Some Happy Scribbles...
Hello! How has your week been? Our house has been very quiet - with Jim on a work trip and Teddy at sleepaway camp until tomorrow - Sadie (15), me, (oh, and the two dogs and eight chickens) have been home alone.
Maybe it was a mid-summer slump or the string of hot days here, but I climbed into bed even earlier than my typical 9 pm bedtime not once, but twice this week! I’m reading a fun new novel, Nora Goes Off Script, and that was another early-bedtime motivator. It’s a breezy romance that anyone who identifies as a coastal grandmother, or coastal grandmother adjacent, would enjoy. The quick synopsis: a single mother of two well-behaved kids living in an adorable but falling-down old house gets a movie-star houseguest who might just be falling in love with her. She also gets up every single morning to watch the sun rise, which sounds dreamy! I haven’t finished it yet, but am primed for a happy ending…
If you, too, enjoy quiet nights and cozy activities, you might like the Girls Night In newsletter, which is crammed full of ideas for spending time at home!
Another great read is this New Yorker piece about pickleball, which according to some, is America’s fastest-growing sport, and included this awesome quote:
The teams were closely matched, and victory could have gone either way. But, in the end, shortly after a man recovered from a powerful smash to the crotch, the men prevailed. Everybody hugged, looking triumphant in victory and in defeat.
I did stay up late enough to watch the Netflix docuseries, DB Cooper: Where Are You? with Sadie, about a hijacker in the early 70’s who parachuted out of a plane with $200,000, never to be found. I had never heard of this mystery or caught the many pop culture references to it; but we both loved the show.
It has a Catch Me If You Can feel to it (another family favorite of ours) and Sadie was gobsmacked by the differences in air travel pre-9/11. Several times, she paused the show to look at me in amazement and say something like, “Wait, people smoked on planes?” or “Wait, you didn’t have to scan your luggage?” and “Wait, flights were only $20????!!!!” Needing to confirm our eyes weren’t deceiving us, we had to pause and replay the clip of a newsreader reporting on the story in the 70’s to confirm that yes, he was smoking a cigarette, while on air! Very Anchorman!
It was quite the mother-daughter week here: we also went to the movies on a rainy day to see Where The Crawdads Sing. I had read the book, but Sadie hadn’t, so I was interested to see what she thought. She thought the movie was slow. I thought the book was better, but Daisy Edgar-Jones is beautiful and a wonderful actress, and it’s always fun to go to the movies!
Sticking with the quality mother-daughter time theme, this great list of trips - for mother-daughter duos - appeared in my Inbox yesterday. The destinations are all in the American south and there are a ton of great ideas in here - and are certainly not just for women.
There has been almost zero cooking going on around here (see aforementioned heat and mid-summer slump) but I did get my act together enough to make cold salads. The best was an heirloom tomato and burrata salad with a handful of arugula, some chopped red onion, and a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which we piled atop lightly toasted sourdough bread. A close second was farmstand cucumbers, sliced with red onion, dill, and my “Fake Ranch” dressing:
using a fork, whisk together a small amount of mayo with red wine vinegar; taste, adjust mayo and vinegar ratio, then add a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Voila - fake ranch!
On the topic of cooking (or lazy cooking!), I’ve heard a lot about air fryers lately and had started to wonder if I should get one. This piece by Julia Turshen answered the many questions I had - and didn’t know I had - about this gadget. To be honest, I wanted one because I thought the air fryer actually fried things, and I was very intrigued by the idea of making delicious french fries at home; but now I understand that the cooking method is actually accelerated convection and the device is kind of like a big toaster oven, my interest has waned… I’ve decided I don’t need one, but you may feel the opposite!
In other food news, I finally cataloged all the recipes I’ve mentioned in newsletters: you can find my favorite family-tested spring recipes at this link, and summer recipes here. These are the recipes that are approved by the adults and children in our family, and that always turn out beautifully on hurried weeknights and fancier occasions. I’ll keep adding to these, and of course, autumn and winter when we get there!
Do you sometimes think of a friend, want to give them a quick call or send a text, and then decide against it, reasoning they might be too busy, or won’t really care whether you reach out? I’m embarrassed to admit that I do this, even while knowing that if someone unexpectedly reaches out to me, I love it; so why do I hesitate?
This NY Times piece set me straight, with its summary of recent research which showed:
Across all 13 experiments, those who initiated contact significantly underestimated how much it would be appreciated.
The more surprising check-ins (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful.
Dr. Liu and her fellow researchers kept the bar for what counted as reaching out intentionally low: a brief call, text or email, or a small gift, like cookies or a plant.
I’m going to head off now to send some “casual” texts to unsuspecting friends and family members… I hope you have a wonderful weekend - and please, be gentle when you’re rescuing turtles and thank you so much for reading!
xoxo
Amelia
Yes!
Another really good one, Amelia!!!
Gubs