Weekly Good Things – Week 52 2023

Cross-Posted to my Substack, my new weekly Newsletter. (Sign up for goodness in your inbox directly!)

Hello! Hello! Welcome to another weekly episode of Good Things where I give you a peek into my everyday life during the week, and roundup my good links, ideas, books, and more.

We made it to the last day of the year! I’m spending the day doing some planning, tidying, reading (including re-reading my own Winter Good Things Guide I published at the beginning of the year) and blog posts from years past. I always love the last week of the year for the “in-between energy”.

January Intentions

Each month I sit down and write out a list of intentions for the month ahead. It’s not exactly a to-do list, more like an “options” list. Place-holders also help me make space for more exciting adventures! How do I want to feel this month? Like I eased into January with purpose and renewed energy.

Out and About

Photography Walk with my nice camera – documenting New England winter wildlife • Movie Theater on $7 Tuesday • Dog Walks with friends • Movie Night at Home with Popcorn • Winter at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with Amanda (Jan 10th) • Monthly Boston dinner with my friend Kathy • Monthly family dinner out with my mom and brother

Good Eats

Food in January List (work in progress!) • Rancho Gordo Popcorn for movie nights • Candied Citrus • Annie’s with crab, tomato paste, sherry • Kapuska (Turkish cabbage and meat stew) • Lamb Biryani

Self Care

Self-Care List • Massage • Eye Masks in the fridge in the morning • Stick on Nails until you can get a manicure again • Float Spa (want to test Float and The Indoor Oasis) • Sauna at Kelo

Move!

The Needham New Year’s 5k • Lift (Weekly Lifting 3x at home with lifting schedule printed out, 1 at gym) • CRAW • Yoga (weekly Ompractice, daily 30 days) • Pilates (Reformer – SolidCore at Arsenal)

Update Lists

Inputs List (Podcasts, Reading, Watching) • Recipes to Cook • Cooking Projects 2024 • Bean of the Month • Hobonichi Prep for 2024 • Placeholders for “Once in a Lifetime monthly activities” • Favorites 2023 (see inspiration)

Create

Write (Daily Ship30) • 2024 Calendar • Sketch in Sketchbook • 2024 Kitchen Resolutions

Home

Tidy up outdoor plants for winter • List 5 things to giveaway on Buy Nothing • Haircut • Updated addresses for New Year Cards • Valvoline • RMV • Labcorp • Order lid screws for toilet • Get knives sharpened

Inputs

📺 Watch: The Banshees of Inisherin  The Taste of Things • Killers of the Flower Moon • Past Lives • Poor Things (theater) • Michael Clayton • The Northman • The Holdovers  Past Lives • The Killing of a Sacred Deer (before Jan 22) • The Iron Claw (theater) • ‘Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros’ (theater) • Fargo (TV) • Reacher (TV) • The Bear (TV) • New Season of Queer Eye (TV) • Jury Duty (TV) • Beef (TV)

📆 Accountability Workshop on 1/6/24

  • Something I’ve been toying with for the past few months has been how to help other people move things forward. I’m of the belief that community is one of the best forms of accountability. For years I hosted a weekly *Do The Thing Hour, which is currently on hiatus, but love the idea of co-working towards getting things done together! I’ll be trying out something new in January, a “One Month, One Goal” workshop. We’ll come together to identify a *singular* goal you’d like to tackle in 30 days, and work together to make daily or weekly actions on your goal both measurable and more easily implementable. We’ll then have a shared goal tracker (via a fancy Google Slide Deck) Sign up here for the live class, or the recording if you can’t make it! January 6th on Zoom + 30 days of fun! $42.

