Here’s a happy-sad photo of Michael waiting in the rain for his ice cream last month at Mac-a-Doodles in Stamford, NY. It’s raining here in Amherst today and it’s the first of September, which you know, if you’ve been with me for a while, is my least favorite month. It’s the season of losing. We’ve all lost Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry. We’ve also lost a dear friend. There’s been catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet and flooding in the Grand Canyon too. If my kids were here, they’d be going back to school and crying in my lap every night, but instead they’re not here at all.

I used to see a chiropractor for my headaches and he once said to me, laughing sadly, “Is that how you breathe all the time? We call that rescue breathing, and we usually associate it with crisis.” Of course that’s how I breathe all the time! Ha ha ha sob! So this is a reminder to sit up and let your shoulders drop right now and to relax your jaw and inhale and exhale deeply. I promise you that scrunching your neck and breathing shallowly is not helping you get anything done.

Ah, my beloveds. If the good grown-ups are going to die, then we are going to have to replace them with our own safe and tender and in-charge selves. And we can do that—we will. Even if we really just want to get our ice cream cones and then doze in the back of the car while a trusted someone drives us through the night. We’ll take turns! (Except for the driving, which I can’t do. But I’ll find the good places for us to stop!)

Anyhoo, enough of the melancholy. Because endless summer—who even needs it? Sob. The rest of this post is a lot of seasonal reminders, which is annoying, maybe? I don’t know.

Like, this zesty, thrilling tomatillo salsa! Which I no longer add lime zest to if I’m canning it because it turns bitter over time. I need to make a note in the recipe but haven’t yet.

And if you make that tomatillo salsa (if you give a mouse a cookie), you can make Illia chicken! Which you can make anyway, of course, with boughten salsa if you must. I made some last night—a huge batch, so we’d have leftovers all week! And then WE ATE IT ALL while we were watching tennis. Honestly. I was texting about it with Illia herself, who also made Illia chicken last night. Illia reminded me, after I originally posted that recipe, that after the chicken comes out of the oven and she shreds it up a little, she dumps the chicken and its juice into a hot pan with olive oil and lets the juice evaporate and then fries it like carnitas. I will update the recipe to include that optional step! But fair warning: I did it that way last night, and it became actually irresistible. Hence the no leftovers.

Another seasonal reminder: over on instagram, years ago I detailed my method for recycling candles into candles. “Detailed” may be too strong a term for it. This might not really be a practical idea for most people? But let it be a reminder that you might want to start saving your waxy odds and ends as we move into candle season. Like, for example, whatever the fuck this is:

Finally, this idea, which is obviously not rocket science or Pulitzer journalism. At two dinner parties in the last month, I was served in-hand ice cream. My friend Rebecca, who hosted, like, fifty zillion of us in her perfect home, put out gallons of ice cream and boxes of cones after dinner, and I was astonished at the simple brilliance of it. No dishes, no fuss, just happy kids and adults. And then this past weekend, a friend in charge of dessert brought ice cream treats (e.g. these omg) for everyone, a couple different boxes, and it was so fun and exciting. They were on the bougier end, but honestly you could bring a 12-pack of ice cream sandwiches and a 12-pack of creamsicles, and everyone would be thrilled.

Starting and ending with ice cream. It’s that kind of day? Sending love as always.

xoxo

Oh hiiiii, friends, how are you? I hope you’re not having the August blues. I am not, why would I, my kids aren’t even here milling around depressedly about going back to high school. Or college even. Because they’re just living their grown-up lives, away from me, which is so fun for everyone! Ha ha ha sob.

Let me start with the tour for the paperback of Wreck. Please come and/or tell your friends! Pleeeeease!

And then!

I’m sharing a recipe because I spend my whole life craving salty snacks, and most of the bagged kind feel unwholesome to me and/or give me an actual literal headache. I eat a lot of popcorn with Frank’s hot sauce and nutritional yeast on it, and I have developed lots of savory snack recipes in my many years as a recipe developer, and these are some of them:

Dill Pickle Popcorn
Jicama with Spicy Lime Dipping Salt
Miso-Sriracha Deviled Eggs
Spicy-Sour Edamame
Tofu Jerky
Weirdly Addictive Tortilla Pizza
Salami Jerky
Alllll the crackers
Some other kinda weird low-carb snacks

But I have had my eye on a recipe from this book, which is a book I love and am always mentioning here I know. It’s called simply “Savory Granola,” and Janet being Janet and the best, she gives you lots of options for how to make it. I followed the basic bones of her delightful recipe, but skewed it even a little saltier and also didn’t have preserved lemon. I wanted it to be extra protein-y. It’s not the kind of granola you would eat with milk. Just eat it out of hand or use it to top cottage cheese or tzatziki or a salad. Soooooo good.

(Kind of) Janet Elsbach’s Savory Granola
Double the recipe and you’ll have enough to give away! Chaat masala, if you’ve never used it before, is weirdly lusty and consuming. It’s sour and super umami and has a very slightly funky smell and flavor from the black salt that’s in it. It’s the seasoning of Indian snack foods, and it is so so so good.

1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut ribbons (or shreds)
1/2 cup nuts (roasted cashews or pistachios, raw almonds, raw pecans, raw walnuts, or a combination)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds or pepitas or a combination
3/4 cup other stuff: more oats, nuts, or coconut or what I used, which was an odd combination of TVP (dry textured vegetable protein), millet, and flax seeds
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds (if you have these)
1 egg white (or JE’s chia seed trick, see recipe above)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons tamari (or soy sauce)
grated zest of one scrubbed orange
2 teaspoons chaat masala (or a different seasoning of your choice, such as smoked paprika)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper such as gochugaru or kashmiri chile powder
1/2 teaspoon (+ more) kosher salt

1. Heat the oven to 350 and put parchment paper on a large rimmed baking sheet.

2. Mix the first 6 ingredients (the dries) in a large bowl.

3. Mix together the rest of the ingredients and pour it over the dries. Stir well. I taste it to make sure it has enough salt at this point but RAW EGG so don’t do that.

4. Spread the mixture out on the baking sheet and bake for about 25 minutes, stirring after 7 minutes and then again after every 5 minutes (or even more frequently at the end). Taste it as it bakes to see if it needs more salt, and add some if it does. It’s done when it’s evenly brown and toasty looking.

5. Cool completely then store in a jar.

A few other recommendations, while we’re all here together!

This tender and heartbreaking book, out today.

This entirely perfect beach read, out last month.

This funny and delicious banger, out two months ago.

This very funny comedy special that’s free on youtube.

This craveable zucchini-corn salad, which I make with mayo instead of tahini because I am a pervert (skip the water in that case).

Sending love! Juice your bad watermelons in the blender with lime juice and zest! Read in bed with the fan on!

xoxo Catherine

Like this salad! Which I just made for lunch this very day, but I used freshly cooked quinoa instead of brown rice (quinoa cooking directions here) and I used mint and parsley and plums, and added crushed garlic to the dressing and some sliced pepperoncini, of course. Feta. Fried almonds. Oh, and sauteed zucchini instead of diced cukes, because the zukes were the thing I was trying to use in the first place. It was delicious. Or, I should say, is delicious because we will be eating it for years.

Or this salad, which I talk about here. I’ve been added the packaged fried shallots from Trader Joe’s, and they’re perfect. Be aware that this salad takes longer to make than you will first imagine, but it’s a total show-stopper.

I’ve made some other things that were good too, and easy and summery. The coleslaw I talk about here (I grate wedges of cabbage in the food processor and it takes 11 seconds). These shockingly good pickled shrimp, which I brought to a 4th of July gathering where we played the incredible fun game Crokinole, which we have been playing all summer, despite that fact that we don’t own it ourselves. But other people do! Who knew?

Oh, also, I’ve made these soy-pickled eggs twice in quick succession. They’re great to round out a meal that you know secretly isn’t really a meal (e.g. a Strawberry Shortcake ice-cream bar) or to add to a plate of other delicious things. And these straight-up pickles. I realize there’s a theme here, and the theme is vinegar.

Otherwise, we are watching a lot of sports, and I am not a natural sports fan. I feel so much grief for the players who lose. I feel so much anxiety for the players that biff something. I hate Trump, FIFA, the colonial empires that still function somehow. And still! Still I kind of love it. Mostly all the hugging and the feelings and the drama. So many incredible black and brown athletes from all over the world! And also people’s muscled bodies and joy.

That’s kind of it?

Not really. Michael and I had the opportunity of a lifetime to go rafting in the Grand Canyon with a lot of people, and it was so special and magical that I’m not even ready to talk about it yet. Except to say that I brushed up very close to many of my fears—falling, drowning, snakes, bats, scorpions, sand, being away from home, lightning, small planes, other people, my own thighs—and I screamed a lot and laughed the whole time and occasionally cried, and was fine. More than fine. I loved it! And many people made it possible for me to go, in terms of my obligations here at home, and what a gift that was—the encouraging generosity of my children in particular. Plus, nobody on my trip got norovirus! Maybe more on all of that another time.

