In January, I shared my newly formed walking habit with you and wondered what the next habit might be, and how else I might improve my morning routine. I wondered especially–whatever I was going to tackle next–if it would stick. A second habit didn’t build right away, though I made attempts, ranging from mindfulness meditation to earlier wakeup times to being more religious about strengthening exercises. In the process, I’ve continued reading Zen Habits and have also read a few other influential pieces on habit forming, namely this piece by Charles Duhigg featured in the New York Times Magazine in mid-February (if you’d rather listen than read a very long article, similar content was featured on Fresh Air with Terry Gross this March). Here’s the most important nugget about habit forming from Duhigg’s essay:

First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop – cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward – becomes more and more automatic.

By April, all of this had sunk in and I’d decided to start journaling (I purchased a shiny new notebook in order to do so). With a desired outcome in mind, I just had to find a cue, a stimulus that would put me into automatic writing mode. I built the practice around an already well-established habit–my morning coffee (really milk with a splash of coffee). Once finished eating but not quite finished with my coffee, I’d pick up my journal and write a half page, a few lines, or a page and a half, being careful not to judge the entry based on word count, readability, or style. I wrote, and continue to write, whatever comes easiest or feels right for the day. After a week and a half of this, Tom opted to join me and asked for his own notebook, but bigger! We’d banned computers/the iPad/iPhones and other reading material from the breakfast table earlier in the year in order to eliminate distractions that took away from conversation, but writing–especially at the close of the meal–seemed like a positive addition.

It has been.

With Tom writing along with me, we’re doing this habit right – Make it Social, remember? Done at breakfast, journaling has also become a Top Priority in our day. Having ticked all the boxes for the four “top principles for forming habits,” it’s pretty easy to see why we’re writing daily with ease and enjoying our mornings more and more.

A specter is haunting Minneapolis: the specter of per-half-pound cheese pricing. There you are, innocently perusing the fancy cheeses, thinking to yourself, “Alas! These cheeses entice me so, but I could never afford them!” But then you pick one up and glance furtively at the unit price, and lo! $10! The kids might have to skip their medicine this week, but ten-dollar-per-pound cheese you can afford.

If you’re smart, you’ll examine that label more carefully, or, if you’re like me, you’ll examine it a few days later: printed next to the clearly visible $10 is a virtually indecipherable one-slash-two: $10 per half pound. $20/pound cheese – this is a cheese for bankers and movie stars, not for you!

Before last week, my experience with this insidious practice was limited to the cheese shop at France 44 – but one expects a certain amount shenanigans as one approaches Edina, and, on the strength of their sandwiches and liquor selection I’m willing to put up with it. Recently, though, Martha brought home a Belgian Passendale from the Uptown Kowalski’s that I was surprised to see priced at only $10 per pound. But examining the label more carefully, it was $10 per 1/2 pound. As far as I know this is a new thing for Kowalski’s – and it suggests that this nefarious pricing scheme may be spreading.

My first reaction was that I don’t like this. It feels like a trick. I can see how people might be fooled at first and stores might move a few extra pounds of cheese, but in the long run consumers will catch on, and their trust in the retailer will be hurt in the process. I don’t see any benefit to the consumer here: as long as I’ve been grocery shopping most things have been priced per pound. Most products – meats, fruits, bulk foods – are still priced this way.

The argument could be made that a 1/2# is closer to the amount of cheese a shopper will actually purchase when it comes specialty cheese, but people really buy arbitrary weights of cheese – consistent unit pricing helps with making comparisons. Unless every cheese (and other comparable products) is priced in the same way, this just adds another math problem into my grocery choices.

It could be worse – stores could be pricing per quarter pound, or per 3/8 pound, or pricing different cheeses in different units of weight (and different currencies!). And ultimately the best way to buy precut cheese is to hold the cheese in your hand, look at the final price and ask yourself, “Is it worth paying this much money for this amount of cheese, based on how delicious I imagine it’s going to be?” But still, come on grocers, you’re not fooling anyone – can we have a little consistency here?

