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Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

Friday Five – Oh, Autumn, Where Art Thou?

Posted in Books, Food, Friday Five, Home, Nostalgia, Prompts, Resolutions, Writing, tagged , , , on October 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Wearing my new boots and long sleeves today. It may be in the 80s still, but I am trying to bring in autumn through sheer force of will. Even if I have to keep the fan on in the office all day.

Some good reads for your Friday:

  • EEEEEEEE!!!!! Mychal the Librarian is hosting Reading Rainbow!!! I’m so excited that kids get to have this little bit of magic as part of their childhood.
  • I love Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, but I suck at morning pages. Nothing has made me want to quit writing altogether more than trying to churn out three pages of stream-of-consciousness every single day (yes, I’ve tweaked it and tried it all sorts of ways. It’s just not for me at this stage of my life. Maybe I’ll try again later when I don’t have to spend most of my mornings rushing to get to my job.). I do enjoy a writing exercise/prompt, though. I’m a bit late to Laini Taylor’s September 2024 challenge, but I’m trying them out over this month and next, and I’ll see how far I get. I tend to collect and use small journals as commonplace books, so I have all I need to get started. Maybe this will inspire me to finish my goal of writing 50,000 words this year.
  • “The wisdom of prayer is the genesis of all poetry, I think.” And “Time gets holier by the minute.” I love this gorgeous piece –  When to call the witches by Joy Sullivan. 
  • Matthew Bound’s chicken and dumplings. Y’all. I made these last week, and it really did take less than 30 minutes. I love my standard low-and-slow chicken and dumplings recipe, but this version is almost as good. I subbed water + an onion soup packet for the broth/stock, and I do not roll out my dumplings (I just pinch off bits of dough into some flour so they get lightly dusted and then fish them out and add them to the pot- if you do it this way, simmer for five-ish minutes more before you add the chicken to compensate for the chonkier dumplings this will make). I followed the recipe the same otherwise, right up to doing that same little dance he does in the video when I took my first bite. Also, I recently read his cookbook Keep It Simple, Y’all, and it is full of fantastic, easy recipes and would be a great gift for a new adult, or anyone who is new to cooking, or anyone who is in a rut, or anyone who likes quick meals…really, anyone.
  • This piece on helping parents sell the magical childhood home hit…well…home.

This upcoming weekend is busy, but I’ve carved out enough downtime. I think. We’ll see. 

I hope you have a great Friday and a restful weekend!

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Sunday Seven

Posted in Books, Epic Meal Planning, Feast, Food, Friday Five, Fun, Getting It Together, Home, Resolutions, Seasons, What I'm Into, tagged , , , on September 21, 2025| 2 Comments »

This week holds more news than Friday Five. This week has been…whew. So I bring you the Sunday Seven.

First, my car has decided it is tired, so I have been shopping around for a new one, and I found it! Soon, a sweet little Nissan Versa will join the family. That’s a fun/nerve-wracking/expensive process, but as soon as the necessary paperwork is finalized, she’s mine!

Second, my friend Shadan, host of our cookbook club, now has a cookbook out! You can purchase Cookbook Club: Plant-Based Recipes for Entertaining by Shadan Kishi Price for your very own!

Here are five other things I read/watched/have been pondering this week:

  • Full co-sign on this article on letting your college kid decorate their own dorm. I have such great memories of working with my freshman roommate and suitemates to curate our own space. We had a collage of pictures in the bathroom that we created from magazines. It was epic and a great conversation piece. Remember that this is the first time a lot of new adults get to make all the decisions about what their home looks like. As a seasoned university housing professional, I beg of you – don’t rob your kids of this experience! Talk to them and follow their lead on how much (if any) help they want (PSA – advice not limited to housing. They’re grown. You did a good job raising them to be adults. Trust yourself and them, and let them do it!).
  • I’m rewatching Scandal these days. It’s one of my comfort shows. If I were still writing fanfiction when Scandal came out, I would have shipped Liv and Mellie so hard. I love Scandal in general, but if I were to list my top ten favorite scenes, their scenes together would make up more than half of them. 
  • Speaking of great TV, I love Somebody Somewhere so much and I love Jeff Hiller so much and I love that he won his first Emmy.
  • I agree with Brigid Misselhorn of MMD. I do enjoy seasonal reading. I usually try to sneak in a few seasonal reads every month. For the record, spooky season (which ranges from cozy fantasy to dark academia to horror) is August through January. I said what I said, and I will not be taking any questions on the matter. 
  • I also have seasonal to-do lists. I like this one from Joy Wilson (aka Joy the Baker). Since I rent, most of the maintenance is done by my property management, so I don’t have to worry about the specific seasonal things homeowners do (one thing off my to-do list – I’ll take it.). These are mostly things I do at the beginning of every season, but there are a few fall-specific things I like to complete each September:
    • Step 4 of my Epic Meal Planning process – Snowed-in Meals. Clean out pantry/fridge/freezer by making as many weird meals as I can with what I have to make room for groceries for the upcoming season (yay soup!).
    • Speaking of soup, chop/bag/freeze several rounds of the trinity (onion, carrots, celery) so that they are ready to go. I also would like to take a page out of JTB’s book and do this with cookie dough. Maybe I will be that person someday. That sounds perfect, especially for cozier months.
    • Clean off tables/surfaces. Piles accumulate so easily in my home, and this is where they land. Right now, I think my efforts have just resulted in different, more organized piles, but over the next few weeks, everything I actually keep will hopefully get to where it belongs.
    • Change my air filter.
    • Clean out closets and assess what needs to be donated/repaired/replaced.
    • Look at this year’s resolutions and assess progress. Tweak as needed. Specifically, start to organize next-ten-years bucket list into categories.
    • Find three fun fall things to enjoy. 
    • Start thinking about holiday plans, including travel, writing, cooking/baking. Looking forward to how my theme of wonder is going to show up this year!

I am looking forward to more fall(ish) weather that we’re supposed to have pretty soon. I hope you have had a good weekend and have a smooth week ahead!

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