Meanwhile, I’m back on my bullshit: writing and watercoloring and watermelon and old people. Did you read Whistler yet? Just go ahead and read it. It’s a perfect novel.

Sending so much love to you, my lovelies. If this is a hard summer for you in whatever way, I am with you.

xo

We camped on Cape Cod and our friends got married on the beach of our favorite pond there, where we swam in the cold water, and it was all so magical that I can hardly even say anything about it. And then we came home and it rained and Birdy went back to New York, and I looked in the fridge and all I saw were the campfire hotdogs that we hadn’t eaten all of. And let me say this: if you have leftover hotdogs from the long weekend? Treat them like a glam protein, and add them to a fancy salad.

Will your child make fun of you? I mean, yeah. But it’s so good. You can add them to a lentil salad, like this one. Or a kale salad, like this one

with pepperoncini (obvs) and celery and a mustardy vinaigrette.

Or the one in the text photo, above, which is this, below. Obviously, if you’re a freak of nature, you could swap in chicken or salmon or tofu for the hotdogs.

Herby Cabbage Salad with Hotdogs
Makes 2 servings

This is very loosely based on a kind of Thai salad we once had with herbs and sausages in it. The hotdogs add just the right kind of salty, greasy richness. So, so good. I’d have added both radishes and fresh chiles if I’d had them.

2 cups green (white) cabbage cut into 1-inch squares (or slivered)

2 celery stalks, thinly sliced

2 persian cucumbers, thinly sliced

1 heaping cup basil leaves and cilantro, roughly chiffonaded (!!!)

3 hotdogs, thinly sliced and then browned in a pan with a little oil

½ cup fried shallots (like these from Trader Joe’s)

Dressing:
Juice of ½ a juicy lime (2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon Bragg’s liquid aminos (or soy sauce or tamari, but Bragg’s is ideal)
I garlic clove, minced or put through a garlic press
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon kosher salt
Something spicy, if you like, like chile-garlic paste or sriracha

Put the cabbage, celery, and cukes in a large bowl and add all the dressing and toss. Then add the herbs and hotdogs and toss again. Top with the shallots and serve.

A few other things:

Don’t sleep on watercolor painting as a summer activity. Plus, the paintings make excellent Father’s Day or birthday or wedding cards. You can paint from life:

Or from your imagination

Or from an online tutorial or a book, like this one:

Also seasonal: I am cultivating a love of women’s basketball. I hate football so much, and most other sports too, but I love tennis and TV and women and cheering and athletic lesbians, so I thought I could swirl it all together and turn myself into a WNBA fan, and I was right! The New York Liberty is my team, and we went to a game and had so much fun. We’re going again. My friend wrote about The Liberty too this week, which I love! Everyone Watches Women’s Sports.

Finally! My friend and neighbor, the award-winning cartoonist Suzy Becker, is running a workshop on the Cape in August! She’s the best. Here are the details.

Cartoonapalooza! Single Panel Cartooning Workshop with Suzy Becker
Monday-Friday, August 17-21 from 1-4 pm
Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro (next to Provincetown), MA
To register: https://www.castlehill.org/all-workshops/becker
www.suzybecker.com

Make cartoons on Cape Cod with New Yorker cartoonist Suzy Becker! For all levels, including people who thing they can’t draw.

Also, hey, guess what? I AM STILL NOT DRINKING. If you’ve wondered about quitting, I am telling you from two years in: it is so, so good. I loved drinking, but I love being sober even more. Polar pink apple and lemon seltzer. Just saying.

All love to you. xo

It’s rhubarb season! Asparagus season! Lilac and dogwood and violet season! Lily of the valley and bleeding heart season! The season where I wander around sobbingly muttering romantic poetry to myself and wonder how many springs I have left on earth in this body because all of a sudden I am William Wordsworth. Sob! It’s all ending even as it’s just begun. Come hang out with me! It’s always a laugh riot around here.

Anyways, not to be immodest, but this cake (pictured above) is honestly a perfect cake. I almost never use the orange zest that I myself call for. And I do 2/3 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup almond flour, for all my gf girlies out there (heads up, the fruit always sinks more in a gf cake—it’s not a problem). I made it twice in three days this past week.

Asparagus: I am still at the stage of lightly boiling it in salted water and putting butter on it. If I get bored, I’ll move onto brown butter, braising, roasting, etc.

Okay, but here’s another recipe while we’re talking about food. It’s based on a recipe from Tenderheart

and it’s what she calls crispy chickpeas and what I’m calling chickpea-roasted chickpeas. I usually just pan-fry them for salads, but this method is a little more hands-off and makes chickpeas that are a little crisper. They look like this:

Here’s my version of the recipe, easily doubled: Heat the oven to 450 and put a piece of parchment on rimmed baking pan. Drain a (15-ounce) can of chickpeas (or 1 1/2 cups if you cooked them yourself) and put them in a bowl. Add 3 tablespoons chickpea flour, 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, and a grind of black pepper and stir well, then drizzle on 2 tablespoons olive oil and stir again. Spread them out in the pan and roast until crisp, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. You can add other seasonings too: chile or garlic powder or a masala blend or whatever you like.

Here they are, in situ:

This (perfect) salad is green cabbage, celery, pepperoncini, tinned Trader Joe’s smoked trout, feta, and the chickpeas. Dressing is the usual: 2 teaspoons kosher salt, 1 clove pressed garlic, 1/3 cup white wine vinegar, 2/3 cup olive oil, stored in the fridge and used as needed. I could eat this every night of my life and practically do.

Also, while I was outside photographing this in the last of the light, I looked up and saw this:

And also this:

Sob.

Okay, Enough spring crying. What else? The Merlin app! Am I a new birder wholly because of watching the fantabulous Listers movie? Yes! And it’s so fun! The Merlin app is free, and you can track all the birds you lay eyes on. It knows where you are and can help you guess what you’re seeing, both by suggesting what’s likely to be in the area and also by—hold onto your hats—listening to the birdsong around you. Sorry, sorry—I know you know this already! Sliced bread! It’s bread! But sliced!—but I didn’t, and I can’t get over it. It’s the most user-friendly app I have ever, er, used. You press a button and it listens and it starts telling you in real time what birds it’s hearing. Which makes being perennially awake for the dawn chorus an occasion to be so glad for!

A free hobby is totally my jam, and it’s so fun, and it’s about nature, and it gets you outside, and you and your friends/family/partners can all do it! SO GOOD. So far there are 23 species on my life list, and I’ve only been doing it for a little over a week.

My final recommendation, besides ’s Blackout Chocolate Cake Ice Cream, which you need like you need another hole in your head, is Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest, London Falling, which we listened to on audio via the Libby app. Like his other books, including The Empire of Pain, it is riveting and educational and perfect.

A final note: You were all so funny about the mango in my last post! I will mention, just for the sake of clarity, that “your dad” was written by Birdy and was referring to the person she lives with, who is, in fact, my dad. Still funny, but maybe a little more cry-laughing.

I love you! Be good to yourselves. xo

Hi! Did you need dinner to be nutritious and delicious and also cheap? I’ve got you. My wonderful father-in-law sent us home with tzatziki from the good yogurt place, so I decide to make falafel, only then I didn’t have eight hours to soak the chickpeas and so I googled “red lentil falafel,” and lifted the bones of the recipe from here. (If you give a mouse a cookie.) I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to making it with chickpeas, which I realize is total BLASPHEMY coming from me, but there you go.

These are so easy and tender and crunchy and garlicky and herby and just perfect in every way. I made them twice in five days. I serve them with pickled red cabbage and tzatziki. If I’m making the tzatziki from scratch, I use this recipe, but these days I grate little unpeeled persian cukes instead of peeling and dicing a big cuke, and I salt it and squeeze out the extra liquid before stirring it into the yogurt. Also I don’t always put herbs in my tzatziki any more.

Red Lentil Falafel
This serves 3 people for dinner or 4 people for lunch or just me in a world where I go for it and eat the whole batch. If you added pita maybe it would serve more people.

1 cup red lentils

2 teaspoons kosher salt

½ cup or so chopped onion

3 minced garlic cloves

1 cup chopped cilantro and/or parsley (or up to double this amount)

1 teaspoon each cumin and coriander, ideally whole spices toasted and then freshly ground (I got my mortar and pestle from Marshall’s) or else the powder straight from the jar like a normal person

½ teaspoon cayenne or other red pepper or more or less or none

2 tablespoon chickpea flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

Oil for shallow frying (ideally something with a high smoke point (??) like grapeseed or avocado)

1. Put the lentils in a bowl and cover them generously with cold water from the tap. Soak them between 1 and 2 hours at room temperature, then drain them well.

