Our Week in the Middle of the LA Fires
Plus, a simple pot of beans.
Well, hello. It’s been quite a week here in Los Angeles.
It’s 5am on Friday and I’ve been up since 4am when one of my kids woke with a nightmare and crawled into bed with us. When she fell asleep again, I slipped out of bed and came upstairs for a cup of coffee. Falling back asleep just wasn’t happening.
A few minutes ago I watched the lights from another house across the neighborhood turn on, and about 10 minutes later the house went dark again. Perhaps another family up too early, then trying again to get some sleep? Understandably, all 3.8 million of us in Los Angeles have been on edge this week. We all live in tightly packed, parched neighborhoods. It’s easy to feel like anything could go up in flames at any moment. Most nights this week, good sleep has been elusive as we check our phones and read alerts and in our case, get up to simply look out the window and monitor what’s happening.
The best part of our house - and what sold us on it immediately 15 years ago - is the view from our hilltop perch. To the west, we can almost see all the way out to the ocean, where the Palisades fire has been raging all week. To the east, we see the San Gabriel Mountains covered in a cloud of smoke from the Eaton fire. Straight ahead is Hollywood, where we watched the Sunset fire spring up out of nowhere and rapidly spread across a hillside. We sit right in the middle of the two largest fires, a safe distance away in a neighborhood that has been untouched by flames for no other reason than luck.
We’ve been on high alert all week, which is an impossible way to live, especially when you have kids in the house. Yesterday afternoon I finally took a long deep breath (not outdoors, where the air still smelled like a campfire) and as I released the breathe my shoulders dropped down a little bit and relaxed. I hadn’t even realized I’d been hunching them up around my ears since Tuesday morning. It’s felt very much like the early pandemic days, when a threat was right outside your door but inside you were distracting your kids with puzzles and baking and funny cat videos.
Now, hopefully, because we are the lucky ones, we can move out of crisis mode and into helping mode, which feels like one of the best coping skills to teach kids. Making plans with our kids to help others has felt cathartic, and as we talk about what we can donate and how we can help I can see their faces light up and their little shoulders drop down and relax, too.
Even here, where we watched the tragedy unfold first hand, it’s just sinking in how utterly devastating these fires are and how many families lost almost everything in an instant. The names keep pouring in. A much-loved 4th grade teacher at my school, Mr. Rager, lost his home in Altadena. If you’re able, and want to make a donation that will directly help a young family facing what is sure to be an overwhelming financial burden to rebuild, you can contribute Mr. Rager’s family here. Even the smallest of donations are adding up and will really make a difference for his family.
A Simple Pot of Beans
In the spirit of “new recipes for a new year” I had bookmarked several recipes in cookbooks that I wanted to try this week. It turned out to be the wrong week for new recipes. I don’t have the energy right now to try cooking anything new and to be honest I’m kind of wondering if that energy will return at all in 2025? I want to cook stuff that is easy, that is familiar, and that I know my kids will eat.
On Wednesday night I had planned to make a pinto bean stew with multiple ingredients. Instead, I just combined 1 cup of dried pinto beans with 3 cups of water and a pinch of salt in my Instant Pot. I cooked the Instant Pot pinto beans for 40 minutes and served them half-mashed with tortillas, shredded cabbage, cheese, guacamole and chips. The next day I ate the beans again in a bowl of rice with hot sauce and cilantro.
Dried beans have turned out to be an early theme this year and seem fitting for the time we’re in. They’re easy to cook, very affordable, very filling and healthy. What more could you want? You can find a detailed recipe for Instant Pot pinto beans HERE.
Cookbooks
Have I got a bean cookbook for you! The Bean Book comes from the King of Dried Beans, Steve Sando, who also owns the popular heirloom bean company Rancho Gordo. The Bean Book includes instructions for cooking beans using multiple methods and has 100 recipes that show you how to turn dried beans into flavorful meals.
Tiger was our pandemic kitty and has been a truly delightful addition to our family. This week we set her carrier by the door just in case we had to evacuate quickly and she promptly crawled inside and has been napping there happily every since. I think we could all learn a lesson from Tiger about handling stress. 🙂
That’s it for this week! Let’s hope that the second week of January is a little less eventful. As my 10 year old said, “I wish life would just be boring again.”
xo
Jenny
I am so grateful that you are all safe! A simple pot of beans sounds just fine.
Oh Jenny, I am just relieved you are okay! And I agree with your daughter - I wish life was boring again.