The oven was already warm.I wasn’t planning to bake. I’d just finished heating leftover soup (the pea one Mae hates), and the kitchen smelled like …

Recipes Inspired by Martha Stewart, Cooked in Real Life
The oven was already warm.I wasn’t planning to bake. I’d just finished heating leftover soup (the pea one Mae hates), and the kitchen smelled like …
The sun was doing that thing where it pours through the kitchen window like it forgives you. I hadn’t baked in weeks. Not really. Not …
I wasn’t planning to cook.The fridge light felt too bright, the air too clean. April rain had that sideways slap, and the radiator was ticking …
The first thing I smelled was orange. Not the fruit, not the juice—just the ghost of zest hitting oil in a cold kitchen. I wasn’t …
It started with the butter. The way it smelled when I melted it—low and slow, almost too long. That warm-sweet-fat thing that settles in the …
The lemon didn’t even hit the counter yet. I smelled it and — that was it.It was her again. Mae. Nine years old. Flour on …
The rain came in sideways. off the ocean, under the porch door, all through my knees. I wasn’t planning to cook—didn’t even have socks on …
The oven door was already open. I don’t remember opening it. It was cold again—radiator groaning like it had feelings, and the dog tracking salt …
The crust was too cold and my hands were too warm. The kind of mismatch that happens when you’re not really present. I’d meant to …
I wasn’t hungry.The windows were sweating.Rain slid down the glass like it had something to prove. The kind of gray that flattens everything—even my appetite.But …