2. In a food processor, blitz the lentils with the salt, onion, garlic, herbs, and spices until the lentils break down into a texture kind of like chunky wet sand (??). It will start off very coarse and then get finer and you don’t want it to become a full-on paste, although if it does don’t even worry about it, it will be fine.

3. Scrape the mixture into a bowl, stir in the flour and baking powder, then cover and chill for an hour or two, which will firm it up enough for scooping.

4. Use a cookie scoop to grab up loose balls of the mixture and flatten them slightly before placing them on a pice of wax paper on a plate or baking sheet. Don’t worry if they seem fragile. Any size is good, but flatter is better for shallow-frying and smaller is better for the ratio of crisp to tender, without any raw onion flavor lingering in the middle. You can chill them again at this point if you want to—or else just fry them now. Put some paper towel on a cooling rack and put the rack on a rimmed baking sheet.

5. Use a very large frying pan (or else you’ll need to do this in batches): pour in enough oil to generously cover your bottom (!!) and turn the heat to medium/medium-high. Wait for the oil to get very hot (I dip the edge of a patty into it and if it does not sizzle with absolute conviction I wait another minute and try again), then put all the patties in. Fry until deeply browned on the bottom, something like 3 or 4 or 5 minutes, then flip them and fry until deeply browned on the other side. Remove them to the cooling rack and serve immediately.

Also on offer today is the best iced tea in the world! It’s just good, strong black tea (I usually brew a bag of Trader Joe’s Irish Breakfast tea in around 3/4 cup of just-boiled water for 3 minutes) poured over ice and then you add a drop of rose water. This is something I’ve been making since 2020, when someone (Who? I don’t know!) posted a picture of their iced Oolong tea with rose water. Oolong is great—smoky and strange—but I almost never have it. What I do have right now is this delicious Publisher’s Blend Murchie’s black tea that someone gifted me at an event. (Who? I don’t know!) By the way, you can get culinary-grade rose water at a Middle Eastern or Indian grocery store or probably at Whole Foods. A drop of vanilla is a different good addition to a glass of iced tea, and vanilla in Oolong definitely gives whiskey vibes.

Next up, a few recs that I guess I’m counting as one thing?

I had the great blessing of getting to watch an early cut of my friend Julie’s incredible film The Tallest Dwarf last year, and I loved it SO MUCH. It’s my favorite kind of documentary, where you learn a ton about the world but the whole experience is shaped by the filmmaker’s personal journey. At the end of a very long kvelling email I sent her, I wrote, “It's profound and entertaining and hopeful and just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.” You can watch it now and should.

“I read this book cover to cover, and it was so hot and delicious, so funny and smart and real, and the dialogue was so great, and the sex was so steamy and uncringe that I want to study it.” That’s what I said about this Rainbow Rowell chunk of deliciousness. I loved it.

Finally, I wanted to recommend the TV show DTF Saint Louis, which is dark and funny and constantly surprising and also deeply moving and sad. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered quite so heartbreaking a representation of everyday loneliness. Wowza. I’m sorry in advance if it’s not your cuppa, but it was definitely mine.

Thank you so much for being here. Life isn’t always easy, but boy do we get to laugh a lot.

e.g.: Babies. I was giving blood at the hospital earlier this week—and by “giving blood,” I mean only that many vials of my blood were being extracted for self-oriented testing purposes—and I got to see two different couples walk out from the birthing center with their miniature brand-new babies! One of the babies was crying just about as loud as a mewling kitten and the parents looked so panic-stricken and when they stopped in front of me to adjust something or other with the car seat I smiled at them and gave them an old-lady thumbs up, said, “You guys are crushing this already,” and they smiled back nervously and probably assumed I was in the process of donating my elderly corpse to science, which I essentially was.

e.g. The pinky-sized spotted garden eel with its tiny frown, which we got to see at the New York Aquarium last weekend.

e.g. Tiny bowls and plates. I cannot enough sing the praises of tiny bowls and plates. It’s our main complaint when we’re staying in a rental—that all the bowls are cereal-sized, even if all you wanted to have was a 11 pistachios or a handful of olives.

A ramekin is a great sub for a small bowl.

But I just love small bowls so much that we have tons of them, most of them thrifted or purchased from actual pottery people.

If you’re full from dinner, Michael will offer to make you a micro-sundae. You can choose your own bowl for it.

Those two bluish ones I bought from an immense thrift store outside of Reykjavik, which I made my family take a city bus to. (Worth it.)

Oooh that rice-cake-peanut-butter-pepperoncini picture reminds me! I made this two days ago:

It’s a Trader Joe’s seedy flatbread cracker with cottage cheese, garlic powder, pepperoncini and dill. An ideal snack in every way. Speaking of: I found this picture of a Birdy snack from some years ago. Sob!

Oh, wait, I got sidetracked. The last small thing: tiny vases, so you can turn a bouquet into an endless, iteratively smaller arrangement.

I am too lazy to hunt for an old picture from when we used to have flowers in the house before this animal arrived, intent on devouring every toxic thing in the known feline universe.

Wow. Is that it? I don’t know! Have I mentioned this chocolate cake recipe before? I am obsessed with it and make it all the time. It’s small and gluten-free and doesn’t require a ton of effort or ingredients. The only thing I do slightly differently is that I whip the eggs and sugar together to ribbons before adding the chocolate mixture. Also, I use salted butter, obvs. And I add vanilla. I am back to baking it at 375 despite the note that says otherwise, but I do double it for a party and bake it a little longer in a 9-inch pan. (A party! Please. I mean, like, having two people over.)

That’s all I got for now. Except that Michael made me this sobriety chip for my 2-year anniversary. I was so afraid when I saw the jewelry box! But then it was one of the best gifts I have ever received. If you look close, you can see that he used glitter Mod-Podge. I love not drinking so much, even though it is still very occasionally hard because of how much I loved drinking.

And we are protesting in everyday (e.g. we take care of our people and we do not shop at amazon) ways and in special-occasion (e.g. No Kings) ways.

Plus, we are alive and welcoming the spring light.

I hope you are alive and welcoming the spring light too. Thank you so much for being here.

xo

Thing 1: Tons* of you asked for details about the 2-ingredient slaw from the bean feast post, so here is a photo essay about it:

* 1

Oh my god it’s so perfect! Perfectly seasoned without any added salt even—just the brine left in a jar that has been emptied of its peperoncinis. Toss it with tongs or your hands, then leave it under a weight in the fridge overnight or for at least 2 or 3 hours—it will give up a lot of juice and end up covering itself in brine even if it doesn’t seem like it will. It keeps well and, in fact, gets better and better, though I tend to eat all of it fairly quickly because it’s the perfect gorgeous garnish for nachos, bean or grain bowls, hot dogs, quesadillas, and scrambled eggs.

Thing 2: Thanks to an instagram post by fabulous cartoonist Lynda Barry, we had the idea to do this drawing game on a recent vacation. We did skeletons, mermaids, and bicycles—first 1 minute with eyes open, then 30 seconds with eyes closed. Here are some of the eyes closed ones.

So good! It would be a perfect waiting-for-your-food-at-a-restaurant game, although we played in our hotel room.

Side note: I’m a huge fan of the short, drivable vacation. It’s easier to organize, there is less pressure on everyone to take off a million days of work, it tends to be cheaper and therefore less stressful and kind of splurgier-feeling and more restorative, and you can lie around your hotel room guiltlessly because the Sistine Chapel or Great Wall or Machu Picchu isn’t beckoning from around every corner. In this instance, we went to Portland, Maine for three nights with our grown kids, who took the train up from NYC. Mostly we ate (e.g. Central Provisions, Eventide, LB Kitchen, Three Dollar Deweys, Empire) and played board games (e.g. Viticulture, Blokus, Azul, Splendor, Chinese Checkers) and sleeeeept and thrift shopped and binged The Pitt. I don’t seem to have taken any pictures except of our drawings? Although Birdy made a video of me being VERY EXCITED in the car.

Was that three things? I don’t really know. A few others:

I have procured some weights and am going to be virtually working out with via her substack programs.

My friend has an amazing new novel out called Where the Girls Were. It is so good.

We really mostly eat this salad (like, 3 or 4 nights a week, with just green cabbage as this base of it), but I’ve also been making this black pepper beef and cabbage stir-fry, only I do it with firm tofu that I press then cube, toss with 1 tsp salt, 1 tbs crushed black pepper, 1 tbs cornstarch, and 1/2 tbs brown sugar, pan-fry, then follow the recipe-ish in terms of the cabbage and sauce. I add a dash of sesame oil or chili crisp, and sometimes sliced radishes and/or celery. Sorry, sorry that was annoying.