This Week in Good Things:

  • 🍏 A quick trip to New York City: my friend Rebeqa was visiting from Luxembourg! Highlights included an excellent Korean lunch at Han Bat (seafood pancake was the best! kalbi, kimchi fried rice, tofu stew), hot chocolate at Burdicks, dinner at Mercado Little Spain (pan con tomate, tripe stew, lentil soup, salad with avocado and goat cheese, another salad with egg and tuna, flan, and my favorite basque goat cheese cheesecake). A breakfast sandwich at Sip + Co (bacon, egg, cheese, on a bap). A points upgrade to the Kimpton Eventi (lovely!) Punctuated by wandering through Bergdorfs, Muji, and spending a lovely afternoon in the Housing Works Bookstore doing our end of year review and planning.
  • 🇹🇷 House Dinner with Turkish Food – my neighbor Elif cooked up a veritable feast for us all: köfte and vegetables, mercimek köfte, sarma, börek, carrot salad, potato salad (with yogurt and cornichons!), hummus, fried peppers, baklava. I have the true luck having neighbors I truly adore!
  • 🐾 Pup Walks with Friends: a walk with Sawyer (the Corgi) and her humans.

Good Things to Think About

What’s your backup? This year I’m working on backup lists – ideas for when to downshift because of lower energy, or when I need to intentionally reduce chaos or spend more time resting. I’ve been also thinking of Minimum Viable Consistency: “What’s your chicken fingers in the freezer version of your newsletter? (or whatever you’ve committed to)”

The “Hand-Copying Method”: I’m intrigued by the practice of copying writers by hand (as popularized by Gary Halbert) as a way to practice better writing and learning new skills. I’ve been trying to think of who I’d like to practice this with. Nigella Lawson?

Other Good Things

  • ☕️ Morning coffee with Crescent Ridge Eggnog by the “fireplace” with a good book. I drink my coffee black all other parts of the year.
  • 🔥 Watch (but not with family): Saltburn. (Murder on the Dance Floor is now stuck in my head and may never leave.)
  • 🔎 Use the Difficulty Michael Caine – a very short clip (90 seconds)
  • 🚀 Learn something new: Aprilynne Alter’s viral video on Youtube Thumbnails (and psychology) even if you have no desire to make a youtube channel, this is fascinating.
  • 🪡 Capturing the year: an embroidery journal (I love the idea of capturing the year in art, journaling, or other mediums.)
  • 🍽 To bookmark: The Trader Joe’s subreddit (where I find out about new in-stock items)
  • 🤣 Memes and randomness of the week: mortadella shortbread (I’m sorry) // the last week of 2023 // people are so good sometimes (New Seasons Parking Lot Girl) // if you are a Wellesley, please enjoy wabancam

The Weekly Meal Plan:

I’ve been working on a little project around what I’d like to eat in the New Year. Today I found myself thumbing through two of my favorite authors – Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson, who seem to have captured what I want to eat at any time.

Lunches: Leftovers, palak paneer, tofu on greens

Snacks: Ricotta, soft boiled eggs, cottage cheese, cheese sticks, tofu, chicken broth.

Treat options: Tapioca Pudding. TJ’s Pretzel Breadpudding. Chocolate mousse. TJ’s Iced Gingerbread in the freezer. Peppermint Hold the Cones. Walker’s Shortbread. Pumpkin Sticky Toffee Pudding. TJ’s Apple Tartin Tartelettes. (You’ll notice that this list keeps growing – I have a bad? habit of getting fancy desserts from Trader Joe’s from my freezer and taking forever to eat them.

🥑 Good Eats from this past week: I include a weekly meal plan in each week’s Good Things, and things never *actually* go as planned! Some of the standout additions include: Korean seafood pancake, Trader Joe’s tarte tatin with ricotta, basque goat cheese cheesecake.

That’s all for now! Hope you have a great week!

xo, Sam

What are you looking forward to in January?

Previous Years:

Weekly Good Things – Week 51

Abbreviated Good Things!

Cross-Posted to my Substack, my new weekly Newsletter. (Sign up for goodness in your inbox directly!)

Welcome to another weekly episode of Good Things where I give you a peek into my everyday life during the week, and roundup my good links, ideas, books, and more.

Abbreviated version tonight – I hope you are all having a lovely and relaxed holiday weekend. I wanted to drop in with a quick hello!

