I have a few dishes in regular rotation that I lean on in moments of desperation or when life gets too busy. Meals that feel like a relief: “wow, we’re fed, and that was so easy.” My criteria for inclusion here is simply: would I want to make this and clean it up by myself after I get home from work? If no, I didn’t include it. (Mostly, this means the list has a lot of soups and stews.)

These are my perfect pumpkin cookie: soft but not a muffin top, heavy on the fall spices, and finally (classic me): made in one bowl with no mixer. They’re heavily studded with chocolate chunks and caramel sea salt chips.

A pretzel crust is perfect to layer a sweet mixture of cream cheese and Cool Whip on, and the whole thing is topped with a pound of strawberries and strawberry Jell-O.

I wanted a vegetarian pasta bake that felt indulgent but not heavy, and I wanted to lean into my love of jammy zucchini. One of my personal favorite flavor combinations is balsamic and dill, and I’m leaning fully into that with a probably-sacrilegious version of a bechamel sauce that incorporates either white wine or balsamic, depending on your preference.

I’m sharing some of the best vegetarian recipes in my cookbook. It’s easy enough to eat vegetarian by simply omitting meat from recipes or eating cereal for dinner, but I’m far more interested in having meals that make me forget I ever ate meat to begin with. I want to feel satisfied at the end of the meal! I want protein and umami!

This soup is such a great choice for a night when you want a bowl of something warm, but also healthy and nourishing. Sweet potatoes! Ginger! Curry powder! What’s not to love? I’ll admit that I tend to throw frozen spinach into just about everything (sneaky greens are my favorite greens), but it works so well here.

This recipe came to me as I considered the best way to use the extra cheese sitting in the fridge after I made my cheesy broccoli casserole. I’m not sure there’s a better way to dispose of spare cheese than these scones, my friends. They are towering and savory, perfect all on their own or with a runny egg and some bacon.

After a few rounds of tweaking, I’ve arrived at this: my ideal enchilada-ish soup. It’s cozy, deeply flavored, full of pantry staples, and ready well under an hour (yes, even with prep work). Bonus: it’s even better the next day.

It’s simple: we’re going to make chili, and then we’re going to top it with a layer of cheese and bake the cornbread right on top of it. That’s it. Chili is best topped with cornbread anyway, and this way you get it all in one bite. You’ll love it, I promise.

Fall is here, which means I’m once again rifling through my recipe book for cozy dinners full of fall squash and sweet potatoes. This one definitely fits the bill and is perfect for weeknights: cubed sweet potatoes or butternut squash, cooked with ginger, onions, and Thai red curry paste for a fragrant, nutritious dinner.

Everyone has their own idea of a perfect chocolate chip cookie. Mine is one that’s chewy, bakery-size, and cooked until just golden. I prefer dark chocolate, which is a little less sweet, and chunks over chips, because I want to bite into pockets of chocolate.

I wanted a miso soup that felt like a whole meal. I also didn’t want to work very hard. We always keep ramen in our pantry in case of extreme laziness - we’ve been known to dump some peas and carrots into the ramen pot and pretend that counts as eating our vegetables. So… miso ramen?

Last spring as everyone else was making sourdough and I was finishing unboxing my kitchen, I saw Smitten Kitchen’s Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Cabbage on Instagram. She swore it was easy, she used a small chicken, and for the first time in my life, I thought “I could do that. I should do that.”

I love chicken noodle soup, but it doesn’t really satisfy as a meal. This take swaps the noodles for pearled barley, which is high in fiber and has a slightly chewy texture that makes it a great sub for noodles. The recipe is packed with good-for-you aromatics like garlic, ginger, and turmeric. The carrots and celery turn the recipe into a little bit of a cuisine mashup, but I think it really works.

We’ve all been there: busy days, no motivation, and you’re trying to figure out how to turn a fridge full of half-bad food into a half-decent meal. I’ve cracked the code. For me, all it took was Pinterest, a binder, and a custom shopping list. Let’s talk!

Fun fact: a few years ago, this chili won me second place at an office chili cook-off. There were more than twenty entries… it’s that good!

Every region and family has their own favorite chili, and this is mine: a thick consistency, a little sweet, heavy on the meat and beans.

That top layer of cheese gets golden and slightly crispy in the oven. Every bite here is a cheesy, broccoli-filled dream. You’re going to love this.

We have arrived at the season in which even the least enthusiastic home cooks will be entering their kitchens with the intent to make something from scratch… let’s save a little spot on the plate for something more produce-forward, shall we?

At this point in 2020, we all need a cookie. This cookie, specifically, because you only need one mixing bowl and the handful of spices you’ve already probably gathered for your holiday baking.

This is a foolproof, flexible recipe that will give you meal after meal of delicious carnitas… The options are endless, which is why this recipe is a meal-prepper’s dream.

The beauty of this recipe is in its simplicity. There is something magical about a pile of chopped vegetables and broth turning into something so delicious with just a few seasonings and some half and half.