Come and see me sometime? I’ll be here:

Saturday, March 14th 2:30
Sunday March 15th 10:00
Tucson Festival of Books
Tucson, AZ
​More information

Tuesday, March 24th 6:30
East Hampton Public Library
East Hampton, CT
More information

Saturday, April 4th 4:00
Exeter LitFest
Exeter, NH
More information

Saturday, April 25th

Time TBA
Newburyport Literary Festival
Newburyport, MA
More information

Thursday, April 30th 7:00
Darien Library
Darien, CT

Saturday, May 2nd 7:00
Leelanau Reads
French Valley Vineyard
Cedar, MI
More information

Tuesday, May 19th 7:00
Ipswich Public Library
Ipswich, MA

​Sunday, June 7th 2:00
Trumbull Library
Trumbull, CT

Love you guys! Take care of your people and other people’s people too. xoxo

If you cook a pound of beans perfectly and serve them for dinner with or without rice (I am an orthodox non-rice bean feaster) and with a modest assortment of toppings, then you will have tapped into the most inexpensive and supremely satisfying meal on earth—the original “bowl” before bowls were even a thing.

This is one of the most important meals I make when my kids come home now, even though when they lived here all the time they were so sick of it that I literally thought maybe this was them when it showed up in our local police blotter:

We’ve always called this dinner “bean feast” because it’s funny to sing “I want a feast. I want a bean feast!” with a snotty little English accent like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But I just looked it up, and here’s this from Wikipedia: “A bean-feast, also known as beano in Britain, is an informal term for a celebratory meal or party. Historically it referred especially to an annual summer dinner given by an employer to their employees.” The appalling staff-appreciation event of yesteryear! BRING BACK THE BEANO! Or maybe don’t?

(If you are not following here, what are you even doing? She’s so incredibly brilliant and funny, plus she happens to be the daughter of my beloved , but doesn’t need to be. I mean, she needs to be, obvs, but you know what I’m saying.)

Bean Feast (not quite a recipe)
Serves 6 with rice or 4 without

The fun part of this meal is, of course, topping your own bowl of beans. These are the toppings I typically put out, but if you’re snowed in, just put out whatever:

• olive oil for drizzling

• flakey salt

• salsa, tajín, hot sauce (something smoky is nice)

• jarred pickled jalapeno slices or escabeche

• arugula leaves, cilantro, slivered cabbage, or pink slaw made with slivered red cabbage and the brine leftover in your jar of pepperoncini (give it a couple hours in the fridge)

• diced avocado (if we have it, which is only sometimes)

• lime wedges

• sour cream

• crumbled feta or shredded cheddar or Jack

And then there are the beans themselves. If you’re serving them with rice, you can get away with heating canned beans in their liquid, roughly 2 cans for every 3 people. But for the best beans in the world, start with a pound of dried pinto beans and pressure cook them. They’ll turn out creamy, fudgy, delicious, a little bit smokey and almost meaty. The beans you start with don’t have to be fancy! Sure, Rancho Gordo are the best—they really are—and I love them and order them regularly. But a bag of dried pinto (or black) beans from the supermarket is great too. The key is pressure cooking them, which you can do in your Instant Pot. (I’m not going to tell you how to cook them without a pressure cooker because, lukewarm take, it is not worth it.)

Here’s how: Pour the beans into the Instant Pot and pick through them to get out any stones and shrively beans and cat whiskers, etc, then generously cover them with water (by at least an inch or 2), add 2 or 3 tablespoons of salt, and bring the whole thing to a boil on the sauté setting (choose “more” if you’re offered such a choice). Once they come to a boil, turn off the heat by hitting “cancel,” pop the cover over them loosely, and let the beans soak for an hour or more. Taste the water and make sure it’s salty enough—add more salt if it doesn’t taste at least mildly salty.

After the hour of soaking, make sure there’s still water for the beans to boil in, cover the pot properly with the lid, and use the “beans” or “soup” setting to pressure cook them for half an hour. Allow the Instant Pot to release pressure naturally, which you’ll know has happened when the little valve drops. This will take around half an hour, but if you can’t stand to wait that long (BEANO!) then let it release naturally for at least 15 minutes before flipping the thing that will let the rest of the steam escape. The thing is called the “steam release.” Taste a bean to make sure it’s tender, then use a slotted spoon to scoop the beans into everybody’s bowls.

{Note: I more often actually use my stove-top pressure cooker, which looks like a futuristic robot from the 1960s and cooks beans in as terrifyingly little as 2 minutes.}

Stay warm, my lovelies, and thank you again, dear !

xo

and where I ate my own bodyweight in, of all things, cookies, which were offered to me around every drizzling bend. (“A wee shortbread?” “A ginger biscuit?” “Go on.”)

Thus, relatedly, Thing One is my perfect travel snack of many, many years:

The cheese does not need to be refrigerated, the crackers are snappy and sour, and I carry them together in a large ziplock bag. It’s true that a wedge does not fit neatly on a rectangle (#geometry), but I smash one cheese between two crackers and then push the extra that squidges out back into the empty part. (?)

Somehow this is the perfect antidote to my weariness of nuts or cloyingly sweet bars. On the advice of my freshman roommate, one Suzin Cho MD, I have been eating Barebell Salty Peanut protein bars, which she thinks taste like Snickers and I think taste, happily, like a Tiger’s Milk bar from 1978. (Why do we need so much protein? I don’t know. My dad is 94 and eats approximately six grams of protein every three to five days in the form of a barely boiled egg.) But they’re not actually food, and you can eat only so many before you feel the bovine collagen catch in your throat. Hence, portable cheese and crackers! Plus a 2-cracker serving has 11% of your daily fiber, so I eat 20 and get alllllll of it.

Thing two, also related, is this kind of weird minty “hot chocolate” I’ve been drinking, in an effort to reset from my tiring, headachey cookie habit while satisfying some of my cravings.

Here’s the recipe: brew a large mug of peppermint herb tea (I like most brands of it). In a blender, whiz up the hot tea with a splash of milk (any kind, I use whole dairy), a pinch of salt, a pitted date, and a heaping teaspoon of cacao or cocoa powder. Now lower your expectations. So good! (Probably even better if you dunk a wee shortbread into it.)

Thing three is just any joyful media that will be an antidote to cruelty and the weird derealizing feeling of everything being AI: all the glistening brown cottage cheese muffins and otter-giraffe friendships that make you feel like there must already be a German word for it—for the pleasure of seeing something nice coupled with the anxiety that it’s not real, the disappointing certainty that it’s not real, and the shame of ever having thought it was real for even a second. (Note: I first wrote A1, like the steak sauce, which would be an even worse and weirder world, so maybe we should feel lucky.)

For me, this joyful media includes:

• the Bad Bunny halftime show, which, like all six episodes of Heated Rivalry, you are totally allowed to watch as many times as you like

• the Olympics

• this essay about the beautiful, baffling death of his friend, which is exquisite

• the Madi Diaz album Fatal Optimist

• my beloved Susanna Daniel’s new book Girlfriending, which I got to blurb:
  “I swallowed Girlfriending down in one big, thrilled gulp, not having realized how thirsty I was for exactly this calmly mesmerizing and fresh book about midlife. Also? It made me want to be a better person, somehow, even though it’s sexy, page-turning fiction (i.e. not self-help). I am a huge Susanna Daniel fan and will be for life.”

• Okay, not media, but: Giving money to mutual aid organizations in Minneapolis. Truly! I once wrote an article about how, like volunteering, charitable giving releases dopamine. WIN-MOTHERFUCKING-WIN. (We just donated to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the Open Cupboard Food Pantry.) If you can’t donate right now—I’ve been there. I am with you.

What is making you happy?

Stay warm, lovelies!

xo

I am with you, as you know. Sending all love. We’ve got each other’s backs, always.

xo

Hello, loveliest ones! I am just popping up from my hibernation hole to recommend a few things for this last week of eating and lazing, assuming you have such a week planned.

I made these Peppermint Brownie Cookies, which are fudgy and delicious and festively use up any stray candy canes you may have ended up with. I made them much smaller than the recipe suggests—12 to a cookie sheet versus six—and also made them gluten-free by simply swapping in a basic gf blend, which was probably King Arthur. Fun fact: you can tap the candy canes lightly with a hammer while they’re still in their wrappers! Or skip the candy canes.

I am making this spinach-artichoke dip (I always add caramelized onions) and these soy-pickled eggs for New Year’s Eve.

I recommend making and sending thank-you cards as an antidote to the feeling that if someone poked a hole in your side eggnog and candy and plastic and cookies would pour out. We used watercolors and then cut out little paintings, which we mounted on blank cards.

Movie-theater movies I recommend:

• Wake Up Dead Man: Fresh and funny and goes down easy (full disclosure: we streamed it).

• Hamnet: I went because I was in love with Maggie O’Farrell’s book and also with Paul Mescal; by the time I left, I was gloomy and crying and in love with Jessie Buckley.

• Housemaid: We mostly wanted to look at Sydney Sweeney for a couple hours, which was not at all disappointing. Also she makes us all laugh SO MUCH, maybe on purpose, maybe not.

