One of the things I keep coming back to on this trip is how good our mornings have been.
We do this thing every day that I'm just a huge fan of. We open up cheeses and meats. Olives, sardines. Tomatoes on toast. Fresh juices. Make coffee. There's no real recipe to any of it, no preparation in any meaningful sense. Just good ingredients laid out on the table, and everyone picking out what they want and building their own little plate.
Call it a brunch. That feels right.
Everyone sits together. We have actual conversation. It's a beautiful, unhurried way to start the day, and I find myself thinking about why we don't do this more at home. On a workday, the morning is gone before it begins. Wake up early, get the girls dressed, get to school. There's no time, no space, to invest in a ritual like this.
But on weekends, there's no real reason we can't. It's not about cooking. It's not even really about the food, exactly. It's about the time, and the ingredients, and the act of sitting down together and actually appreciating what's in front of us.
A few running jokes from this trip have made the brunches even better. The girls have fully jumped on our disdain for refrigerated butter (the spreading is a nightmare), so there's an ongoing investigation into who keeps putting it back in the fridge. The case remains open.
And then there's Nutella. The kids have discovered it for the first time on this trip, and honestly, no surprise: it's chocolate on bread. How could it not be a hit. But seeing them light up about it for the first time has been one of the small joys of these mornings.
I want to remember to do more of this when we're home.