Good Morning, Good Night

Let's spend some in-between time together...

Jan 14, 2025

This week, I want to share some cool morning, night and in-between stuff with you!

BOOK: GMORNING, GNIGHT! by Lin-Manuel Miranda

My Julie gave me this terrific little book (actually a compilation of some of Miranda’s sweet and cheery tweets) four years ago, and I still flip through it often. Here’s a sampling:

Good morning. Your pace today. You can’t be rushed. You can’t be slowed down.

Good night. Your pace in this life. No one else’s. You can’t be rushed. You can’t be slowed down.

Cheers to beginnings and endings of our days!

BREAKFAST RECIPE: ALP BLOSSOM MUFFINS

Foodie that I am, even I had never heard of Alp Blossom cheese until Pat and Ashlyn gave me a gift card to Philly’s wonderful DiBruno Cheeses, and there it was. It is a sublime Gruyere-style cheese made with actual dried blossoms and herbs from Switzerland. Delicious by itself, it makes a really fabulous muffin too! Forage for some Alp Blossom—you won’t be sorry!!

Alp Blossom Muffins (recipe from Salem Cheese Shop)

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup Labneh (you can make your own by wrapping Greek yogurt in cheesecloth and squeezing out the moisture)
1/2 pound Alp Blossom cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with 12 baking cups.
Grate the Alp Blossom cheese, including the rind and flowers. It should amount to about 2 cups.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a small bowl, whisk together the Labneh and buttermilk
In a large bowl, beat the sugar into the melted butter with a hand mixer. Add in one egg at a time, beating between each addition, until batter is pale yellow and fluffy. Add the buttermilk mixture in two additions, and mix until fully incorporate.
Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in two stages. Reserve about 1/4 cup of the shredded cheese for sprinkling on top of the muffins. Fold in the remaining cheese into the batter.
Fill each muffin cup to the top, sprinkle a little cheese on each one. Bake for 20 minutes, remove from the pan and cool on baking rack.

Yields 14 muffins

Sunshine? What’s that? Ah, it’s that time of year…but here’s some!

SONG: SUNSHINE (GO AWAY TODAY) BY JONATHAN EDWARDS

I love this song, which encapsulates the feeling of being really down when the world is saying “Cheer up.” The bouncy rhythm belies its serious subject. But it does have a happy ending!

SONG: IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY BY ROSE SEYFRIED

And here’s Rose’s great song, set in her own hometown…(note: one of her favorite TV shows is the very quirky “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”)

POEM: NOON—IS THE HINGE OF DAY BY EMILY DICKINSON

Not usually a huge fan of noon, but I do love Dickinson’s metaphor. Exactly halfway through the 24 hour span, the door of the day fully opens now…to reveal the future.

Noon—is the Hinge of Day—
Evening—the Tissue Door—
Morning—the East compelling the sill
Till all the World is ajar—

SHORT FILM: LATE AFTERNOON

This Oscar-nominated Irish short movie is so simple, yet it is so, so touching. For anyone who has loved someone with dementia (as I have), but really, for anyone who wonders about how memory loss feels in the late afternoon of life…

And finally we come to day’s end…

PODCAST EPISODE (FROM THIS IS LOVE):

In the Great Green Room

I so enjoyed listening to the story of this cherished children’s book and its author, Margaret Wise Brown. Brown was very different from the way I pictured her!