• Marty Supreme: This movie fails to Bechdel Test so outrageously, and still I loved it, which is crazy given how disinterested I tend to be in men and what they are saying to each other. It’s very chaotic like Uncut Gems crossed with After Hours, if you remember that movie from the 1980s, but it was still watchable and a ton of fun.

Streaming stuff I recommend:

• This fantastic and utterly surprising birding documentary.

• This very funny stand-up special.

• This documentary about the Lilith Fair, which filled me with Sapphic nostalgia. Also, spoiler alert, all of those women got SO RICH!
  
  (This is the next thing we’re watching, as per multiple recommendations.)

If you are at all tempted by a polar plunge on New Year’s Day, just do it. It’s the best.

Next up today: annual charitable giving. We try to give away enough money that it makes us a little bit nervous. (Another antidote to the chocolatey-lead-balloon feeling.)

Happy everything, even if everything is weird and you’re a little sad. We’ll get through it together.

xo

Hiiiiiii! If you are new here—well, welcome, for one thing! But also? I’ve been doing a holiday gift guide for a long time, and here’s some of the history:

Last year’s gift ideas are here.

• The year before that are here. And that year’s homemade game idea is here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before are here—and also there is a list there of links to the homemade gifts we’ve posted over the years. I’ll add Our Fudge of Perpetual Sorrows because it is a perfect recipe and would make a great present for a sweet-toothed kind of person.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before, here.

• The year before, here.

• The year before that, here.

• The year before that, here.

• And the year before that, here.

• Some long ago thoughts (i.e. for little kids) are here.

And remember, as always, that there’s a big list of games on my old blog, here.

These gift guides involve various revenue-earning affiliate links (the Amazon and bookshop.org ones and, randomly, Fishwife). I’m not adding new Amazon links anymore because JEFF BEZOS jezos krist—but I don’t have the bandwidth to redo all the old ones. Anything you see here? Try to buy it locally—especially if you have a local game and/or book store.

Also? This is going to be too long for an email, so you might want to switch to the web view or the app.

What an unfestive opener to a holiday gift guide! Ha ha ha! What is wrong with me? (Plenty!)

I always start with games, even though I recommend fewer and fewer new games. (Sob!) But don’t forget there are so many in years past! I’m taking this opportunity to recommend Upwords again because it is just so much fun. Like Scrabble, but somehow both more distilled and more complex? Ha ha ha. I sound like a hipster tobacco merchant. There are TONS of used copies of this game out there, and some of them are very retro and fun. (Like ours, which came from Savers obvs.)

I believe I have never recommended Stone Age, and it only occurred to me because I was looking for some holiday photos, and there are so many pictures of us playing it!

It’s a big, expensive, complicated strategy game, yes. And, yes, someone will need to digest the rules and regurgitate them for everyone sitting with their lazy little baby beaks open. But it’s not as stressful or complicated as some of the other games in that class of games, and we think of it as a kind of all-purpose fun game that takes maybe an hour, yes, but not half the day. (That beautiful wooden object is a dice roller made for us by our engineer nephew, and we treasure it. Please excuse the distractingly plump and glistening Castelvetrano olives.) Also, do not try to teach, learn, or play this game while anybody at the table is stoned. I am not really selling it very hard, ha ha ha. But we love it.

I am interested in playing both of these how-well-do-you-know-people party games because they sound like the sadly discontinued Whoonu? which we love. I will get one of them, but I’m not sure which, so I’m recommending both, which have both been recommended to me!

This one, First to Worst.

And this one, Priorities.

We love to give people puzzles because then there’s something fun to do! My favorite puzzle brands include the classic and always excellent eeboo

the strange and wonderful Piecework

the lovely Ordinary Habits

And the very expensive, heirloom, collectible, and exquisite Liberty.

I am giving Ben and Birdy these retractable marker pens this year. I feel like one of the hard things about moving out on your own is that you don’t have any art supplies. I’ve been slowly replacing them over the years. (There are lots of links in past gift guides.)

and this chunky sketch pad. (If you want a chunky sketch pad but don’t want to spend nearly so much on it, there is also this one.)

Probably they’re going to be drawing lots of pictures and mailing them to friends and family, so go ahead and get them some stamps too! I got my kids these (obviously):

but I also stocked up on a ton of 1-, 2-, and 3-cent stamps because it’s fun to add them to your envelope for no reason, and they only cost 1, 2, or 3 cents!

Is weird that I kind of want to give everyone this Brutalist architecture calendar? I don’t know anything about architecture, I just think it’s kind of funny? But maybe a little pricy for the bit.

Okay, here come the book recs! But first! A bag to put them in. I got Birdy this classic monogrammed tote from LL Bean just to make her laugh. Well, that, and it will be actually useful. (A friend I saw last week had one monogrammed with the word yikes, which I also loved.)

Do you have a small somebody in your life? You really won’t do better than a lovely, dreamy, whimsical, and perfect book. These feel like old-fashioned kids’ books—not silly or grave or pandering, but somehow just imaginative and exciting and beautiful. I gave my little nephews this book two years ago, and this year I’m giving them this book, If We Were Dogs. I can’t wait to read it 7000 times in 2 days!

Next up: Mary Roach, whose books are loved by young and old alike—or have been in my house. Side note: When the kids where younger (maybe 10 and 13), Mary Roach audiobooks were everyone’s favorite thing to listen to in the car! Full of her inimitable mischief and humor and infectious delight over people and oddities. Find me a more curious person on the planet! (She should team up with David Attenborough.)

Michael and I listened to Replaceable You on a recent road trip, read by Mary herself, and it was just as fascinating and funny as we knew it would be. Also, this made me chuckle. (It is also a New York Times bestseller, fwiw.)

I am always waffling on about because I love her so much, and I cannot think of a sister, friend, mother, or aunt I wouldn’t give this book of poems to. It’s just exactly the right amount of [sharp astonished inhalation] and [deep sighing exhalation]. It’s someone saying “same” to you a hundred times, but in a lyric format.

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino is so funny and readable and delicious—perfect for so many of the people you’re buying books for. It’s a thriller and kind of nasty in the best way, like if House Hunters were hosted by a stylish and charming sociopath. Also it’s comically relatable if you’ve ever tried to buy a house. Michael laughed out loud while he was reading it, which is really all you need to know.

Okay, yes, I am a Miriam Toews FANATIC. When I am asked to pick a favorite book I often refuse in a panic, but I just as often say All My Puny Sorrows. Her latest book A Truce that Is Not Peace is strange and deeply sorrowful and funny and philosophical. I would give this book to a college student or to a person who loved to laugh and cry and think. I got to blurb it, and I said, “This small book is bursting with hilariousness and suffering and rage and also so much tenderness that the pages are practically flying off like paper-airplane love letters. I would have read another thousand chapters.”

And Wreck, obviously, since nothing says holiday spirit quite like a peculiar, spreading rash. Also, while I’m tooting my own horn, can I just plug Stitch Camp again, because these are evergreen skills, and this book with some crafty supplies always makes a great gift for a child or tween.

What about a cookbook? I have two new ones to mention, although I did just recommended my friend ’s book The Weekday Vegetarians to another friend who wanted to buy a cookbook for a newly cooking adult because it really is the best: unfussy, reliable, and delicious. (Also, Jenny’s own 2025 Cookbook Gift Guide is an invaluable resource.)

Heartland Masala by Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji is so good. The bean chapter alone is intoxicating—I’m not joking! (I would never joke about beans.) But also the book is so beautiful and stylish and the recipe for chai is simply the best I’ve ever tried. Full disclosure: is in the band Darlingside, which my family has been obsessed with forever, so I preordered his and his mom’s book in a kind of weird fan way, but I’m really glad I did.

Good Things by is another book I’d give a newish cook or anyone else. I love her and her generous vibe and the way you can read one of her recipes and just know it’s going to be perfect.

While we’re on cooking! I love my Gir spatulas because they’re one-piece and indestructible, and I would buy them again but don’t need to because INDESTRUCTIBLE! I gave Birdy one.

These glasses are our all-time favorites, and they’re on sale right now: $9 for 6! They’re thin and light but sturdy, and we use them every day. Ben has them too.

Birdy and I are obsessed with small spoons. I was lucky enough to find a $2.99 stapled hodgepodge baggie of tiny espresso spoons at a thrift store in Montreal—all different brands, the best—but Birdy lives with my parents now and they have NO SMALL SPOONS so I got her some for a present! I bought them at Marshall’s, but there are tons around. I love these, below.

Confusingly, I’m switching back to putting the photo first! Okay, I know I’ve recommended them before, but I love everything Fishwife makes. Their trout and salmon and sardines and mackerel and tuna—they’re all just so meaty and delicious and they ruin you for other canned fish. So go ahead and give it as a gift (the gift packs are decadent) and ruin someone for supermarket tuna! Life is so short, right?