The best thing about your father-in-law building a wood-burning oven in his backyard is the amazing pizza you can bake: its pillowy crust dotted with pinpoints of char, the right balance of chewy, soft and crisp.  The worst thing about baking in a wood-fired oven? All the other pizzas you’ve ever made seem horrible in comparison.

I’m not a newcomer to the world of pizza. Since my first irregularly shaped shaped pie in college (flour those peels!) I’ve come a long way, and have been baking pizza in my home oven semi-regularly for more than seven years. As of this spring Martha and I are observing weekly (Thursday) pizza nights for regular practice and experimenting with new recipes and techniques. After all of this practice I can produce a pretty good pie – at least pies that are rarely figure-8 shaped. But at a mere 550ºF, it takes 8—10 minutes to achieve the level of crust browning I want, but with all that time in the oven the crust dries out too much, leading to a disappointing cracker-like crunch around the edges.

I suspected that, rather than blaming my oven, changing the dough recipe might solve these texture issues. For years, I have relied on Peter Reinhart’s Neapolitan dough recipe from American Pie – an excellent recipe to be sure – but lately I’ve tried other recipes on those weekly pizza nights. Recently, I’m working with Jim Lahey’s no-knead dough, as described by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats. The new recipe was a nice change, but I still found it lacking when baked at home; it seemed under-salted and still too crispy after a ten minute bake.

But then I baked it in the wood-fired oven. Oh, what a difference. As soon as the dough hit the oven floor, a tall cornicione popped up around the edges. Within a minute or two black spots dotted this ring. The first pizza was done in under four minutes.

The wood-fired pie was a thing of beauty, but the most striking difference became apparent on biting into my first piece: as I mentioned, the texture was a perfect balance of chewy, crispy and silky. But from the flavor I was amazed that I was working with the same dough recipe. What had seemed a bit bland when baked in the home oven was alive with the rich, earthy flavor of wheat, punctuated by the acrid burn of char. The best pizza I’ve ever made, and all I needed to do was dial my technology back 500 years.

The wood-fired oven is not a total panacea, though. Cooking with a wood fire is more labor intensive than gas or electric. My father-in-law, Juan, starts a fire in the oven about three hours before we want to cook the first pie. Starting the fire this early allows us to heat the floor of the oven to over 750ºF. While Juan takes the role of ovenmaster, I am usually in the kitchen, prepping toppings and caring for the dough. When pizza time comes, I move to an outdoor work station a few yards away from the oven, where I stretch the first pie, quickly top it and then slide it into the center of the oven floor, which Juan has recently cleared of cinders.

With a wood fire, you can’t just drop the pizza in the oven, set a timer, and get back to your cocktail – you have to tend to it. Juan usually operates the tools – a long-handled metal peel, a small metal hook to facilitate turning the pies, and the all-important infrared thermometer to monitor the heat of the oven surfaces and the temperature of the surface of the pizza – while I look intently over his shoulder and offer commentary. Because the fire itself has been moved to the sides but not the front of the oven, the crust will brown unevenly unless you turn the pies. I’ve seen the pro pizzaioli manage this trick with the flick of the edge of a peel, but for us amateurs a small metal pole works more reliably. The final step is to raise the whole pie toward the roof of the oven, using the intense heat up there to put a last bit of brown on the cheese and toppings.

It’s a lot of work, but pizza like this is worth it. Which gets us back to that problem: home oven pizza that I thought was pretty good just can’t stand up to what I can make in the wood-fire, but it’s not my wood-fired oven – it’s my father-in-law’s. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my in-laws, and would happily spend many evenings baking with them, but they’re a 12 hour drive or $400 flight away. I suppose I could lobby my apartment manager to install a communal wood burning oven in the back of our building, though the fire department might have some concerns. What happened to the days of the municipal oven in the center of town? For the time being, it looks like I’ll have to work on tweaking my indoor oven technique and recipe on Thursday nights, tasting pizza heaven only on our twice-per-year visits back home. It might be a while before my pizzas measure up, but at least I know what I’m shooting for.