Good Things This Week

🖼 Creative Input: A quick trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. I’d been meaning to go see the Fashioned by Sargent exhibit before it closes in a few weeks, and it didn’t disappoint. In 2024, I’m going to prioritize more quick museum trips, even if it means just popping in for an hour for inspiration.

Tiny Treasures: The Magic of Miniatures. You’ve heard of Fabergé eggs, but have you seen his miniature bulldog, Cody? (This was in the miniatures exhibit, which left me rationalizing a collection of more tiny objects.)

Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances. There’s an exhibit by the late Canadian artist Matthew Wong which is really quite stunning. He died at 35. I love some of the inspiration from artists like Kusama (which you can really see in this one.)

Creative Participation! There was an interactive part of the exhibit where you could write a poem. I spent a couple of minutes going through the thick stack of patron contributions. Some of them were truly delightful. Some of them were as entertaining as you’d think giving a crowd writing instruments could be.

Take a seat. The MFA has a collection of chairs in the permanent collection throughout the museum that you can actually sit on. This pair of Conoid chairs were created by George Nakashima and are in the Toshiko Takaezu exhibit in the new wing on the top floor. They are *wildly* comfortable.

Toshiko Takaezu was a ceramist, but perhaps more interestingly she was an artist who worked in a range of mediums, inspiring innovative techniques. I enjoyed the layout of this exhibit which included photographs, video, and sound.

🍫 Chocolate Treats: checking off another item on my December intentions list – a fancy box of Burdick’s chocolates, acquired. Bonus: I got a spot directly in front of the store. After not eating much of anything for an entire week while my mouth healed from a tea burn, I managed to also get myself a warm dark hot chocolate which was the first food in days I finally enjoyed!

⏲ Time to Bake: Cocoa Gingerbread. I loosely adapted this recipe in the NYtimes, adding cocoa and chocolate chips a la Nigella Lawson. It tastes better on day two! I don’t bake often, but when I do, I’m always decently pleased with myself.

A smattering of other good things:

  • 🛁 Watch: Saltburn (only if you like movies from A24 or other arts films and be prepared to be… mildly disturbed.) I enjoyed the movie, but I’m *really* enjoying watching reaction videos to the film. (I’ve also broken down and am watching Reacher, a show about a man who solves problems with his large size.)
  • 📚 Reading: Kim in the West’s The Meth Lunches about poverty and hunger in America.
  • 🗑 Stop Doing: I deleted Cats and Soup and Two Dots from my phone. I like playing small video games and idlers occasionally while I listen to audiobooks, and then I wake up one day and am done (for the best!)
  • 🌱 Plant Lady Life. Patiently waiting for my waxed amaryllis to bloom. (There’s still time to grab one at Trader Joe’s). I took in my little succulent garden a few weeks ago from my front stoop, and they are thriving on the bookshelf.

A quote to internalize:

I deserve a treat when I have a bad week but I also deserve a treat when I have a good week. I simply always deserve treats” – Bettina Makalintal

That’s a wrap for this week!

I hope you have time this week to rest, relax, and connect!

xo, Sam

2022 Q1 Reading List

After a great 2019, and a middling 2020 for reading, and an even worse 2021 (lots of half read books with my attention as shot), here I am with my renewed sense of enthusiasm in the new year!


Having a reading list helps me make decisions about getting in quality reading without falling into decision making slumps. I aim to have a large percentage of my reading written by women, POC, and international writers; and typically read a handful of Man Booker short list titles. I typically make a list of my favorite categories, and then will supplement or swap as I find reading that calls out to me. I make room for the synchronicity of just picking up any random title, but I always have a backup! 

A few notes and observations:

Audio Books: yes, I definitely count audiobooks as reading. I process information better when on my walks and runs, and thus prefer listening to memoirs or non-fiction this way. It’s also easier for me to stay engrossed and follow along while I’m moving physically. 

Don’t forget FOOD! For the past several years, I read almost zero food memoirs, literature, or history – some of my favorite topics. So I made this one of my kitchen resolutions this year! (Again.) I’m also re-reading cookbooks

The library is your friend. While I always try to support local book stores – I’m also a huge fan of my local library – grabbing things off the Speed Read Shelf is my jam. Plus you can leave with a large stack and it always feels like I’ve won something.