I love (and am comforted by) chicken and dumplings so much that this is the dinner I made the night I took the practicum of my NCIDQ exam. After months of studying and hours of testing, all I wanted was to reward myself with a bowl of this deliciousness.

This recipe was the result of summer longing and a whole lot of leftover wedding lavender, though I find I like them just as much in November as I do in June. The floral lavender, the bright lemon, and the juicy berries really sing. I think you’ll love these.

This year, I’m pretend-shopping for three portions of my personality and sharing a few things I’ve loved and a few things I would love. Next up: the bookworm.

This year, I’m pretend-shopping for three portions of my personality and sharing a few things I’ve loved and a few things I would love. First up: the homebody, the lover of a quiet night in, the curator of cozy.

I wasn’t sure I’d manage to read more than 50 books in a year; it seemed steep, even for me. But last week, I finished my fifty-second book, six weeks early! I do not move from periods of serious nonfiction to periods of fun romance to periods of prestigious fiction: I pinball between genres with utter abandon.

I saved too many beautiful options along the way to keep them all to myself. In the past few years, companies have really stepped up their game to outfit the home offices of those of us who work from home, and there has never been a better time to find truly beautiful and functional pieces for a home office.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a book roundup, but I’ve continued my tear through genres and bestseller lists. I’ve read as widely as usual (over 50 books this year!), but this list is definitely more heavily weighted toward sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism than most have been. I think maybe I’ve wanted a bit of escapism!

last year I published an “Upgrade Your Life” wish list full of things I loved and slightly splurgey items that were on my personal wish list, and it was a fun excercise in finding beautiful, quality things that really add to my life. This year I want to share items I’ve received and loved and items I personally love to gift.

It’s no secret that I’m product-obsessed. My lineup of skin care is held in check only by the force of my relentless frugality and my hatred for clutter.

From holy grail skincare faves to the new things I’m trying, here’s what’s in my medicine cabinet right now.

I don’t like to be scared, but I love to watch seasonally. For me, spook is atmospheric more than topical. As fall looms and then settles in, I want to watch things that are weird or creepy or unsettling, and I’ve got all of that on this list!

I thought I’d share a few things that I’ve bought and loved over the last several months just in case you’re on the lookout for something similar. All of these have been in my possession for at least 2 months, and I would buy them again and/or rave about them to my friends. Happy shopping!

Last spring as everyone else was making sourdough and I was finishing unboxing my kitchen, I saw Smitten Kitchen’s Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Cabbage on Instagram. She swore it was easy, she used a small chicken, and for the first time in my life, I thought “I could do that. I should do that.”

Every year on Valentine’s Day weekend, I end up sifting through the streaming platforms looking for a love story that’s not eye-rollingly cringey or too horribly acted. Here are a few favorites!

We’ve all been there: busy days, no motivation, and you’re trying to figure out how to turn a fridge full of half-bad food into a half-decent meal. I’ve cracked the code. For me, all it took was Pinterest, a binder, and a custom shopping list. Let’s talk!

I read almost 40 books in 2020. I’m a reading generalist: I’ll pick up most anything and finish it, but I don’t like them all equally. I went through my list of this year’s reads and pulled out my favorites. These are books that deserve to be read.

If something is intentional, beautiful, and high-quality, I’ll probably love it forever or at least until it falls to pieces in my hands.

To this day, my skin remains incredibly dramatic. My joke is that it’s always looking for a reason to be mad at me, and Covid masks have given it a reason to be furious.

I’m a voracious reader, and I always have been. Though I spent my childhood obsessed with adventure and historical fiction, I now read everything from sci-fi to religion to romance to biography. This perfectly positions me as a recommender of your next read!

For the last two months, Joey and I have been in the thick of a kitchen remodel. This has been on our project list since the day we moved in, and I have to say: I’m glad it took us 3 years to get to it. We’ve picked up so many skills over the last few years of homeownership, and it was all leading here.

Most resources online are directed toward flower farmers, so I want to share what I’ve learned as a hobbyist, a backyard flower-grower with a day job and supplies purchased from the hardware store.

I saved too many beautiful options along the way to keep them all to myself. In the past few years, companies have really stepped up their game to outfit the home offices of those of us who work from home, and there has never been a better time to find truly beautiful and functional pieces for a home office.

This was meant to be our first project after moving in, but suddenly it was a home office for me, I started calling it “the study” like I lived in a period piece, and it was no longer a priority on our project list. But during the pandemic, the corporate world shifted, we now have the option for some flexibility, and we’ve decided to take it. All this to say: I guess The Study is here to stay, and it needs to be extremely functional.

What started as a low-impact refresh turned into a gut job, and we spent two months of nights and weekends working on it. Our goal for the space: a clean, functional, beautiful guest bathroom that we won’t need to touch for the next decade.