I was recently given a pair of spices from the lovely Curio, and one of them is this Rose Harissa, which I’m a little obsessed with. I’ve been swapping it in for the za’atar on the fried chickpeas in the salad here. It’s fresh and fruitily spicy and just the tiniest almost imperceptible bit floral, in a good way. I also have the Molasses Cookie Sugar, which is a collab with Sofra (one of my favorite restaurants), and which means I will get to make these. Furthermore, Curio is “a small, woman-owned B Corp working to disrupt the world of commodity spices and bring fair trade, equity, and female empowerment to small farmer communities around globe.” So look around and see what catches your eye! I’m so obsessed with chaat masala that I will probably have to try their version too. Oooh, there’s also a spice subscription! How fun would that be?

Oh, chocolates! I have a hard time sending gifts that aren’t boxes of chocolate. In fact, I recently had occasion to thank a lot of people, and I sent three different kinds! Always, always Burdick’s, which are appealingly small and delicious and some of them are shaped like animals and they’re festively crammed into a box (also, if you’re ever in Cambridge, go and get a cup of hot chocolate there zomg). And then my friend recommended these to me, and they were delightfully well received! (You can find her original rec on this amazing Cup of Jo gift guide.) And, finally, I have become obsessed with these, first gifted to us a month ago by my wonderful and generous friend Laura.

While we’re talking about edible things, ha ha ha, here’s my weed recs: These exact delicious gummies (I take 1/4 of one to sleep, 1/2 of one to feel happily stoned during sex or a movie, and 3/4 of one to laugh until I am obliterated by laughing. I have literally never taken a whole one.) These exact seltzers, (I get the 3 mg), which are utterly delicious and don’t taste at all like La Croix drunk from a tall Grateful-Dead-stickered bong, and I can drink one and feel the edges smoothed off and still be more or less social and functioning. (I understand if your own personal sobriety journey doesn’t include THC.) Stocking suffer for yourself!

These continue to be my favorite candles ever—clean, pure, perfect evergreen smell—and I just sent one to someone very special. (I buy the smaller one for myself because I’m a martyr.)

Speaking of candles: I buy the warmly amber and wonderful-smelling beeswax tapers from these folks (they sometimes have “oops” sales on IRREGULARS, which I snap up, because irregular), and I see they also have Hannukah candles, which would be lovely.

I am obsessed with these, and have lately taken to embroidering handkerchiefs as custom presents: the person’s name or a line of poetry or a special phrase, say, for a friend who interviewed 5 times for a job they ended up giving to someone different (younger).

I also buy and embroider these, shown above, which are much cheaper, but just make sure you wash and iron them first. (Yes, I hire an archaeological dig crew to locate and excavate my iron for this one task.)

Okay, maybe this is just a You Present (almost as festive as the rash!), but I started wearing compression socks on the advice of one of my doctors (cough *stroke risk* cough), and I just completely love them. They are the only socks I wear anymore, and I love this brand Wellow, in spite of myself, even though the socks are very expensive and wear out? But they’re unbelievably comfortable and they will replace them if you send a picture of the hole that developed within one year of buying them. Get them when they’re on sale (often) and note that, at least for me, they run a little big so consider sizing down.

Here’s a recommendation for underpants that would make a great stocking stuffer for the kind of person (e.g. not my daughter) who wouldn’t be irritated that you were buying them underpants. But really I’m just using this gift guide as an excuse to mention them because they’re the most comfortable underpants I’ve ever worn: nice and high-waisted and soft and snug and stretchy. (I’m sure some or other Instagram ad targeted me, and I know nothing about this company, but I have been wearing them for a while now and they hold up.) Please note that at this link, they are “on sale” at 2 pairs for $25.99, which is still really expensive for underpants, but I think they’re either always or at least usually on sale.

Ending on the underpants. Happy everything, beloveds.

How lucky I feel to share the planet with you.

xoxo

In that vein, I wanted to remind you of a few things! (In that vein? What a weird expression. That’s all you need in your vein!) One is this post, where I suggest two activities for your holiday gatherings, both of which we do literally every year: 1) setting up a still life for painting and 2) the game Fishbowl.

Someone here recommended adding a 4th Fishbowl round called, I think, “Under a Sheet,” and now we will never play another way. It’s the charades round, again, but this time from, yes, underneath a sheet, and it’s so funny.

Here’s me last year, trying to act out the word cubicle. I ended up on my hands and knees laughing for a full minute, beneath the sheet. Suffice it to say, this was not a high-scoring round for my team.

The other Thanksgiving link is to this post, which is itself mostly links to lots of recipes.

A few notes! Liz Prueitt edited her scrumptious but finicky gf pie dough recipe, and it lives here now. (It is easier to deal work with in its new iteration.) Also, this is absolute heresy, but I am not making the traditional green dip. WHAT? I’m making a dip that’s mayo, finely chopped shallots, lemon zest and juice, lots of chopped dill, and chopped capers (and if there weren’t a chile allergy amongst the guests, I’d also add finely chopped pepperoncini omg it’s my tuna salad without the tuna). I am also making these crackers. And this corn thing, but I’m using a full box of Trader Joe’s gf cornbread mix and doubling the recipe and calling it a main course for the vegetarians. Also, I should mention that I don’t make sweet potatoes because our friends bring a delectable version with creme fraiche and carrots, but when I used to make it, this old Gourmet recipe is what I used for years and years. (If you have a choice, use California apricots rather than Turkish ones.)

Please feel free to ask, if there’s anything you need, recipe-wise! And finally, I am putting the gift guide together but I’m not sure when it will be done. Feel free to peruse last year’s, which include all the prior years, in the meantime.

Happy everything. I hope you are getting to wrap your arms around the people and animals you love. xoxo

Hi! Hi! I have been home for 3 days and am just jumping right in here with a recipe! It’s socca! Which is a kind of French/Italian tender pancakey chickpea flatbread (also known as farinata) that I make it all the time—usually to pressure a salad into becoming a meal. Basically, the only ingredient is chickpea flour, which I always have. It’s quick, easy, filling, inexpensive, perfect for gluten-free folks, and liked by everyone because it’s delicious.

Socca
As shown here, I often use socca as the basis for a quick pizza. After you bake it, just spread it with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste thinned with a little olive oil, then top with shredded mozzarella or Monterey Jack or whatever cheese you like and pop it under the broiler until the cheese bubbles and browns a bit. (The way I used to make it, with the onions and rosemary a la Mark Bittman, is still here.)

1 cup chickpea flour
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
1 cup lukewarm water
4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil (divided use)

Heat the oven to 450 and put in a well-seasoned 12-inch cast-iron skillet to heat. (Spray it with a nonstick spray if you’re not confident about the pan’s seasonedness.)

Put the chickpea flour in a bowl with the salt. Whisk in the water and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Cover and let sit at room temperature while the oven heats, or for as long as 12 hours. The batter should be about the consistency of thin pancake batter; thin it with a little water if it seems too thick.

Remove the pan from the oven, pour 1 or 2 tablespoons of the oil into it and swirl, then return it to the oven for a minute or two before pouring in the batter. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes, or until the pancake is firm and the edges are set. It might look cracked on top, and this is fine!

If you’re not following the pizza instructions in the headnote, then heat the broiler and drizzle the top of the pancake with another tablespoon or 2 of oil. Set the pancake a few inches away from the broiler, and broil just long enough to brown it in spots—a minute or two. Cut it into wedges, and serve hot or warm.

Another easy, nourishing, I-always-have-all-the-ingredients-for-it recipe I’ve been making a lot is this Riceless Fried Rice, which is essentially fried cabbage and eggs. I often season it at the end with a bloop of vegetarian stir-fry sauce (or oyster sauce) and a spoonful of Mama Teavs. Last night I made it with a bag of Trader Joe’s Cruciferous Crunch, which felt extremely wholesome. Briefly boiled edamame make a fine sub for the peas, although peas are sweeter and burstier.

Okay, here’s a much weirder recommendation from me, of all people, honestly.

It’s the Makeout Club Soft Blur Lipstick in the color Legend from Feck(?). I have been looking for a dark matte lipstick from a relatively groovy company, and this one fits the bill and is my perfect shade of plummy brown. Plus, even though it’s matte, it goes on in a creamy way, not like you’re waxing skis or trying to write your name with a crayon on the skin of an old onion. It’s also vegan, gf, and made in CA without some of the obvious offenders in terms of chemicals. I’m embarrassed to recommend a beauty product? For all the obvious reasons. But I really love it, even though it seems suspiciously small for a lip color that costs $24.

While I’m at it, I also got and LOVE their Shadow Slide Long-Wear H2O Shadow Stick in the dark purply-grey color Deep Dive. It goes on so dreamily liquidy, even though it’s not a liquid. And it doesn’t irritate my poor sensitive eyes, which is very unusual. It, also, is an astonishing $24. (I am offsetting the cost with these thrifty handy DIY makeup remover scraps!)