As always, still working my way through my list of Personal Leadership Development Books, and the BBC Big Read. I also read quite a few business books for work – whatever I need to expand my ideas and sharpen my skills. Our team has quite a few readers, and an up and coming leadership book club has us reading (me re-reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, next.)

January:

  • Re-read Atomic Habits by James Clear; Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg (done!)
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (done!)
  • We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers (in-progress!)
  • Beartown by Fredrik Backman
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
  • Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • Re-Read: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown (work book club)
  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • What it’s Like to Be a Bird David Allen Sibley

Categories to choose from: (I often choose outside these, but I find that when I’m in the mood for a particular feeling, it breaks down by this type of category.) 

YA fiction or Fantasy

  • Gallant by VE Schwab (March 1 Release)
  • Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin
  • The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy) by S.A. Chakraborty
  • In the Serpents Wake (Tess of the Road #2) by Rachel Hartman
  • Skyhunter by Marie Lu

Leadership / Business / Finance:

  • Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
  • The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp
  • Think Again by Adam Grant (in-progress!)
  • Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr

Writing and Creating:

  • The Practice: Shipping Your Creative Work by Seth Godin
  • Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
  • The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert

Fitness and Health / Mindfulness / Brains

  • Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection by Ximena Vengoechea
  • How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
  • The Body, A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
  • The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life by Piero Ferrucci

Gripping / Thrilling / Literary:

  • My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
  • The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Memoirs / Non-Fiction Reporting 

  • The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
  • Taste by Stanley Tucci
  • Eat a Peach by David Chang
  • Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman

Books to Finish (technically there are many more half-reads over the past few years):

  • The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk
  • Dutch House (Audiobook?)
  • Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
  • Circe by Madeleine Miller (may switch over to Kindle)
  • Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

What’s on your shelf this year? What’s up next?

xo Sam

Good Things 2020: Week 19

If we can clear the air with the Pandemic, all the terrible things going on in this world, and 2020 just being a general dumpster fire – without further ado, I’ll jump back into my regularly scheduled Good Things posts for 2020.

Spring Tulips

Good Things: an acknowledgement of things that are working well, the little things I’ve noticed, moments that I’ve paused to savor. A combination of my weekly wins, gratitude practice, curiosity and observation.

Good Things Week 19:

I’m kicking off the warmer months with a new fitness challenge – the #GVRAT1000k virtual race across Tennessee. It ends up being about 5 miles a day roughly of walking and running, so not too far off from my usual distance, but still an admirable challenge. One of the things I’m going to enjoy is learning more about the state of Tennessee as I go. I have a couple of thematic audio books lined up. For anyone curious about the genesis of this race, it’s put on by these folks. (Recommended watching.) I’ve taken quite a bit of pleasure heading outside and watching spring unfold.

{Good Reading}

This week, I’ve taken to working through finishing half read or listened books on my Kindle/Audible over the past few weeks. I had a good chuckle when I found myself with Radical Focus (Christina Wodtke), Radical Candor (Kim Scott), and Radical Acceptance (Tara Brach) all on the docket.

I’m currently loving Arlan Hamilton’s new book It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage.

Embracing Re-Reading: Last year, my focus was on both reading and watching new to me books and films, rather than re-reads as a way to inspire, intrigue, and shake up my routine. With the general progression of 2020, I switched to seeking comfort where I knew it would could be found: my evening reading shifted largely to re-reading my favorite stand-bys. (This coping strategy was well honed from seasons of finals periods in high school and college, when I’d switch back to re-reading for comfort.)

In Fiction over the past few weeks, I finished my epic re-listening journey of all the Harry Potter books – the ones read by Stephen Fry (not Jim Dale). I then moved onto a re-listen of Garth Nix’s Sabriel, one of my fantasy favorites. Not everything was old hat: I also read Leigh Bardugo’s The Ninth House, and have commenced Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch.

