Good Things: 2019 Week 5

the second lunch winston flowers delivery purple flowers

There’s something incredibly satisfying to recapping my week by looking through the photos on my phone these days. This is my blog version of a regular gratitude practice – something I’ve committed to over the past few years and can’t recommend enough in order to really appreciate the good things in life. (And for that matter, I appreciate each and ever one of you reading this. Hello!)

{Week 5}  Good Things

  • a gorgeous floral delivery from Winston Flowers – my aunt and uncle are excellent at pick me up gifts. These purple flowers are stunning, and they’ll last for a while!
  • my curl quest – last week I ran out of conditioner, and decided to go wild testing out a bunch of new options. My typical go-to is Acure, which I pick up at Whole Foods. But to embrace my curls, I know that there are better options, so I polled some curly friend (and the cashier at Marty’s) and ended up getting a bunch of sample size – Shea Moisture, Carol’s Daughter, Kinky Curly, Cantu, and the Trader Joe’s Shea Butter and coconut oil hair mask. I’ll keep you posted.
the second lunch curly girl conditioner haul
  • Movement, amplified. In my quest to “spend out” – gift certificates, passes I haven’t used, memberships, I realized that I had a 10-pack to OrangeTheory that is going to expire this month. So I took my first class on Friday, another today, and I have my next two scheduled this week. Not sure how this is going to affect my year long run streak – so I’m going to be mindful of not overdoing it.
  • Yoga: four times! To ensure my mobility, stretching, and well, because I founded the company and get all the free yoga and meditation I want: I took FOUR! live classes on Ompractice this week. I’d love for you to join me! Unlimited membership is only $5 for your first month, and I’d be happy to meet up virtually for a class on me! Here was my lineup:
    • Yoga Nidra with Amy a cross between yoga and meditation – all about conscious relaxation, a chance to renew, and recharge yourself. Mondays and Wednesdays at 1 pm ET, 10 am PT. (Amy was in the polar vortex of the midwest while I was complaining about our 10 degrees…)
    • Yoga for Office Workers is a 25-minute break from the world. Tuesdays at 3:30 pm ET, 12:30 pm PT with Charina. Harkening back to my Runkeeper stretch-o-clocks! (Charina was actually in her “outside office” for class because…. southern California..)
    • Chair Yoga with Marie. Chair yoga is great for anyone, but is especially recommended for those who want a gentle practice. One of the surprising things was how much I enjoyed seated sun salutations!
    • Yoga for Low Back Pain with Traci – a perfect low impact class. Thursdays at 7:30 pm ET, 4:30 pm PT. Also – Traci was a sport for not laughing at me as Bertram decided that instead of his usually nap, he was going to “assist” me by licking me, sitting on the mat, and generally speaking being adorable but in the way.
ompractice amit ray quote
  • Two large library hauls: one of my favorite “activities of abundance” (a.k.a. making your self feel better through shameless acquisition without affecting your wallet) is checking out a huge stack of library books. I had to go to two different libraries this week. (On the literary note, I had about 50 recommendations from friends that I was going to post here but the list was too long. I’ll make a separate post if you need ideas of good reading!)
  • Team Retrospective: each week, one of my favorite personal activities is to reflect over the week with three questions: what worked well, what didn’t work well, what do I want to stop doing? This is straight from the “agile” playbook that most tech companies use to keep their teams celebrating their wins (hello, gratitude practice), and learning from their misses. We had a *great* team Retro this week!
  • New folks on my weekly *Do The Thing virtual co-working. Each week I gather together friends (from around the world!) for a weekly digital co-working session on Wednesdays at 1:30 – 3pm Eastern. We go around, each share what we want to get done, and then I mute everyone and we get to work. Want to participate? Sign up here.
  • On that note, I had an “in-person” friend come to participate in *Do the Thing hour this week. Amanda came with lunch she had prepared for us, and work to do! Salad (TJ’s cruciferous crunch), roasted delicata squash, warm farro, freshly made black beans, an herb-buttermilk vinaigrette, pickled shallots, an avocado, and tomatoes. I added a little bit of chicken and cilantro from my fridge. My friends are amazing.
the second lunch farro and black bean salad with avocado vinaigrette

{Delicious Meals:} 

Got ahead of myself there with a delicious meal in good things! There were so many more!

This was another week absolutely smitten with Alison Roman. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve cooked this many recipes out of a cookbook in years. If you don’t have your own copy of Dining In, RUN!

On that note, I think I’ve cooked more from cookbooks in general this month than I have in the past five years.

Here’s some of the highlights this week:

Takeout From Kimchipapi. Kimchipapi is new to Allston on Harvard street. Korean fusion poke bowls and other good stuff. (#SendNoodz.) Recommend! I had the crab fries – thin fries topped w/ crab salad, spicy mayo, eel sauce, fish eggs, scallion, and black sesame. And then a make my own poke bowl with kale noodles (thin starchy noodles), spicy tuna tartar, salmon, crab salad. Pickled radish, pickled ginger, kimchi, fresh corn and carrot, spicy mayo, ponzu sauce, fish eggs and roasted seaweed. I regret nothing.

Black bean soup with chimichurri chicken. No shame, my secret recipe is that I use Goya black bean soup in the red can. It’s excellent. 

