First Day Cacio e Pepe
Wedge salad, veggie burgers & good reads
Welcome back to This Needs Hot Sauce! I had a good start at my new job and am settling in. I need to get back in the swing of packing lunches—more to come on that soon, but I am very open to your suggestions of good things to pack (and I’ll be revisiting Meal Prep Made Simple for some evergreen ideas). I can’t believe it’s already June, May was certainly one to remember (it was good!)
I had a good weekend that included the latest season of Selling Sunset and trying a very fun new restaurant in the neighborhood. I also slept all the way in on Sunday, which was much needed. My grandma is visiting from California this week and I can’t wait to see her—it’s her first trip to New York since before the pandemic and we have lots of fun I hope you had a good one.
Thursday’s newsletter has a fun theme: it’s a shopping cart of items I’m planning on buying now that my income is more stable (don’t worry, I’ll be saving and working on my retirement plans too).
Now, let’s dive in.
Something to cook:
Mindi works with Organic Valley and sent a lovely dairy delivery featuring cottage cheese and some other cheeses (their sliced aged cheddar is really good). I had some cottage cheese with black pepper as a snack and am planning to make these broccoli cottage pancakes for dinner tonight.
Dale and I wanted something sweet one night and luckily I had cookie dough in the freezer from when I made Claire Ptak’s peanut butter cookies. They were a perfect treat.
Lukas Volger writers fantastic vegetarian cookbooks and he has a new edition of Veggie Burgers Every Which Way out this week. It’s a great guide to veggie burgers of all kinds, made with beans, veggies, grains, tofu, etc. I made the bean burgers with white beans (they also have lemon and parsley) and they were so flavorful and easy.
Something to order:
I’m figuring out the lunch options around my office and Depanneur is a good one. I got the pickled beet sandwich with a medium boiled egg and it was really good. It’s also the type of vegetarian sandwich that feels good to purchase out because it would be time consuming to make at home (and working with beets always leads to stains for me).
Julia, Julianne and I commemorated my first day at Tuffet, sipping rosé in their gorgeous backyard. Julia and I grabbed slices at From Rome to Brooklyn on our way home and the vodka slice is a winner. Plus, it’s open later than other local pizza spots.
When Dale started at his job in 2019, we had cacio e pepe to celebrate. We continued the tradition for me at Montesacro, where we had cacio e pepe and aperol spritzes.
Michelle and I planned a fun Brooklyn day for Dale and Manny’s friends from college who were in town. I booked dinner at Cool World, right by McCarren Park and it was a great spot for a good time. The food was wonderful, especially the wedge salad and the barbecue maitake sandwich. The team was so kind and send out a few extras and the playlist was full of throwbacks (Ciara, Akon, it felt like a middle school dance). Dale is still talking about the fried chicken and I’ll definitely be back.
Something to read:
New this week: this section is getting a little shorter. More reads will be in Thursday’s newsletter.
I can’t help but read all the Caroline Calloway interviews
Counting down till the Barbie movie (and very excited for the soundtrack). Ryan Gosling is going to be great as Ken.
A legendary taqueria in El Paso
What happens to college influencers after they graduate?
The journey to see Taylor Swift
The untold story of the Zoot Suit riots: How Black L.A. defended Mexican Americans
A week in the life of a striking TV writer
So happy for Abena and her James Beard award. Abena hosts the podcast, The Future of Food is You on Radio Cherry Bombe and I was honored to be a guest earlier this year.
The five sense of gentrification from
Five tips for better veggie burgers from
Let me know your favorite office lunches in the comments and I’ll talk to you later!
xo, Abigail