Most of the way through a long weekend during which I did nothing, which was not enough, and therefore the weight of the semester starting tomorrow built up castles and piles and walls of things to do, that I just couldn’t start since I’d already put them off too long, I found myself feeling a bit unready, and a bit homesick, and a bit cranky about it all. The moment I decided I could take this week off from recipe writing and photo editing and blog posting, it all suddenly seemed more doable.

So I did.

Except, it’s worth popping in to say, that if you find yourself in possession of a bundle of slim, whiskered, rainbow colored carrots, and you toss those in a concoction of roughly equal parts mango chutney (or apricot jam), dijon mustard, and olive oil, and you spread them out on a cookie sheet and sprinkle them with salt, you can roast them at 400F until they are caramelized on the outside and just tender on the inside (anywhere from 15 minutes for very thin spears to 45 minutes for fat ones), and you can challenge yourself to see how many fit on your fork tines at once, and you can fight over the last almost-charred morsel, and your evening suddenly has a lovely chance of being bright.