There’s a marked difference between the menace of blizzard snow, icy and gravelly against the window, and what’s happening here today. Today, the sun is just barely shining through the thin gray clouds, and there’s no wind, so the fluffy tangles of snow aren’t falling so much as they are wandering around on their way down to the wood of the back deck.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning; the house was dark and quiet save for the sound of the faucet dripping in the sink so the pipes don’t freeze. I spent a few hours doing word puzzles and thinking about sleep, staring at the internet and thinking about whether the sunrise would be blotted out by clouds, texting with a friend in Europe, and thinking about making more coffee.

Now the snow is weaving around and I’m finishing Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor while Sean makes pancakes and bacon — a rarity on these aimless winter mornings, when we usually eat idiosyncratic breakfasts on our own and reconvene for yoga or a morning movie, which Sean always refers to as “going to the cinema.”

It smells like coffee, bacon, and coconut, which Sean has decided to toast and add to the pancakes because he found it in the cabinet next to the ancient buttermilk powder.

He spent the early morning making a playlist, which we’re listening to now. Joanna Newsome’s “Peach, Plum, Pear” is playing, which I always mishear as “Beach Plum Girl,” and it makes me think about how the gentle snow I’m watching right now would be fat, irregular raindrops pelting the garden in a different season in this place I love on the end of the world.

Then I think, “I should write this down, so I don’t forget.” And that’s kind of how you end up writing a food memoir.

Which is something I did last year. I submitted Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir to my editor in December and I should be working on revisions soon. Writing the book is something I care a lot about. But also something I wanted to stop looking at every day. This is a weird limbo.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the book was written in my kitchen in Provincetown. Writing inspiration, like grief and lust and all the other big important things, often comes sideways, when you least expect it. I spent that whole year of the manuscript cooking with the laptop open, just in case.

The scent of onions cooking in butter has always been one of my favorite things about being alive, but now it also triggers the impulse to write, to explain, to describe. Writing a book makes slow braises turn into office hours. The last swirl of sesame oil in the pot of beef noodle soup triggers a memory, and I’m back at the keyboard, trying to find the right way to describe the sushi bar I worked in when I was 20.

The book tells the story of my life through the kitchens where I’ve lived it. Writing it led me to describe my mother’s kitchen in categorical detail, to remember old lovers, and to find some patterns I inhabit unknowingly. You might not realize that you use cheese as an emotional salve, but you will after you write a food memoir.

The recipe for this soup is not in the book, because at a certain point in the memoir-writing process you have to decide to stop.

Instead, this recipe came from a search for something different to make with a special ingredient, in this case a couple of pounds of beautiful beef short ribs. I pulled every cookbook off my shelf before I found inspiration in The Gourmet Cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl. I am going to make this a thousand more times. It’s a slow pot of soup in case you need some office hours of your own.

Chinese Beef Noodle Soup
Serves 2, with plenty left over for tomorrow

1-2½ pounds beef short ribs
7 cups water
⅓ cup soy sauce
¼ cup mirin
1 Tbsp. sugar
6 ¼-inch-thick slices fresh ginger
8 scallions
4 cloves garlic
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 tsp. salt
1 dried red chile (or ¼ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes)
2 small heads bok choy (or about 3 cups of any other greens you have on hand)
¼ lb. dried egg or rice noodles (or instant ramen)
3 plum tomatoes, quartered
1-2 tsp. sesame oil

1. Combine short ribs, water, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a big, heavy stockpot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and skim the foam off the top (this is the key to a beautiful, clear broth later).
2. Drop ginger slices into the pot. Smash five of the scallions and add them. Smash the garlic, unpeeled, and add it. Add cinnamon stick, star anise, salt, and chile to the pot. Simmer, covered, until the rib meat is tender, 2-3 hours. Let ribs cool in broth, uncovered, for 30 minutes. (You can do everything up to this step ahead of time and chill the whole pot overnight, if you want. I did, and it made removing the excess beef fat a breeze.) Transfer the ribs to a cutting board. Remove the meat from the bones and give it a rough chop, or just shred it with your fingers.
3. Bring a smaller pot of water to the boil for your noodles and cook them how you like them. If you’re using instant ramen, like I did, cook them 15 or 30 seconds less than you normally would.
4. Strain the broth, or just dig around with a slotted spoon until you’ve removed all the aromatic bits and are left with the liquid only. Skim off as much of the fat as you like. Add the chopped meat and tomatoes and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add the bok choy or other greens and simmer until they just turn bright green. Taste your broth for seasoning — you probably won’t need more salt, but you might want it. I added a splash of rice wine vinegar because I like the broth to be a little sour. Add the sesame oil and the sliced scallions at the very last moment.
5. Put the noodles into the bottom of your serving bowl, and add the soup on top, making sure to distribute the greens and meat, and serve piping hot.