Hippy breakfast and links

hi!

Every month goes like this: it’s the first, it’s the fifteenth, I am old and then dead. How? Why? It’s been gorgeous, it has. So many crisply blue-skied days and cool nights, and we listen to black walnuts thud down to the ground all through the predawn hours because the squirrels are needing to remind us that winter is rushing in and they will be ready. Fall is not for the faint of heart.

A friend of mine posted a photo of her college-age child’s left-behind lovey, and I sent her this picture back:

Forlorn little friend!

The mood is melancholy. I thought it wouldn’t be? I mean, we don’t have kids going back to school this year. They’re just plain gone. Why be especially sad in September? But I am!

Anyhoo!

Hippy Breakfast

I eat this every single day. It’s basically muesli: a small cut-up apple, a cut-up peach (or not, if we are out of peaches), a handful of rolled oats, a small handful of freshly chopped raw almonds, a large spoonful of unflavored whey protein powder (obviously you should skip this because ew), and a large spoonful of psyllium husks because this is apparently the great chimney sweep of foods, if by “chimney” I mean *heinie hole.”

Chim chim cher-ee!

I usually add some dried tart cherries too, and then a big glug of milk. I get the oats, almonds, psyllium, and cherries from Trader Joe’s. Try it! Whatever other crap falls into your mouth during the course of the day, you’ll feel like you ate at least one good and nourishing thing.

If you want to feel more cheerful about the change of season, do what I did and order some candles. I like these scratch-and-dent beeswax tapers. (Don’t sleep on the organizing principle of the candle plate.) For a not super helpful photo essay on how I remake candles from candles ad infinitum like the way my grandmother somehow turned leftovers into leftovers without end so that every bite of gravy contained multitudes of traces of decades of all the previous gravies, see this instagram post.

Three recipes I’ve been loving:

This coleslaw, which starts with brining the cabbage, is the coleslaw of my dreams—vinegary and crisp and creamy—and I’ve been making it all the time. I shred the cabbage on the shredding blade of my food processor because I’m lazy and because I like the KFC vibes. Also, I add celery seed. I got to this recipe by trying to see if there was a Zabar’s recipe online because Zabar’s is the Platonic coleslaw in my head when I’m served coleslaw at a clam shack that tastes like nothing and I have to doctor it with salt and pepper and the end of my lemon wedge.

This Brazilian limeade, which I’ve been eyeballing for almost two years and wrote about in my new book and then finally made and it’s at least as good as I thought it would be—and I thought it would be excellent. I did not add the ice until after I strained it, at which point I blended it with ice to make it slushy. Also, I skipped the sugar and found that the sweetened condensed milk had made it plenty sweet. It really is like a glassful of cold, foamy, creamy, dreamy key lime pie. Everyone is obsessed.

This 3-ingredient frosting, which makes something that is more or less liquid fudge (!) and is perfectly shiny and drizzly and rich for glazing a bundt cake or cupcakes. (When I was eating leftovers with a spoon and loudly yumming, Birdy noted that it was basically the same ingredients as Brazilian brigadeiros.) If you make a half recipe of limeade, you’ll have enough sweetened condensed milk leftover to make a half recipe of this frosting, with is kind of enough for a cake, tbh. But I’m not really a frosting person, so don’t come back and complain about your underfrosted whatever.

No, I’m kidding! Feel free to complain! I am here with a listening ear for whatever woes strike you. xoxo