Three things

Plus BONUS CHICKPEA CONTENT ha ha ha

Oh, hello there, on this, the first day of August, the biggest Sunday of the whole year even though I have zero (0) children still in school sob. I hope you’re o k a y. I am just popping by to recommend a few things and to suggest a dog-days dinner strategy. These are the few things:

My friend Helen’s book The Salt Stones. Oh, can you not see it? Hang on.

Jelly and I are obsessed with this book and we have bitten it up completely, which is too bad because it is (was) so gorgeous: heavy and beautifully printed and covered in Helen’s daughter Wren’s amazing artwork. It’s a book about Helen’s life as a shepherd in Vermont, but it’s also a love song to her existence as a daughter and mother and steward of animals and the natural world. I could not put it down when I was reading it, and if you loved the James Herriot books or H is for Hawk, you will love it too. But you will love it anyway because it’s filled with the kinds of passages you need to highlight but it also keeps you turning pages because the storytelling is so special and good.

“[B]lindfold me and dull my senses and bring me to a hundred farms in the dead of night, and I would still be able to sense which one was my home.”

Also, and excuse the whiplash turn from tender meadows to oozing frankfurters, but I am also recommending the audio of the hot-dog book Raw Dog, which we just listened to on a road trip, and it was so incredibly, surprisingly great. It’s a cross between a memoir and food writing and a breakup lament and also a social and political history of various places and labor practices, and it made us laugh so much and think and also, weirdly, crave hot dogs. Jamie Loftus reads it herself and she’s such a good narrator. We’re going to listen to her podcast now. Oooh and this one too!

We watched the two-part Paul Reubens movie and we’re not, like, crazy Pee-Wee Herman fans, but it was one of the best documentaries I have ever seen—about art and queerness and living authentically. I LOVED it.

Those are the recs! But here’s my final piece of advice. Shake up a jar of this salad dressing, our absolute go-to, eat-it-every-single-day vinaigrette:

1/3 cup white whine vinegar
2/3 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
1 clove garlic, minced or grated or put through a garlic press

Keep it in the fridge. It will dress 3 or 4 big salads.

Then, whenever you want to eat dinner? Start heating a pan with a bloop of olive oil, drain a can of chickpeas, blot them with paper towels, and fry them over medium heat, well salted, for the time it takes you to figure out what you have in the fridge that you can make a salad with, such as any combination of:

• cut-up lettuce or salad greens or shredded kale

• chopped or slivered raw cabbage of any type or color

• chopped or sliced cucumbers and/or celery and/or celery leaves

• other raw vegetables, as you like

• diced up apples or other fruit

• sliced pickled pepperoncini peppers (always)

• crumbled feta (always)

• toasted or butter-fried almonds or pine nuts or other nuts or seeds

• dried cherries or other dried fruit or olives

• fresh herbs

• canned tuna

Assemble and dress the salad, by which point the chickpeas should be brown and crisp. Ideally you would cool them a bit, but I usually just tip them in.

I am showing you 3 versions of it, but it’s always more or less the same and we eat it allllllll the time. Like, at least twice a week (hello, empty nesters sob).

That’s it for now, my lovelies! Except for an action item. The political tide is finally turning. I know we’ve all imagined the unimaginable: holding a starving child in our arms. Let’s keep turning our broken hearts toward action.

c/o Glennon Doyle on Instsgram