In between the hot days and the rainy days, there have been a few just-right evenings in Minneapolis lately and Tom and I have taken advantage by heading out for picnics. Whether at the lake or in our neighborhood park, there are a few things we almost always have along.

1. Our reusable plastic plates and silverware (not plastic!). I sort of hate plastic knives and forks, so we’ve got a pair of picnic-dedicated metal sets as well as 4 generic red plates that I’ve had since just before college (thank you, Sarah!) that are great for dining outdoors. They’re lightweight, durable, and stack neatly to fit into a slim space. Preserve offers a similar set of 8 plates.
2. A waterproof fleece picnic blanket. The waterproof backing on this blanket has allowed us to picnic in many spots and at many times when we might have otherwise decided the ground was just too wet. It packs up very small and is easy to carry, whether by itself from the included shoulder strap or clipped to a hiking backpack.
3. Pretty paper napkins. At home, we’ve been using cloth napkins for a while, but on picnics we continue to use paper napkins culled from the supply I built up before kicking my prettypapernapkins buying habit. They make it easy to wipe down our dishes at the end of a meal and add some color to the spread. My favorites are from IKEA, Finnstyle, and Klippan’s designs like the Tulips above, available online and in various Scandinavian shops in the Twin Cities.
4. A giant tote (or pannier, if bike picnicking) into which picnic supplies can be liberally tossed. Again, IKEA is a great source.
5. Camping mugs, far classier than an opaque Solo cup.
6. An insulated, soft-sided cooler. I found ours for under $10 (new!) at a thrift store, so at $90 Menu’s similar version (pictured above) seems steep, but I like that its liner can be removed – you might be able to use it with other bags or panniers.
7. ENO’s doublenest hammock. We use ENO’s “pro” straps with our hammock so that it can be hung from almost any pair of trees at the park or by the lake. It provides a nice spot to wait for the grill to warm up or for dessert to settle before heading home.
8. Bodum’s portable Fyrkat grill and grill brush. After owning this grill for two years, I’d say its only downside is that the enamel easily chips (and I’m not the only one who thinks so…). The handle stays cool even when the rest of the grill is firey hot, the clamp-on lid makes Fyrkat bikeable and more totable than its counterparts, and paired with the matching grill brush, clean up is quick and easy. The grill cools down almost instantly once any remaining charcoal has been dumped.

photo by Walker Art Center staff

I’m leaving out the obvious –food– but I didn’t want to miss mentioning another must-have: games. We usually bring ring toss at a minimum and sometimes include cards, a frisbee, or a board game that travels easily. After learning Kubb (and painting faces) with Nina at the Walker’s recent member night picnic, we’ve got our eye on a Kubb set from ASI to bring a little more challenge into the competition. If any Kubb players are reading, I’d love to have your input on which set might be best.

With a day off ahead of me this morning, I decided I’d take a ride down to Minnehaha Falls before Minneapolis hit 90ºF. I had almost reached Minnehaha Park when I came upon an unattended yard sale. I strayed from the path to take a look at the few items on offer, one of them being a small, three-legged table–a class of tables for which I have an unusually strong attraction.

I liked the table, but without the homeowner to talk to, there wasn’t any way to have him or her hang on to it for me until I could return with the car. A sign read “SALE. Please place money in the mail box.” I was disappointed to read it and realize there was really no one there. But then, I haven’t touched my car since last Saturday, so why use it now? The table was pretty lightweight. How much was this table, anyway? A dollar, it turns out. AND, I had a dollar. How was I supposed to pass up a $1 table? Maybe it could fit in my basket? Yes. Of course it fit in my basket. Everyone knows a Brompton fits anywhere, but as it turns out you can also fit just about anything in a Brompton. Expand that a little bit and you’ll have a new version of my father’s oft repeated, “Everything fits in a Volkswagen.” Here’s proof that just like we don’t need to burn gas to get to work, go to the store, or get to the farmers market, you don’t need a car to go trash picking garage sale-ing.

So I didn’t make it to Minnehaha Falls, but I did I make it all the way home without a hitch and even got a salute from the Flanders team for my nice ride and nice furniture.