{Good Eats}

My cooking has been relatively simple – things that require really limited prep time, mostly a minute or two of chopping and then roast in the pan, or that have developed flavor by a long bath in a marinade. In added kitchen excitement, I treated myself to a long-desired Thermapen in my favorite yellow. One of the best tools in your kitchen.

This week in good meals:

  • Chicken thighs with Elotes, tomato salad with lime and cilantro. (pictured above) – cheat’s special with Trader Joe’s Mexican Corn from the freezer section.
  • Herby chicken, ramen, and garlic yogurt sauce. Ive become a fan of Trader Joes savory herb chicken thighs – they have a nice woodsy-mint taste. I served them on fresh ramen from Valicenti pasta company, with a garlic-yogurt sauce.
  • Rancho Gordo Vaquero Beans – my bean pot of the week. I cooked these simply with a few bay leaves and some garlic cloves. Looking forward to my next Bean Club shipment!
  • Greek-style three ways: one of my favorite combinations is the Greek tray bake with potato, tomato, and whatever protein you are using. I did this three separate times. Pork chops with fennel, potatoes, and tomato; a second time as Greek Fish with Tomato, and a third as Chicken with lemon, tomato and potato. There’s not much I like more than a good tray bake and these flavor combinations.
  • Lamb chops roasted over potato. My fennel and cumin seeds have been doing overtime this week. I ate the dinner with a trio of sauces: garlic aioli, shaved truffle mustard, and seafood cocktail sauce (because I’m classy.)
  • Cuban pork tenderloin with lime and grapefruit marinade over cauliflower chimichurri rice. The marinade is perfection: olive oil, lime, grapefruit and white vinegar with garlic. I’m not strict about the proportions, but the original recipe is one for Chuletas de Puerco from the Versailles Cookbook that my mom uses quite frequently. It’s just so good.
  • Banana Curry Fish over rice with lime. Another comfort food that reminds me of my mom’s kitchen. It’s a super simple combo of butter, bananas, and curry powder.

Odds and Ends:

  • Morning Coffee. Black. On my little second floor porch. (See above. Big mug thanks to the folks at SurveyMonkey.)
  • A large bowl of broccoli, beans and pesto. Looked virtuous, tasted delicious. When summer comes along I tend to make my own pesto, but until the plants are copious, I buy Bear Pond Farm from Whole Foods.
  • Naan with really good hummus, soft boiled egg, and tomato. Or a second iteration with hummus and the above pesto.
  • A bowl of soaked oats with milk and seville orange jam. I needed to finish up the last few spoons of jam, and this seemed like a worthy pairing. (It was.)
  • Really good popcorn. It’s absurdly easy to make good popcorn at home. I usually don’t even bother to stove-top – I just microwave a few spoonfuls dry in a large pyrex with a heavy plate on top.

With this, I conclude this week’s Good Things. Let me know what you’ve been up to – I’ll be back for more. Of course before we part ways: I’d be remiss to send you off without your weekly Bertram. This little buddy turned FIVE last month. He’s the happiest dude. <3 Here’s to a good week.

Good Things 2019: Week 52

With our year coming to a close, one of my favorite cozy winter activities is to snuggle up with a mug of coffee spiked with eggnog, my 2019 calendar, and my phone’s photo album, and sit and review the year coming to an end. I work to make a list of the things that were meaningful, and then do a deeper dive of the things that I’d like to improve. Without posting the entire novel, here’s a little bit about how I went about doing this: 

I start out with general buckets to note things in:

  • My year in fitness: any races run, programs taken, favorite classes, PRs.
  • Favorite movies, tv, and books. 
  • Favorite podcasts (Dolly Parton’s America!) 
  • Review my reading list: how diverse was the range of authors and thinking? 
  • Favorite Eats: restaurants, recipes, and purchases (I’m looking at you bucket of Maldon and Rancho Gordo Bean Club) 
  • Review of Travel: in 2019 relived highlights from Disney in March (that JIKO tasting and Safari! Dole Whip!) Turkey in June, Stratton in July, Houston in September and New York in October. 
  • Creative Dates: my weekly journey into culture – museums, plays, and more. 
  • What I learned (courses, projects, etc.) 
  • Fun Random Things
  • New Things Tried
  • What didn’t work so well, and low points
  • People I met / re-connected with / spent time with

