That impending moment of descending in a jet through the rust red smog of the city. That was my first memory of Kathmandu.

It’s a bizarre notion, landing in a city on the opposite side of the planet. My heart swooped with a thousand fluttering wings.

From the plane window, I saw haze and square buildings made of crumbling stucco. The vastness of it captivated me. I barely remember disembarking the plane, completing visa forms, or passing through customs.

I remember the taxi ride to the hotel: lengths of bamboo scaffolding at Tribuvan Airport, mountains of garbage on the streets, lanky white cows grazing atop those garbage pinnacles. Grey monkeys with curling, come-hither tails, dancing along telephone wires like circus performers. A man, like some city dog walker, escorting six roped-together goats to market, much to their bleating protest. And all the while traffic: maddening, jostling traffic. Shoulder-to-shoulder, bumper-to-bumper, one hundred blaring horn tones of traffic. 

Kathmandu shifted my senses. It interrogated me, then bullied my mind and body into submission. It insisted on taking control, and I surrendered. Sometimes I miss that wildness. That permeating aroma of incense, rotting garbage, and dust. The omnipresent, peaceful practice of religions. Bartering without restraint, and the kindness of strangers.

Relive it, here.

XOXO,

This is a place with a sea salt breeze, rubber kelp strands, and terra cotta sand where the tide runs in rivulets. A place where robin’s egg paint peels away from dinghies docked on the promenade, and where an old lady in a pink sequin beret strolls with her husband in the hazy spring sun.

Welcome to The Mumbles: an adorably-christened seaside villa in the south of Wales. We had one warm February day, two pairs of hiking boots, and a couple of free hours to explore.

Gorgeous world we live in, wouldn’t you say?

XOXO,

Let the beauty you love be what you do.

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

-Rumi

XOXO,

There comes a time in every young woman’s life when the ol’ blog well dries up, and blog posts veer into bottom-of-the-barrel territory.

This is not one of those moments. Because today, I am fully disclosing crumpets in all their British gastronomic glory! Certainly this warrants a resounding “Huzzah!” from the peanut gallery – that’s you, my faithful reader. And yes, I use “reader” (singular) on purpose.

Warmly described as jolly good tea party or brunch fare, the crumpet is a moist, rather doughy cousin of the American English Muffin. Please note that nary an English Muffin can be found in England or its Kingdom counterparts – a puzzling subject for another blog post altogether. Let’s not get too overwhelmed with our cultural breads here.

Crumpets are round, similar in texture to the English Muffin, but spongier and porous with bubbles. Wikipedia likes to compare their texture to North American pancakes, but I have my own beliefs. They are further explained as savory griddle cakes born of flour and yeast.

Process

Preparing a crumpet is an elementary matter, and unless you have a sordid history with toasters, I can recommend the following procedure:

1. Select a crumpet or two from the bag by first removing the twisty tie or that hard plastic bit that serves the same purpose. If dealing with the latter, please note that it is physically impossible to do this without snapping the hard plastic bit in at least two pieces.

2. Insert crumpet(s) into toaster. Select the slightly-less-than-charred or corresponding numeric setting. Depress the lever. You know, the toaster lever.

3. Wait in slobbering anticipation. Beginners, wear a bib as a precautionary drool catcher.

4. After the toaster has launched the crumpets from its fiery coils, smear them liberally with Lurpak (that’s butter, y’all). The butter, by the way, is mandatory. I hate to cite Wikipedia again, but this just slays me:

“The butter may be omitted, but a phrase very commonly associated with crumpets is ‘dripping with butter’.”

I love the rather ominous undertones of that warning – that perhaps the omission of butter might upset the linguistic balance of British life as we know it.

Which it indeed might.

So don’t skip the butter.

You now have a glorious (dripping) buttered canvas for all sorts of sweet spreads. I recommend strawberry jam, but I hear Nutella is divine (but hey, Nutella is delicious even on Doritos).