Chicken Tikka Masala with chicken thighs arugula salad with mint, basil, and cilantro. There’s no recipe here. Truthfully, I ordered a container of sauce from Shan-a-punjab, and then cooked some chicken thighs in it. Paired with an arugula salad with mint, parsley, basil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. My salads are usually half greens half herbs these days.

the second lunch butter chicken and arugula herb salad

Alison Roman’s turmeric roasted carrots with seeds and labne. This was *outrageously good*. I used Samira’s Homemade labne with black olives as the base for the recipe. If you are in New England, I highly recommend picking up some at Whole Foods!

the second lunch Alison Roman Dining In Turmeric Roasted Carrots with seeds and labne

Alison Roman’s scallops with corn, hazelnuts, and brown butter chermoula. Over another arugula salad with cilantro and some lime. Another complete stunner of a dish. Also: the key to golden scallops is to NOT TOUCH THEM when they are cooking in the pan. Look at these beauties.

the second lunch alison roman dining in scallops with corn hazelnuts and brown butter chermoula

Alison Roman’s fennel rubbed pork – so, technically I did a mashup of two of her recipes here because I had pork tenderloin and not chops, and wanted to roast everything while luxuriating in a long shower with one of my new conditioners. The pork marinates in advance in a seed bath of glory. I opted for the double fennel situation, because… why not?

the second lunch alison roman dining in fennel rubbed pork with fennel

Chrissy Teigen’s Lemony Arugula Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe from Cravings. You guys. This dish. Here’s the goodness: lots of crispy pancetta, olive oil, garlic, black pepper, red pepper, lemon juice, cheese, more cheese. And then you add arugula for virtue and bite. The recipe is here, but I recommend the cookbook.

the second lunch chrissy teigen cravings lemony arugula cacio pepe 1
the second lunch chrissy teigen cravings lemony arugula cacio pepe 1

Arugula salad with avocado, green goddess, and marinated anchovies. Apparently I’ve just been craving arugula for weeks and am finally fulfilling my cravings.

the second lunch arugula salad with avocado green goddess and marinated anchovies

Well, that’s about it for this week!

I’ll leave you with this week’s best dog portrait: Bertram, in his element.

the second lunch bertram the frenchie in gray

Here’s to a great week! –– xo Sam

PS: every month or so I send out a newsletter of wellness wisdom, good things, reading, and more. I’m due for a new one imminently.

If you want to subscribe, just sign up below!

Lose 47 Pounds by Thanksgiving!

October 1st. Before we go on, please click this excellent piece from McSweeney’s about decorative gourds, and read it when you are done with my rambling. Or you can just go ahead and read it now. Yes, go ahead, I’ll wait.

Today I took several quite excellent morning still life shots of my coffee, my banana and my morning reading. Without the memory card in my camera. The last time this happened was when I sat with my mother to divvy up the first installment of our Year of Beans from Rancho Gordo. Hundreds of beautiful shots that exist only in my own memory.

To console myself, I headed out on a morning run. My almost always trusty Garmin was having trouble with the overcast sky reading satellites, so I started the timer without the gps, and turned on my Runkeeper app on my phone. Almost as soon as I headed out, I got a call from my mom who was on the way to buy new sneakers at one of my favorite running shops. Having never actually run while talking on the phone, I was surprised to find out that this was a good way to pass the time, and that my Runkeeper app worked beautifully coaching me as I chatted away. Until, of course, my phone just shut off completely. Upgrading to a new phone is looking more and more exciting.

Fortunately, I had arrived at Heartbreak Hill Running Company, which was almost exactly 2 miles away. I stood outside drinking from their igloo cooler for runners, and then wandered in to pick out something to reward myself with when I complete my very first 10k on Monday! New shoes? A foam roller? Cold-weather gear? I haven’t decided.

Speaking of heartbreak, I noticed this on my way back. This is spray painted on someone’s driveway. Actually, I don’t even want to talk about it. I’ll say this – I may have never been so excited for the start of basketball season in my life.

My run ended up being 4 miles in just over 45 minutes, and an extra half mile of walking in order to get the 30 consecutive minutes on my Runkeeper to make my gym-pact.

Lunch ended up being extra good. I seasoned some fresh ham steak (from M.F. Dulock) with salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence, heated up some roasted butternut squash, and served it with a salad of mixed baby greens and lemon juice. It took 10 minutes to put together, and felt mighty fancy.

In the evening, Devon and I had a date night at Target. This is a close second to our other favorite date – IKEA. Except IKEA has Swedish meatballs, dollar cones, and sofas we can sit on and pretend we are relaxing in our own home on. There we were, milling about minding our own business… Romance! And then I saw this:

I mean, I thought I’d seen it all before. “Lose 20 by New Years!” , “Lose 10 pounds this month!” but 47 pounds by Thanksgiving? I feel like we all have to say a collective prayer for humanity. 

For the record, after having a near tantrum of disgust in the store, I went home to look up this magazine, and I found this on their Facebook page. “FIRST for Women is a national consumer magazine that delivers positive info on everything from health and nutrition to beauty and fitness to home and family. Look for it at the grocery store checkout and in superstores like Walmart.” I call bull-shit.

Moving on to happier things. Like this dinner.

Ground beef with cumin, chile, a tomato, and some zucchini/garlic/tomato/onion from the Whole Foods salad bar again topped with some tomatillo salsa I picked up at Trader Joe’s. I ate mine with half an avocado, and Devon got his with some re-fried beans.

After dinner we lounged around watching Breaking Amish on TLC, and reading before bed. I won’t lie, after assuming that this series would be exploitative and cringe-worthy, I’ve found myself impressed by what seem to be a bunch of (mostly) thoughtful and likeable young men and women tackling big life questions. On that note, remember when the Real World used to be a good show on MTV? It’s been a while.