Happy Friday! And congratulations on making it through the first week back from the holidays without a full-on Falling Down rampage… I’m proud of you all. Okay mostly I’m proud of me, because if ever there was a week. January, snow, fires on the metro… what is happening to my world? One more crazy commute and I may have to start camping outside the office in my car…
The good news is that I’m a big fat weather wimp and really, it’s been a pretty good week. The new year really does feel like a welcome reset this year, with a nice slow bit of hibernation ahead for the winter… I have a pile of new cookbooks, a brand new planner, a cleanse in the fridge, and I’m ready for the reset in more ways than one, with a few big things already on the horizon…
I know it’s a tease since I can’t quite give you all of the details, but the work starts this month on a major reset for this space that I can’t wait to share, and this weekend we’ve set an appointment to look at a house that, who knows, might turn out to be a bit of a reset of its own… a sort of massive process of a reset, but keep your fingers crossed, because we’re excited for the possible challenge! Mark hasn’t quite reset his employment situation, but I think he’s on his way, and slowly, surely, life is coming back around to a hopeful place… even if the hope still sits a little in limbo.
I mentioned a cleanse that I’m excited to share with you all next week — you might assume that given my #1 value in life is butter (no really though) I wouldn’t be down for a cleanse… but I believe in butter so strongly because it’s whole. Fake food might save a few calories, sure… and over the course of my life, I’ve tried all of the tricks. But it always comes back to whole, balanced eating to keep me on track feeling truly good. You won’t see shortening advocated for on this blog, but you might see lard… I love to indulge, and I feel that the healthy (and better tasting) way to do so is to stick to foods with ingredients I recognize. So when I’ve gone a little overboard on the butter and sugar (always) and feel the need for a reset, I’m all about a whole foods cleanse.
… that’s not to say it’s easy, so stay tuned for a little detox diary I have planned for next week.
And since we’re on the subject of resets, one easy option I love to add a little more flavor to healthy foods is to make and use infused salts. So this week I’m sharing some of my favorite recipes — three recipes we made at our last Field + Foundry event — on West Elm’s blog!
Head over for a few ideas… they’re super easy to make if you’ve never tried, and there’s no reason you have to stick to my recipes, you can use any of your favorite flavors in a similar way to create your own combination of infused salts.
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Has the narrative of the American dream shifted? What do you think?
Resolutions from from Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sagan, Bruce Lee, Maya Angelou, and more.
This beautiful green minestrone.
Manspreading.
And some research on the gender gap in the military.
This great diy coffee table.
Dutch babies for all of the meals.
It’s cold, I think I’m allowed two links to soup – especially when they look this good.
10 handmade home solutions for the winter.
Photo by Reema Desai.
