Monday morning at Logan airport, we stepped off a bumpy red eye flight into the blistering cold. We'd had a great weekend in LA-- one that went by entirely too quickly and almost without incident.

It's been entirely too long since I've posted a recipe here. Life has gotten in the way many times over the last few months, but rest assured-- I've been cooking.

And eating. A lot of eating.

That's the key to transitioning back to east coast life after a while out west. Throw on a few pounds in the way of lobster rolls, and North End Italian food, and Mei Mei Street Kitchen dumplings...and soon enough you'll long a little bit less for those tacos of yesterday.

Also, I really like soup. And eating soup when it was like eighty-seven degrees out in February last year seemed ridiculous.

While it's continued to be pleasantly surprising on the weather front out here, I've been making a lot of beef stew for myself, Matty and my parents lately. I've filled so many mason jar pints with fresh, hot soup-- yet I'm still dying for more as I type this.

Luckily, I froze some before we headed out west, and I think I know exactly what I'll be doing when I'm done here.

It’s been two years since we arrived in LA, ready to start anew on the left coast. Fresh off a mostly snow-laden road trip, we were wide-eyed and optimistic among palm trees.

The 24 months since have gone by in an absolute blur. I put together the video below over the course of weeks and months. With gin on my breath and tears in my eyes, I scoured thousands of photos, hunted down video clips, and listened to song after song on a mission to find what evoked this season of my life.

This piece of history is positively one-sided. I took photos and video when things were good, when I felt happy, when the sun was shining.

Missing from this, are the moments when my knees gave out when I got a phone call about my mother’s health. The minutes spent searching for a flight to Boston that left within the next few hours so I could go home to my dad’s side.

I don’t depict the nights I got out of bed and paced the living room, or the nights it seemed like I was hugging Matt and my friends just a little too often and fervently.

Or the day I got let go from the company I'd spent most of my career with.

I also don’t show the twenty-something fruitless job interviews I embarked on, or the hellish three-day career I had for a flood restoration company that turned out to be a positively weird yet enlightening experience.

I don’t detail the countless “we appreciate your time but have decided to go in a different direction…” emails, or the hours spent figuring out how to apply for unemployment for the first time.

Missing are the moments spent on a cool tile floor in North Hollywood, hot tears streaming down my cheeks, while a sweet little dog kept trying to get me to play fetch.

And missing from this video is the fourth of July last year, when I awoke to find out my dad—my absolute rock through two years of hell—was having a heart attack.

 Matt and I were barely on a plane back to Boston when he uttered what we both had been thinking. “We’re going to have to move back,” he said. He didn’t make it a question, or act like there was anything at all to decide. We were going to do what we could to help my family, and we both knew it from that moment on.

Moving back to Massachusetts was energizing and gut wrenching all at the same time. A second cross-country trip that demonstrated the obvious majesty of this country left me feeling like there’s still so much more to see.

And remind me that wherever we lay our heads, we’re never too far from where we began.

Home is just state of mind.