According to modern British lore, a mysterious edible lubricant called Marmite is often used at this stage of crumpet prep. Again, I’ll save this 8th World Wonder for another blog post.

Results

I hate to spoil all the thrilling build-up, but I keep circuiting back to one word describing the crumpet flavor experience: juicy.

Okay. Juicy isn’t exactly a flavor, but it’s a word central to the crumpet experience that sets it apart from any American breakfasty bread thing I can think of. Juicy.

And it tastes a bit like French Toast. Just a hint of it, but saltier.

And here’s some slang to share with your posse: the word “crumpet” is sometimes used to refer to an attractive woman, often as the phrase “a bit of crumpet.” Saucy, eh?

In the hopes that my single-reader fan base will one day explode exponentially, I can’t explicitly recommend using that term in your daily dialogue this week. I can’t have anyone issuing blog-suits on me for recommending saucy language. Or juicy language, even. But there you go.

XOXO,

 *Crumpets enlarged to show texture.

Here I am, typing to you from a cozy pub apartment in the rollicking Welsh countryside. It’s like coming home in some ways, but in other ways I will always be just a little bit dopey and out of my element in the UK. The laundry detergent bottles feel fun sized in my jumbo-accustomed American hands, skim milk here is actually 2% in the US, and vitamin D rarely comes wrapped in a sunshiny bow.

Instead of daily (or even weekly) sunlight doses, we have Horlicks: a malty powder that, when stirred into steaming milk, yields a beverage not unlike baby spit up. But it’s loaded with vitamin D, so when the sun hibernates, I guzzle it with cheer.

So far I’ve shopped at IKEA (my first trip ever, in any country – gasp!) for cheap apartment furniture. I’ve built some of said furniture and especially admire my tall, rickety wooden shelving unit that may collapse at any upset.

I’ve been to Cardiff, the nearby capital, which is a lovely energetic city of young professionals. I’ve nearly lost my bowels as a car passenger on the constricted lanes surrounding our teeny tiny village. Driving these lanes requires a kamikaze attitude and a full tank of gas. The lanes are no wider than a Mini Cooper in some sections, with hedges over 12 feet tall. When two cars meet, they slam their brakes abruptly and engage in a staring contest until one driver decides to reverse for several feet or miles until the road widens.I will soon learn to drive here. If I indeed survive, I will promptly transition to Formula One.

I’m also bursting with an assortment of Welsh fun facts.

Wales boasts the world’s longest place name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at 58 letters. It means, of course, “The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave.” It is so long, in fact, that it has seriously knocked this paragraph’s formatting off kilter. 

Oh, and Catherine Zeta Jones is Welsh. As is Tom Jones. Isn’t that unusual? (It’s not unusual.) You will only understand that joke if you were around in the 60′s, or are a giant nerdball like me.

XOXO,

I adore all things kitsch: oversized fish monuments, festivals dedicated to seasonal crops, antique junk shops. They all speak to my inner tourist, which only seems to emerge in my home state of Minnesota.

Fall is the best season to enjoy all the kitschy goodness of the north woods, as well as the colorful chorus of changing leaves. In late September, tourists have started dying off, and the yokels can finally have a real hootenanny. I recently ventured up the shore to Grand Marais, the kitschiest of the kitschiest. It’s the North Shore’s answer to Wisconsin’s Bayfield: a Currier and Ives storybook town set against the massive blue life-force of Lake Superior.

There are organic co-ops, canoe outfitters and bait shops. Obscure art galleries, lawn decor exhibitions, and giant murals of fancy-free black bears dancing. There’s a wonderful restaurant called the Gunflint Tavern, where you can sit with a pint and ponder the meaning of life or what to order for lunch (I prescribe the walleye sandwich, by the way).

After wandering the streets and skipping rocks, you might get in your automobile and meander south on Highway 61. If it’s not too late in the day, you’ll stop at Temperance River State Park for an hourlong inland hike on the Superior Hiking Trail. You will swoon over the scenery.

I think Sven and Ole would approve.

XOXO,