with vanilla ice cream.

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Goodnight, L.A. Apartment. Goodnight, Moon.

I’ve read that people who write a gratitude list are happier than people who don’t. I have yet to confirm if this connection is a chicken or an egg story, but to be on the safe side, I write a gratitude list every morning, and sometimes another one at night. It’s a sort of Goodnight Moon list, recognizing and giving thanks for all the basics, like that I’m alive. The lists are pretty repetitive from one day to the next, but always among my “gratefuls”: that my mom is still with us, that I have work that I love, and my L.A. apartment.

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I live in a tiny studio in a 1920s building in the Larchmont neighborhood of Los Angeles that I rented last May after spending the previous nine months caring for my mom. She’d gotten COVID for the second time earlier that summer and began hallucinating. Life took a hard left, that kind of turn that you anticipate and dread and hope you’ll somehow, magically escape, where nothing is ever the same.

I had been alternately living in Mexico City and San Diego, where my mom was living at the time. I went back and forth often because I wanted to spend time with my mom and because basically, since the beginning of time, I have been terrified — terrified! — of losing her. Not that I had anything to worry about, other than that she was in her mid 80’s (she’s now 87) and forever isn’t an option. My mom drove her Jeep Liberty back and forth from San Diego to the Palm Springs area, where she has a home; took her standard poodle to the dog park; and played tennis three days a week right up until she didn’t. In September of 2023, my sister called and said our mom was hallucinating. The next day I flew with my usual carry-on suitcase and computer bag to Palm Springs— and I never went back.

These two years later, I’ve been wearing the contents of that suitcase, the odds and ends that for various reasons I didn’t bring to Mexico City (e.g., not my favorite clothes), and a few used items I bought on eBay. It’s remarkable to discover what you don’t need.

Which brings me back to my L.A. apartment. I often refer to it as a “tiny studio” but that’s a lie. It’s a studio, but it’s not tiny. It has 9-foot ceilings, built-in turn-of-the-century Spanish revival iron sconces, and four big windows. Two look to the west. If I were one floor up they would look out onto West Hollywood and the Hollywood Hills, but instead they look out onto a fig tree, which I like, and two look to the north onto a brick wall approximately four feet away. But the brick is painted a nice shade of white, and the delicate, indirect light that floods into the apartment in the late afternoon gets me every time.

The apartment has a galley kitchen that is everything I need as a food writer, and an eat-in nook, where I put a marble table I bought decades ago at a garage sale, which is basically where I am 95% of my waking hours. The living room is big enough to hold my large desk, a full-size George Smith couch that saw better days, much better days, a queen size bed that I found on Facebook Marketplace and which love , and a worn-out chair and ottoman where I live when I’m not living at my kitchen table. On the opposite side of the studio from the kitchen is the dressing area (separated by double doors), with a vanity and a bathroom paved with original vintage rose- and white tiles and a bathtub, which for me is a must. And this one is cast iron.

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Which is to say: I want for nothing.

It has been the toughest almost two years of my life for too many reasons to put into this Substack. But every time I come home to this apartment (especially after visits to a challenging eldercare situation for my mom), and every night, when I turn out the sconce over my bed, this 500 square feet takes me in. The world and events and the story of my life fall away and I feel like I am embraced. It’s the same long, tight embrace that I give my increasingly bony mother every time I see her. The kind that says: I see you. I appreciate you. I love you. And I know that life, sometimes, is hard, but I am here. And for that, I am grateful.

When I was 24 and had just arrived in New York from San Diego, I used to walk down Central Park West in a daydream, bursting with opinions and epiphanies, thinking: “If I were Julia Roberts, I could go on David Letterman and people would listen to what I had to say.” That I thought you had to be a glamorous movie star on a late night talk show to be heard just shows how much times have changed, and how isolated I felt, having grown up in the suburbs, where nobody that I knew—man or woman—was making themselves heard outside the confines of their dinner table. I’m not sure exactly what I thought I had to say, but whatever it was, I’m glad I didn’t say it — not on national television anyway.

Two years later, I was at a summer evening barbecue in the Hamptons. I was there with my boyfriend, who was a chef (the fish guy, specifically) at Lutèce, then one of a small handful of four-star restaurants in New York City, who was friends with the hosts and helping them on the grill. George Plimpton was at the party, as was Kurt Vonnegut, who lived next door. George and I were chatting, and when he asked me what I was up to, I told him that I wanted to be a writer.

“What kind of writer?” George asked. He sounded like Thurston Howell the III, the lock-jawed millionaire from Gilligan’s Island. Everything that came out of his mouth had a sense of urgency and importance. I told him I wanted to write “highly opinionated, lightly researched” essays. “But if I write something,” I asked. “Who will read it?”

This was a real question. It was 1993. Pre-internet. Pre-social media. Pre-blogging. To give you an idea of just how long ago that was, we, as a nation, were just discovering balsamic vinegar. Arugula was exotic. Oat milk unheard of. Until then, I’d gotten my ideas out into the world via group letters that I printed on colored stationary, folded into thirds, and mailed out—in envelopes! with stamps!—to the friends and family I’d left in California.

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“You just have to write the damned things!” George declared. “And when you do write one, I can promise you at least two people will read it.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Myself. And. Your. Mother!”

Writing for a living was my goal, in part because I didn’t want to have a job, and in part because I wanted the validation. I needed someone, an editor, some physical proof, to tell me that I was a writer. Sending group letters home, or having my mom—or even George Plimpton!—promise to read a yarn I’d spun, wasn’t enough. I wanted to publish.

And I did. First in Seventeen and then in other women’s magazines. I moved on to the ground-breaking new food magazine, Saveur, which covered food as it related to our lives and culture, not in terms of starred restaurants and resorts that today would set the stage for the next season of White Lotus. I wrote about looking for my late father in the Tijuana bars and restaurants where he spent his days and nights, which was nominated for a James Beard Award. After that, food writing became my beat. I was a regular contributor to the the food page of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, back when there was such a thing. I wrote for Gourmet and Food & Wine and Bon Appetit. I did some food-related travel writing. I wrote extensively about my relationship with my Mexican family and my hometown, Tijuana, and I wrote about learning to cook the recipes of my ancestors with my family Mexico City.

But by insisting that writing be my job, I made the mistake of doing what Elizabeth Gilbert warned against in her book on creativity, Big Magic, and that many writing sages tell you never to do: I put financial pressure on my art. Distractions and compromises, resentment and self doubt, followed. But that was then.

This Substack, where I will serve up recipes and writing — about food, about things I’ve read, about the passage of time, and about my late, forever dog, Rufus — is my way of taking the pressure off of my art. It’s coffee at the kitchen table. It’s a walk with a friend.

I can almost hear George today, saying: “Just write the damned things and put them on Substack!

So that’s what I am doing. Writing. Just writing, because that is what I am here to do.

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