This year, I had two fun “consumption” goals – rewarding myself for relaxation that I got quite a bit of satisfaction out of. I set my Goodreads 52 books goal, (surpassed!) and 52 new to me movies. (This year I’m also planning on tracking my TV watching – it seems to improve my overall quality of choice when I write down what I consumer. I also plan on tracking my music listening with a focus on albums.)  

Because this is theoretically a food blog, here were some of the highlights of my year in food, done middle school yearbook style:

A deeper dive into food superlatives of 2019: 

  • Favorite Takeout: Shan-a-punjab butter chicken, Cava, Wegman’s California Rolls
  • Best Cookbook: Alison Roman’s Dining In (my cookbook of the year) 
  • Best Soup: Samin’s Ribolitta from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
  • Most Liked IG Post: Lobster avocado salad
  • Best Salt Craving Fixes: IKEA Kalles Tube, Whole Food Cheese Crisps
  • Best Recipes: Chrissy Teigen’s Cacio e Pepe, Anita Lo’s Red Cooked Duck
  • Best Turkish-ish: deconstructed cauliflower gnocchi Manti
  • Best Condiments: Patak’s Tikka Masala paste, Branston Pickle
  • Best Food Purchases: 3lb Bucket of MaldonRancho Gordo Bean Club!
  • Best Throwback Recipes: Chicken Marbella, Fettuccini with Spring Veg.
  • Best Porch Snacks: pesto mozzarella toasts, cherries and wine; Whole Foods Cheese Crisps
  • Best Family Meal: 4th of July Ceviche
  • Favorite Ben and Jerry’s: Pucker Upper; Justice Remixed
  • Best Fast Food Item: McDonald’s Stroopwaffel McFlurry
  • Favorite New Trader Joe’s: Kunefe, Peppermint Hold the Cones; Cinnamon Rugelach, Aqua Kefir, Italian Bomba Fermented Pepper Paste
  • Best Apple: Topaz
  • Favorite Method: marinating in mayo (thanks, Kenji!) 
  • Best Evening Snacks:
    • Whole Foods Chopped Mango
    • Cottage cheese with olive oil, salt and pepper.

As for this week’s Good Things: 

I’ve been wrapping up the last week of the year with reading, cooking, work (yes, we have some incredible things in store for us at Ompractice), at least three miles a day outside for my Race Menu Winter Warrior challenge, and more.

{Meals of Note:}

Chinese Tomato Eggs: soft scrambled eggs with shaoxing wine and sesame oil; with some smoked salmon. I wanted Chinese/Jewish/Turkish comfort food and this is what I came up with.

Pulled Pork with Arugula Salad: with cucumbers, lime juice, and a side of nectarines. I was going to have some baked beans with this, but I forgot.

Vietnamese Ginger Chicken Thighs: a great recipe from Melissa Clark’s Dinner: Changing the Game, over arugula salad with cucumber (sense a trend?) A good reminder that marinating meats overnight is always a good idea! Looked like this:

Refried beans with Chicken: a forgotten staple. This is one of my favorite comfort foods. (All it could have used were some HEB tortillas… but I’m due for another trip to Texas since I’ve eaten my freezer stash.

Pork Tenderloin with Peperonata: (top photo) arugula salad with cucumber. I love Peperonata – stewed peppers, onions, and tomato, with a nice hit of red wine vinegar at the end of cooking. It’s versatile and can be made days in advance and only gets better.

Turkey and Cranberry Bean Fagiole with Kale: defrosted a batch from my freezer, and ate for several lunches in a row.

I’ll be finishing up the last day of the year closing out loose ends, but I’m ready and excited for 2020! Thanks for sticking around here, I appreciate you all!

Here’s to a great new year!