These are not affiliate links or anything. Just true bona fide recs because I’m sure every time you see me you’re like WHERE ON EARTH DID SHE GET THAT LOOK ha ha ha ha. I seem to be putting more stuff on my face than I used to. [Shrugs.]

Finally, are you sore? Of course you are. Put 2 tennis balls in a sock and knot it, then roll around on it on your back on the floor or up against a wall. Ahhhhhh.

That’s it for now. Come and find me on the last leg of my tour, if you’re in the Northeast this week, starting tonight! (Some of these events are technically sold out but you can get on the waitlist because people always flake at the last minute.) I had a spectacular time in Toronto and the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and laughed and cried with me. (You got Wreck already, right? I’m pretty sure you did! Thank you a million times over.)

Monday, November 17th
7:00 PM
Porter Square Books with Joanna Rakoff
Cambridge, MA
More information

Tuesday, November 18th
7:00 PM
Booked Author Series with Vanessa Lillie and Nora Dahlia Zelevansky
Providence, RI
​More information

Wednesday, November 19th
6:30 PM
An Unlikely Story with Meghan Nesmith
Plainville, MA
​More information

Thursday, November 20th
6:00 PM
Barnes & Noble with Beck Dorey-Stein
South Portland, ME
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Friday, November 21st
6:00 PM
The Toadstool Bookshop
Peterborough, NH

xo

Here’s a weirdly blurry screenshot, showing you that gorgeous little circle (they call it a “burst” in the biz, or so I learned 3 weeks ago), indicating that this book is the Good Morning America Book Club pick for November.

CAN YOU BELIEVE I KEPT THAT SECRET FROM YOU SINCE THE SUMMER? I cannot. I felt like I was starring in episode of Caillou called, like, The Big Secret. Here is your girl on GMA. I have so much to share about the experience, including how nice everyone was, how unbelievably supportive my HarperCollins team is, the deflowering of my real eyelashes, and the fact that if you ask anyone there at the studio about the person they were most excited to make up/style/escort/drive, the answer is always always always Beyoncé. (Yes, okay, that’s a thrifted dress, but from the Royal Hospice Charity Shop in London, so… fancy?)

Meanwhile, you can read my Oldster Q and A or my new essay over on Cup of Jo. Also, I got to talk to the absolutely vibrantly alive , which was such a total dream come true.

I’ve done a bunch of thrilling launch events, seen a ton of friends and family, met a zillion amazing readers, and am writing you from my hotel room in Toronto where I just ate a butter tart (picture pecan pie, but with raisins instead of nuts and enough sugar to make your jaw ache) and am leaving imminently for the rest of the tour. Come see me?

More soon, about regular stuff. Vote tomorrow! Get your hands on ’s gorgeous new book, which comes out tomorrow! I love you.

xoxo

Maybe your feed is also full of Heart the Lover? Because we’ve all just been waiting and waiting since Writers and Lovers and Euphoria and Father of the Rain and whatever other Lily King books we’ve been completely obsessed with in the past (all of them). Like the others, this book is very special. It feels at first like a campus coming-of-age story, which is a genre I love, and then it turns into something different that’s difficult to describe. I sent Lily an email after I was lucky enough to read the early copy that I weaseled out of her at an event in Portland Maine: “I won’t be able to explain how much I loved Heart the Lover. Refusing the either/or of a conventional love story is so real and so shockingly original and so deeply moving to me. This person who is wholly in love with her old lover, wholly in love with her current life. The totally understandable, tragic, Shakespearean misunderstanding. . . Anyway, I loved it immeasurably, indescribably much. The last line flushed me out with goosebumps—again, now, just telling you.” Please note that the final version is an even more pleasing shade of orange.

We just watched the movie All of You, which I also loved in a kind of similarly stirred way. But then again, I am a sucker for the crying and the starcrossedness and also for Brett Goldstein (aka Roy Kent), who is both darkly brooding and hilarious and should win an award for his magnificent eyebrows.

I mean!

The game is Upwords. Oh my god it’s SO MUCH FUN how had we never played it before? Especially given that our very good friend Judy has been talking about it for years and we trust her completely. You can order it from this admittedly kind of sketchy page at the B & N site, but better yet get it from your local game or toy store. We bought our wonderfully retro copy of it at the Savers for $2.49 (it also had a tag-sale label on it for $3, so the savings were deeply layered) and we have played it every day since. You can probably kind of get the gist of it just from the lid, honestly. It’s this

and then later in the game it’s this

And it all moves quite briskly and twists your brain up good but I do insist that you print out an agreed-upon list of 2-letter words like this:

and also that you get and use a Scrabble dictionary even if at first you’re like this is so dumb none of these words are actually even words. Just go ahead. Then you won’t have to be on your phone arguing about whether or not wordspellerz.com is a reliable site or, really, arguing at all. Because either it’s in the dictionary or it isn’t. Also, life is short—you might as well go ahead and use the word noob. We’ve been playing Scrabble again too, thanks to the dictionary and to our friend Cammie’s delectable Scrabble-themed romance (pre-order it here you nerds).

It’s really an even better game than I remembered, Scrabble. Both of these are ideal two-person empty-nester games because the kids wouldn’t even want to play anyway! Sob!

Okay, granola. This is a version of the granola recipe I posted on my blog a million years ago, but it’s changed somewhat over time so I’m posting it again here. Especially since the “recipe” for raw oats didn’t speak to everyone ha ha ha. Typically I only make granola if we’re camping, but boy if we have it we will eat it every morning until it’s gone. [Insert then delete then reinsert parenthetical depressing climate-catastrophe aside about how the lake at our campground was dried up last weekend so we came home and ate granola in bed.]

Everything Granola
There are many options and customizable possibilities here. I typically use butter, but I’ve made it with coconut oil or a mix of coconut and olive oil, and it’s delicious that way too (though more inclined to burn so check it a little early). You can use coconut sugar or reduce the sugar or (probably, though I am not 100% on this) swap in maple syrup for the honey. And you can really mix-and-match with the add-ins. Honestly, as long as you have roughly 8 — 10 cups of dry ingredients, you’ll be good, even if it’s all just oats, ha ha ha, though that would be kind of dull. I love the excitement of being a hippy freak, tossing in handfuls of millet willy-nilly and popping sorghum in my microwave (in the Venn diagram it’s possible that “sorghum” and “microwave” overlap infrequently). These days I tend to make it with oats, puffed brown rice, pecans, almonds, coconut, millet, popped sorghum, sesame seeds, textured vegetable protein (yes, the self-same TVP you put in your vegan chili in 1992) and dried sour cherries. Make sure your nuts and seeds are very fresh tasting, and consider storing them all in the freezer since the oils in them can go rancid so quickly. One last note (what a bossily unfestive and uninviting recipe intro sorry) is that, if you use gluten-free oats, this recipe is gluten-free as made here.

6 cups plain old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup puffed brown rice or another puffed grain that’s gf as needed (this is not like Rice Krispies—this is the kind that’s very light and styrofoamy, like what rice cakes are made of, the kind of rice cakes you put peanut butter and honey on, not the kind you turn into tteokbokki geez this is a long aside)

1 ½ — 2 cups coarsely chopped raw nuts (I use a mix of pecans and sliced almonds but walnuts are fabulous except we all seem to react mildly allergically to them and get weird sores on our soft palates)

1 — 1 ½ cups shredded or flaked coconut (mine is sometimes sweetened and sometimes unsweetened and also, when I have both, I like to use a mix of normal-sized shreds and enormous ones)

1 — 2 cups of other stuff, including sesame, pumpkin, sunflower, and/or flax seeds, textured vegetable protein, millet, and/or popped sorghum (I pop 2 tablespoons of sorghum in a paper bag in the microwave for 1 minute, until it just stops popping)

½ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt or a little more (or half as much table salt)

1 stick butter (mine is salted)

1/3 cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla (you can add other flavorings, like cinnamon and/or turmeric, but I like it best with only vanilla)

1 cup dried sour cherries or raisins or other dried or freeze-dried fruit (or skip)

Heat the oven to 300. Mix all the dry ingredients (except the fruit) together in a very large bowl, then melt the butter and honey together in a small saucepan, add the vanilla, and stir this into the dry ingredients, mixing with a wooden spoon (preferably one that doesn’t hold an aromatic memory of garlic or cumin) until everything seems evenly moistened.

Divide the granola over two large rimmed baking sheets, shake them to distribute it evenly, put them in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes. Now take the pans out of the oven and use a spatula to stir the granola around—the edges may have started to brown a bit, and the idea is to move it often enough that all of it browns without any of it burning. Put the pans back in the oven (switching their positions top to bottom), and bake another 10 minutes, then stir them around again and return them to the oven, switching again. After another 5 minutes (30 minutes altogether—maybe less for olive or coconut oil), evaluate the granola for doneness: it should be fairly golden and toasted-looking; if it’s not, return it to the oven for a few minutes at a time, stirring at each checking until it’s done; bear in mind that it will continue to toast a bit in the hot pans after you remove them from the oven. Allow the finished granola to cool completely, then stir in the dried fruit.

