By October. The autumn deepens. The oden returns. The candles are lit. The apartment is the warm cave. I am forty and the forty-ness is settling in, the way a new apartment settles in, the way new shoes settle in — the stiffness giving way, the unfamiliarity becoming familiar, the number becoming mine. Forty. I am forty. The forty is mine.
I made oden for the first cold night and the pot simmered for three days and the simmering was the autumn and the autumn was the simmering and I have run out of new things to say about oden and I am saying the old things because the old things are the true things and the true things bear repeating. The oden is the oden. The autumn is the autumn. The practice is the practice. Eleven years of saying "the practice" and the word has not lost its meaning. The word has gained meaning. The word is heavier now than it was eleven years ago, heavier with the weight of eleven years of daily miso soup, of five hundred blog posts, of two books, of a hundred cooking classes, of a daughter who makes gyoza. The heaviness is the richness. The richness is the practice. There is the word.
Halloween: Miya's costume is "an author." She carries a stack of books (my books, both of them, plus a notebook of her own stories) and a pen and a sign that says "AUTHOR AT WORK." She is nine and she dresses as an author for Halloween and the author she is dressing as is both me and herself and the both-ness is the costume: the mother and the daughter, the writer and the future writer, the books that have been written and the books that will be written.
The cooking class this month: oden and autumn stews. The students learned the three-day simmer, the patience of the big pot, the way flavors develop over time. A student said, after tasting the three-day oden: "I had no idea patience could taste like this." I said: "Patience always tastes like this. You just have to wait long enough to taste it." The sentence was both a cooking lesson and a life lesson, and the not-distinguishing-between-them is the practice, and the practice does not distinguish, and the not-distinguishing is the wisdom, and the wisdom is forty years old.
After three days of tending the oden pot, after the cooking class and the student’s revelation about patience, after watching Miya carry my books door to door as her costume—I wanted something sweet and autumnal and immediate, something that required almost no waiting at all, a small counterpoint to the long simmer. These caramel apple cider floats were exactly that: the apple and the caramel tasting like October itself, festive enough for Halloween night, simple enough to let the rest of the day settle around them.
Caramel Apple Cider Floats
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 cups fresh apple cider
- 1/4 cup caramel sauce, plus more for drizzling
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 cups vanilla bean ice cream (about 4 scoops)
- Whipped cream, for topping
- Caramel sauce, for drizzling
- Pinch of flaky sea salt (optional)
Instructions
- Warm the cider. In a small saucepan over medium heat, warm the apple cider with the caramel sauce, cinnamon, and nutmeg, stirring until the caramel is fully incorporated. Heat until steaming but not boiling, about 4–5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, about 2 minutes, so it doesn’t melt the ice cream too quickly.
- Prepare the glasses. Drizzle a little caramel sauce along the inside of four tall glasses or mugs, letting it run down the sides.
- Assemble the floats. Place one generous scoop of vanilla bean ice cream into each glass. Carefully pour the warm spiced cider over and around the ice cream—it will foam up beautifully.
- Finish and serve. Top each float with whipped cream, an extra drizzle of caramel sauce, and a pinch of flaky sea salt if desired. Serve immediately with a long spoon and a straw.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 285 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 52g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 115mg