Good Things 2019: Week 8

the second lunch weekend brunch

This weekend I found myself slightly under the weather – likely a factor of working out in a group fitness environment several days a week… and having a co-founder who has a toddler! On the plus side though, my immune system is as fortified as ever, and illnesses these days are really only days of feeling a little under the weather, rather than anything more sinister. After a generally chronically ill childhood and teenage years, I don’t take this for granted!

{Good Things} 

I found myself resting more this week – after a couple of full months, this week had packed days of hard work on Ompractice, coupled with more intentional downtime. More reading, a little bit more time in front of the television, and delivery instead of a night out. As I get older, I continue to double down on my self care practices to make sure that I have the energy to do the work I want to do in the world. It’s *so important*.

While keeping the relaxation intentional, I still fit in daily workouts, a combination of some higher impact fitness classes, relaxing yoga classes, and my daily mile streak. 

Fitness, this week: 

  • Monday: a mile outside. 
  • Tuesday: OrangeTheory
  • Wednesday: OrangeTheory and Foundations with Traci at 7:30 on Ompractice (60 minutes) 
  • Thursday: Yoga for Tight Shoulders and Neck at 12:30 ET with Niki on Ompractice (amazing!) and another OrangeTheory! 
  • Friday: a “rest day mile”
  • Saturday: OrangeTheory – I’ve been going to the 9:15 am class, and it feels good to get it done!
  • Sunday: “recovery mile” outdoors.

Out of the house

the second lunch cambridge naturals the coconut cult

A quick trip to Boston Landing – for a pit stop at the new location of Cambridge Naturals, and a cup of coffee at Kohi. In addition to a FULL STOCK of pretty much every natural food product I’m ever on the hunt for, I was delighted to see the wildly overpriced but delicious Coconut Cult yogurts at Cambridge Naturals. I resisted ($27.99 will do that to you – hello two dollar coastal mark-up), and instead filed away the note to self, and grabbed myself a Topo Chico for the road. At Kohi I picked up a Cortado (They have Tandem Coffee!) About two dozen banana breads were coming out of the oven just as I arrived, and the place smelled like heaven.

the second lunch kohi cortado boston landing and topo chico

A Target trip – notable because I had a definitive shopping list and left without making ANY extraneous purchases. Can you believe it? (I could barely believe it myself.)

This post on building Willpower: we’ve been blogging some longform articles on Ompractice this month! Chris did the heavy lifting on this one, but it was a collaborative effort! 10 concrete tips on how to build and strengthen your willpower.

A manicure – after months going without, I finally have been working on making my hands presentable again. I took myself to a Miniluxe treat on Friday night, getting my favorite “Rodeo” color. (Side note: I always thought it was Rodeo – like the cowboys… until I realized one day that it’s supposed to be the classy Ro-de-o drive. I choose to be cowboy classy.)  My first trip back since having to pause my $65/month unlimited mani membership because I couldn’t make the time for trips. Locals, this is a *steal*.

the second lunch miniluxe rodeo manicure

Watching: On the plus side, more downtime means more progress towards my 52 new to me movies this year. (Preferably without a cell phone in hand.) In preparation for the newest theater release, I caught up with How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2. Both very cute! 

On television: I finally succumbed to Russian Doll on Netflix. (I’ll join the chorus: it’s SO GOOD!)  And a few minute into the Oscars, I decided to actually turn it on and watch – despite having avoided it for many years. Aside from the rotten best picture vote, I was happy to see some of my favorites win awards – including Olivia Colman for her role as queen Anne in The Favourite, Into the Spider-verse, and Ruth Carter for the costumes in Black Panther, and Hannah Beachler for the Production Design in Black Panther. I’m so excited for Bao – I haven’t watched it yet, but it’s at the top of my queue!

davis museum tour lavinia fontana

Creative Date: 

On Saturday, I went for a museum tour at the Davis Museum at Wellesley – actually the home of my first museum internship (I worked in Development), and where I spent four years on the Davis Museum Student Advisory Committee. I hadn’t been back for years, and was thoroughly thrilled at the updates. For anyone local to the Boston area, the museum is truly a gem. One of the missions of the director of the Davis is to update the museum to better represent the diversity of the student body – and this is clearly seen in both acquisitions and the exhibitions on view.  
We went on a tour of women artists, and I spent another hour wandering through the galleries.

