vanilla roasted pears.

Yesterday morning, Justin and I woke up before the sun, stumbled to our car in the hazy morning fog, and made the long haul across my home state to meet our new little nephew, Carson. We stopped to pick up a box of diapers, but not just any diapers - the kind that look like little blue jeans and made me squeal with delight at the thought of a chubby baby butt being stuffed inside a pair.



I love brand spankin' new babies. I love Carson, especially. I love how he goes a little cross-eyed when he wakes up. I love how soft his armpits are. I love how he does the Jersey Shore fist pump in his sleep [for the record, I have never seen an episode of that show - but I'm aware of the fist pump]. I love how he heats up like a tiny human stove when you hold him and you're sweating after five minutes but you endure it because you don't want to put him down.



So the night before we were going to visit, Justin and I thought it might be nice to bring a little sustenance along, mostly in the form of chocolate chip cookies, cranberry bread, and honey crunch granola. We decided this was a good idea at midnight, just four hours before we set our alarm clocks. Clearly, this idea was not our best.



In other completely unrelated news, I made these pears a few weeks ago. We ate them with vanilla ice cream over the vintage edition of Life. It was my favorite game as a kid, one of the few board games we had at our lakehouse, and my mother always said we couldn't take it home with us because it was a "lakehouse game." We got the old school version as a wedding gift, and it didn't have the same charm it did when I was little. I think my grown-up understanding of life and what it really means to pay bills put a damper on things. Plus, when we first started, I told Justin that however many kids we ended up with by the end of the game would be how many we'd have in real life.

There were seven. Seven. I'm never playing Life again.



But these pears helped soften the blow. They're fragrant and soft, scented with lemon and vanilla bean and just enough sugar to give you an excuse to add a scoop of ice cream. And they are, I think, perfect for summer. You can eat them cold, straight out of the fridge, or for breakfast alongside a bowl of oatmeal. But be mindful not to overbake them - the tip of a knife should slip right through the fruit when they're ready without causing it to fall apart. Mine were a bit too soft and with each bite I'd wished they'd give my teeth a bit more resistance. But this doesn't have to be you.

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from The Atlantic.