Are you ready for it?
Gearing up for a week of good food and REST
Hi friends,
This Monday feels a little different as we prepare for the long weekend. I’m getting my booster tomorrow and have a relaxed weekend ahead. For others, this week involves travel, tense situations (this is helpful), and many hours of cooking. Whatever you’re doing, I hope you get a few moments for gratitude and rest, and of course, delicious food, for yourself and others.
I also want to thank you for the positive feedback on this year’s gift guide! According to my overflowing inbox, many of these products will be on sale this week so take a peek if you’ve got shopping to do.
I’m going to create a special thread for paid subscribers on Wednesday for any last minute questions, cheesy movie suggestions, and ideas to cook the rest of the weekend, when you are not in the mood for leftovers. And I shared my favorite Thanksgiving recipes and some thought provoking reads last week.
Now, let’s dive in.
Something to cook:
My parents made these delicious soy glazed potatoes for dinner with some roasted vegetables and bulgogi glazed tofu (using a favorite Omsom starter).
On Thursday, Julia and Julianne came over for a sleepover, which was such a blast. We cooked dinner for my parents, stayed up late talking, and took a long walk the next morning. We made an eggplant parm based on this recipe and served it with bucatini. Here are the updates we made: first, we added more sauce than the recipe called for as one cup barely covered the eggplant (we used less sauce than called for on the pasta as we wanted a light coating). The recipe also forgets to tell you to add parmesan cheese when you add the mozzarella before baking, which you definitely should. We lowered the oven temperature to 400 to bake the eggplant with the sauce and cheese and turned the broiler on for the last few minutes. We used bucatini instead of spaghetti, because it’s better. PSA: the leftovers are amazing cold.
To accompany the eggplant, we tried something I’ve seen all over TikTok and Instagram: roasted garlic garlic bread. You roast the garlic heads whole and squeeze out the cloves. TLDR: this is a lot harder than it looks and you should just make normal garlic bread (here’s the method I like, which is very fast). It adds a lot of extra time as you have to roast the garlic for at least an hour and then you have to squeeze very hot bulbs of garlic (or wait longer for them to cool), while making sure to avoid getting garlic peel in the butter. Things were falling apart. It’s a delicious flavor but was way harder than it looked and not worth the extra time and effort. We also made a simple salad with an improvised tahini dijon parmesan dressing.
For breakfast the next morning, I heated up some pumpkin bread, which I found in the freezer. It’s delicious and easy to reheat in the microwave.
On Saturday night, my parents made a big pot of Ina Garten’s penne arrabiata, which was so good and garlicky. We ate it with a kale salad and chicken sausages for the meat eaters.
I made these quick pancakes for Dale and me yesterday morning. They’re not the fluffiest but they’re easy and good and use ingredients you probably already have. We ate them with this excellent syrup.
Oset, don’t read this because it’s a surprise, but I’m bringing over this olive oil shortbread for our dinner tonight. It’s vegan, except for an optional egg white, and such a sweet and savory dessert thanks to the rosemary.
Something to order:
Erica and I had a work wife planning dinner at Comodo, the new restaurant at the Freehand Hotel from the owners of Colonia Verde. It was also great to meet Tamy, who is featured in Hannah Howard’s memoir Plenty. The food was delicious—oysters with yuzu mignonette, a little gem salad with pickles!, yogurt, grapes and more, super umami mushroom tacos, grilled cauliflower and vegetable tatin. The wine list, no surprise, was great and I had a nice skin contact Chenin Blanc from Margins Wine. There’s also a fun bar one flight up called Party Upstairs for a nightcap (we fully took out notebooks for planning). Disclosure: our dinner was gifted and we bought our own post dinner drinks!
Dale and I got pizza from Dani’s on Friday. Is there any better way to end the week?
After working on Saturday, I picked up noodles from Xin Taste Lan Zhou Hand Pull Noodle on the way home. They have both hand pulled and hand torn noodles and many broths. And they have homemade chili oil that’s so good. I’m so happy this place is in Forest Hills and will be back often.
Something to read:
Beans may be the food of the future, but US farmers aren’t planting enough
Skincare Culture is Dewy Diet Culture
Hanukkah starts so soon! Here’s a recap of our family’s last Latkes and Vodkas party in 2019. I’m so glad we can host it again this year.
The Fight of Meghan Markle’s Life
So excited for Mayukh’s new book, out now
Nisha shared this and I immediately changed my TikTok settings.
I will absolutely be watching the next Princess Switch movie this weekend.
Greece is so high on my travel list and Kaitlin’s guide is super helpful
The untold story of Sushi in America
Maintenance Phase takes on the question: Is being fat bad for you? A must listen especially if you’re spending Thanksgiving amongst diet talkers.
Is See’s Candies the best in the world? It’s certainly the most memorable
The story behind Erica’s favorite Thanksgiving dish is too good
How Child Care Became the Most Broken Business in America
A message from Amber Ruffin after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted.
This story, from my high school, is horrifying. I had this teacher and am not surprised by it. Even worse, I can think of four other male teachers that behaved inappropriately. At least 2 are still teachers somewhere. I don’t know the alum who wrote this but it does portray the culture of the school fairly accurately (I wore a tank top to my first day of college classes and felt extremely daring after four years of strict dress codes).
Now, let’s talk about what you’re grateful for. I’m so grateful for my best friends who shared these answers, indoor plumbing, the communities I’m a part of, online and off, everyone reading this, Dale who basically lives this newsletter every week, my family, and the chance to keep going and make things better every day.
Julia: I'm feeling grateful that I've reconnected with some really dear old friends lately. It's one of those things that all too often happens due to sad circumstances, but I'm finding the joy in rekindling these relationships, and trying to take it as a lesson that there's never a wrong time to reach out to people you love.
Julianne: Anyway, I'm grateful for you, like overwhelming amount of gratitude for you. You are such a good friend and are the perfect balance of honest and not judgmental. I so appreciate your endless support and miss our fun when we are apart working instead of laughing, cooking, drinking wine, and listening to good pop music!! It's so fun to look forward to our sleepover this week! I'm also grateful to live in the city I love and with the most incredible partner who endlessly believes in me. I am so grateful for the opportunities I have found and that I didn't give up on myself. And of course, I'm grateful for the food we seek out and make together in New York.
No question this week, but we’ll back with soup content and more Hanukkah treats next week.
Have a restful week!
xo, Abigail