There’s a phenomenal new exhibit – Art_Latin_America, including a wide selection of protest and propaganda art, that I highly recommend visiting! 
Here’s a peek at some of the art: 

Next museums on my list? Thanks to some great Twitter suggestions this week, here are some next ones for my list. I’ve been to many of these, but most it’s been over a decade! Who wants to join me?

A few suggestions that I’ve been to recently: the Whaling Museum in New Bedford (I went this summer!), and the Seacoast Science Center in Rye., NH. I’m also trying to work my way through some of the Historic Houses and Trustees Properties. And many thanks to all of you who chimed in. You know who you are!

Three other smart suggestions I’m bookmarking: getting a museum membership high enough to provide reciprocal membership at other museums (it’s.. possible I have that already.) This resource to look up participating museums: NARM – the North American Reciprocal Museum Association. And the Highland Street Foundation which sponsors free museum Fridays in the summer.

{Good Eating} I found myself eating a lot of leftovers this week.

the second lunch algerian jewish beef onion coriander stew clifford wright real stews

Algerian Jewish Beef, Onion, and Coriander Stew. From Clifford Wright’s Real Stew – a cookbook I’d highly recommend. This was INCREDIBLE. Here’s the recipe: I used ground beef instead of stew meat, and canned diced tomatoes, but everything else stayed the same!

Chocolate “Dessert” Hummus. Okay… don’t hate me. I bought two different kinds – Joseph’s and Boar’s Head, and they are both great, and I’ve been eating them after dinner, with a bunch of collagen hydrolysate stirred in as a end of the day protein boost.

the second lunch david lebovitz chicken lady chicken

Chicken Lady Chicken from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. I marinated this gorgeous bird for three days in the wildly flavorful marinade, and then roasted it in the oven. The recipe calls for spatchcocking, but I wanted to cook it in my Breville toaster, so upright she went. Recipe here. Giving into a meme, I served it with generously buttered noodles with parsley. Meme – worth reading the tweets: https://www.eater.com/2019/2/11/18220148/generously-buttered-parsleyed-noodles-meme

the second lunch generously buttered noodles and chicken lady chicken

Hodo Sesame Yuba Strips and a soft cooked egg. I was surprised to see West Coast tofu maker Hodo in my local Whole Foods, and couldn’t resist. These were nutty and good.

the second lunch barbecue pulled chicken and turkish beans over kale

Barbecue pulled chicken and Turkish beans over a bed of kale. A bit of a cultural mashup, this made for a satisfying dinner. 

the second lunch turkish manti trader joes cauliflower gnocchi

Trader Joe’s cauliflower gnocchi deconstructed Turkish Mantı with ground beef, yogurt garlic sauce, and urfa pepper chile butter drizzle. This was a genius move on my part – hitting all my favorite flavors of one of my favorite dishes, but with my favorite TJ’s vegetal freezer item: the cauliflower gnocchi. 12/10 will make again.

the second lunch shan a punjab butter chicken takeout

Shan-a-Punjab Takeout butter chicken, raita, garlic naan, and potato naan. A masala chai, and kheer for dessert. (I have to restrain myself from ordering this three times a week.)

the second lunch soba stir fry with kimchi

A somewhat disappointing stir fry with soba, tofu, and tahini.  (What I should have done was made the Otsu recipe from 101 cookbooks…alas.

Brunch: lucky 7 grain toast with Bavarian Rubius cheese, applegate maple chicken sausage, and some soft eggs.  (At the top of the post.)

A bowl of mac and cheese. I don’t think I actually managed to take a picture of it, because I was hungry, tired, and under the weather. I stirred in a spoonful of Trader Joe’s Garlic Spread-Dip (which is basically Aioli), because, why the heck not? 

Here’s to a good week!
xo Sam