Store in a large, lidded, airtight jar or container or a gallon-sized ziploc. (I use a small flexible cutting board to shovel it from pan to jar.)

Enjoy, my loves! And start looking now for your October 18th No Kings protest! See you in the streets.

xo

Oh, my loves, I am gearing up for this and very excited and nervous because I love people and it’s so much fun to travel but also I’m an introvert and a homebody and I am daunted by airports and the occasional hostile question and by the possibility that an event will be attended ONLY by the guy who broke my heart in college and my dad’s drunk cousin Bumbie. (True story! I’m looking at you, Philadelphia Barnes and Noble! Except that Bumbie is no longer alive—so will it just be my ex? Moot question because I won’t be going to Philly in this round.) Anyhoo, please pre-order Wreck, if you can, or ask for it at your library. And note that the indie bookstore first editions are signed! (Picture me on the couch in my underpants and giant purple headphones, listening to Marriage at Sea and signing 12,000 tip-in pages over the course of multiple weeks. I got an actual blister!) Those indie editions also include bonus recipe content! For delectables as varied as Brown-Butter Waffles, Willa’s Favorite Tofu, and, yes, Corn Chex Nacos. These are real recipes. Like, for things that we eat all the time.

Meanwhile, I am delighted to report that Wreck is the Number One indie bookstore pick for November and a top ten library pick for October! (Bless you, librarians and booksellers.) I’m going to make these next images small so as not to revolt and overwhelm you with my braggadocio.

Okay, that’s it. Except for the tour! Some of these events you have to register for in advance and/or pay for. (If paying is a hardship and you really want to come, message me through my website.) If you need more info, the website has all of the links here. I am so grateful to all the booksellers, librarians, festival organizers, writers, and otherwise readery folks who are hosting and conversing with me. And you, if you can come out! Please please please! Added incentive: Michael will be there too, most of the time, in the cute jeans he just got at the West Springfield Savers.

Thank you, as always, for everything. We are in it together—I always feel that.

xo Catherine

A friend of mine posted a photo of her college-age child’s left-behind lovey, and I sent her this picture back:

Forlorn little friend!

The mood is melancholy. I thought it wouldn’t be? I mean, we don’t have kids going back to school this year. They’re just plain gone. Why be especially sad in September? But I am!

Anyhoo!

Hippy Breakfast

I eat this every single day. It’s basically muesli: a small cut-up apple, a cut-up peach (or not, if we are out of peaches), a handful of rolled oats, a small handful of freshly chopped raw almonds, a large spoonful of unflavored whey protein powder (obviously you should skip this because ew), and a large spoonful of psyllium husks because this is apparently the great chimney sweep of foods, if by “chimney” I mean *heinie hole.”

I usually add some dried tart cherries too, and then a big glug of milk. I get the oats, almonds, psyllium, and cherries from Trader Joe’s. Try it! Whatever other crap falls into your mouth during the course of the day, you’ll feel like you ate at least one good and nourishing thing.

If you want to feel more cheerful about the change of season, do what I did and order some candles. I like these scratch-and-dent beeswax tapers. (Don’t sleep on the organizing principle of the candle plate.) For a not super helpful photo essay on how I remake candles from candles ad infinitum like the way my grandmother somehow turned leftovers into leftovers without end so that every bite of gravy contained multitudes of traces of decades of all the previous gravies, see this instagram post.

Three recipes I’ve been loving:

This coleslaw, which starts with brining the cabbage, is the coleslaw of my dreams—vinegary and crisp and creamy—and I’ve been making it all the time. I shred the cabbage on the shredding blade of my food processor because I’m lazy and because I like the KFC vibes. Also, I add celery seed. I got to this recipe by trying to see if there was a Zabar’s recipe online because Zabar’s is the Platonic coleslaw in my head when I’m served coleslaw at a clam shack that tastes like nothing and I have to doctor it with salt and pepper and the end of my lemon wedge.

This Brazilian limeade, which I’ve been eyeballing for almost two years and wrote about in my new book and then finally made and it’s at least as good as I thought it would be—and I thought it would be excellent. I did not add the ice until after I strained it, at which point I blended it with ice to make it slushy. Also, I skipped the sugar and found that the sweetened condensed milk had made it plenty sweet. It really is like a glassful of cold, foamy, creamy, dreamy key lime pie. Everyone is obsessed.

This 3-ingredient frosting, which makes something that is more or less liquid fudge (!) and is perfectly shiny and drizzly and rich for glazing a bundt cake or cupcakes. (When I was eating leftovers with a spoon and loudly yumming, Birdy noted that it was basically the same ingredients as Brazilian brigadeiros.) If you make a half recipe of limeade, you’ll have enough sweetened condensed milk leftover to make a half recipe of this frosting, with is kind of enough for a cake, tbh. But I’m not really a frosting person, so don’t come back and complain about your underfrosted whatever.

No, I’m kidding! Feel free to complain! I am here with a listening ear for whatever woes strike you. xoxo

Okay, here’s the rest:

1. Charred Zucchini and Corn with Basil and Ceasar-ish Sauce from Tenderheart by Hetty Lui McKinnon. I know I just yap on and on about this cookbook, but my god! I dare you to check it out of the library without renewing it a thousand times and then finally buying a copy. I’ve made this salad twice in the past five days, once with the tahini the recipe calls for, and once with mayo, listed as an optional swap. We liked the mayo much better (but then again, I don’t love tahini, so sue me), and she brilliantly adds a ton of capers to the dressing. I topped with toasted pine nuts for crunch.

2. Squash Ribbons with Tomatoes, Peanuts, Basil, Mint, and Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce from Six Seasons by Joshua Fadden, another cookbook I know I’m always going on about. This is so simple and good. If you have vegetarians in the house, you can (always) just swap in Bragg’s liquid aminos for the fish sauce—also you can add tofu to make it a main (or I bet shrimp would be good in the green-papaya-salad way). Please note that I describe this recipe as “perfection” before jotting down the million changes I made to it because I am a nightmare.

   

   

3. In a similar vein, my own Zucchini Ribbon Salad from the diatribe website, where I used to develop their lower-carb recipes. This one skews lemon-dill-feta, the flavor throuple I often bed down with.

   

   4. Also from diatribe, the Enchilada Zucchini, which I had forgotten about until just now, but which I recipe-tested half to death so I can assure you it’s excellent! I would make it again now, except I seem to be incapable of making hot food for just Michael and me.

   

   5. The Zucchini-Lentil Fritters from Bon Appetit. These are absolutely astonishingly delicious. They seem like they won’t work—like there’s not enough batter to hold them together—but then they are perfect and crisp and incredible. I season them not with the called-for parsley and lemon zest but with chopped green chiles, cilantro, and the Indian spice mix panch phoron (full disclosure: I haven’t tried the brand I am linking to because I buy mine at the lottery-ticket-and-CBD-oil store that doubles as an Indian grocery). And then I serve them with mint chutney (the frozen brand Deep is excellent if you can find it).

   

   6. The rich, tangy, spicy, vibrant Herby Summer Pasta with Zukes, Corn, and Lime, which I still make for company at least two or three times every summer. It is easy to de-gluten it (our favorite gluten-free pasta is hands-down the Jovial mafalda) or de-dairy it by swapping in canned coconut milk for the cream. This photo is so bad I’m going to make it very small.

   

   7. Also from the old Ben + Birdy blog, Zuke-a-Ganoush, a riff on the more famous baba-. It’s garlicky and minty and velvety and, shhhhhh, hot take, I’m not a huge fan of eggplant so I kind of like it better?

   

   8. From right here on Crone Sandwich, something I seem to have humbly titled The Best Minestrone, which is based on a Marcella Hazan recipe and really is delicious. The zucchini is optional, but if I need to make minestrone during squash season, I always add it.

   

   9. Also from here, the unctuous, velvety Long-Cooked Zucchini, shown brightened with a drizzle of chimichurri.

   

   And finally, 10. ’s Braised Chickpeas (!) with Zucchini and Pesto from Smitten Kitchen, which is perfect (site and recipe both). No notes, ha ha ha, but actually! Okay, one note? I mistakenly thought I could see capers in the photo so now I add them and do not look back.

   

   Whatcha got for me? Also, I’m sorry about not including anything sweet. I seem to have grown weary of shredding a giant watery zucchini into, like, the perfect chocolate cake? Prove me wrong!

Take care, dearest lovies. Keep tending and befriending, as Rebecca Solnit puts it so beautifully. Keep defending and resisting and expanding! All love to you!

xo