Every spring, my favorite season is spring. Every fall, my favorite season is fall. I think the reality is that I crave that middle space; whether temperament, politics, or weather, I don’t enjoy extremes. But I’m also perpetually captivated by the rhythms of nature, and the closer I look, the more I see. I’m trying to imprint things onto my brain - what week does our wisteria begin to bloom? When will the ginkgo tree finally shudder and drop its golden leaves? When will the hummingbirds reappear?

I am touched, in many different ways, by the simple thought that it’s all going according to plan in there. Whatever chaos swirls around this moment in history, these seeds are doing what they were meant to do. And if I can just give them what they need, they’re going to keep doing that. Slow, steady, beautiful.

To figure out our goals for the landscaping at our house, I started searching for visual inspiration. I’m ignorant enough about gardening and landscaping that I didn’t know the name for my preferred style until I decided to treat this like an interiors projects: gather images of what I love, and then find the thread that connects it all together. It didn’t take too long to find the thread connecting my images: I am super into cottage gardens.

Fun fact: I didn’t even want to look at the house we eventually bought. It was over our budget, and the pictures didn’t look spectacular. We’d looked at so many houses in person, and I’d flipped through dozens of other listings online. Why bother with another showing of a house that was out of our budget to begin with? But Joey said we should go. So we scheduled it. We walked through the house, and it was cute. It seemed like the perfect size for the two of us.

Then we stepped out onto the deck.

This is my fourth year writing an annual review of my most special memories. Every year, the collections have gotten longer; I’m getting getting better at living life with my eyes open for the moments I want to keep forever… Memory is fickle, and we lose so much of our lives — not just the mundane, but the truly sublime as well. These posts are my attempts to hold on.

I’ve been thinking about how Joey and I can build a life here, so far away from the place we began. About how it will continue to feel a little bit impossible with shallow roots… I’m beginning to wonder if I need to make it all a bit more explicit: “I’m choosing you. I want to show up for you. I want to be inconvenienced for you. I would love for that to be mutual. Can I count on you? Can I love you?”

Maybe more than any other year, this was the one that made me wish I could keep all the memories. But that’s not how memory works. Memory selects the shiny, the sublime, the emotionally intense; and, as always, this exercise for myself is about the beautiful.

Each year brings good and bad, light and dark, joy and pain. I try to hold it all as it comes: soak up the piercing beauty, excavate silver linings, find meaning in the highs and lows of being human. But memory is a finicky thing; it discards what seems like most of our lives, holding onto just a few glimmering moments. So here are a few of my moments, as they unfolded through this year.

I’ve come to believe that the best thing any of us can do is find smart, kind, faithful people who we disagree with and listen to them. For real.

And while I probably spend too much time on Twitter, my favorite thing about it is that these people are always sharing the most amazing articles. So below is a little sampling of what I read this month…

There are a handful of careers that everyone thinks they get because they saw it on tv. It’s probably most commonly the long-running tv dramas, but in my case it’s home renovation shows and the meteoric rise of home decor and residential design Instagram accounts.

It is painful for me to see family, friends, and respected Christian leaders adopt the toxic values of Christian Nationalism that have been spreading for years, and have exploded during the Trump administration. Trump's slogan of “America First” perfectly captures the sentiment held by this value system: “Me First”. As a Christian, this pride and selfishness should be appalling.

It’s wonderful, the way time smooths edges and crystalizes beauty. Every year brings good and bad, light and dark, joy and pain. It’s true, the scale on 2020 seems tilted, but there was beauty even here. And memory is a finicky thing; it discards what seems like most of our lives, holding onto just a few glimmering moments. Here are a few of my moments, as they unfolded through this year.

This was meant to be our first project after moving in, but suddenly it was a home office for me, I started calling it “the study” like I lived in a period piece, and it was no longer a priority on our project list. But during the pandemic, the corporate world shifted, we now have the option for some flexibility, and we’ve decided to take it. All this to say: I guess The Study is here to stay, and it needs to be extremely functional.

What started as a low-impact refresh turned into a gut job, and we spent two months of nights and weekends working on it. Our goal for the space: a clean, functional, beautiful guest bathroom that we won’t need to touch for the next decade.

Furniture is where we live our lives, and I believe it is worth spending our money on. But furniture - and the industry responsible for making it - is complicated, and it’s very understandable that it’s a confusing thing to navigate for consumers.

While it’s by no means exhaustive, I hope this primer is useful to help you begin to be able to see quality differences as you shop for your own home.

I spent several days last October at Neocon in Chicago. While I walked around, I was really keeping an eye out for connections between the showrooms. I’m not a trend-chaser, but I think it’s so interesting to see the way trends develop and get incorporated into the wider design lexicon.

There are a handful of careers that everyone thinks they get because they saw it on tv. It’s probably most commonly the long-running tv dramas, but in my case it’s home renovation shows and the meteoric rise of home decor and residential design Instagram accounts.

We went to Mexico City on a whim. Desirous of a new adventure but lacking the planning bandwidth or enough stored-up vacation time to take an anniversary + birthday trip to France, I mentioned one night that we should head down to the city where all the coolest people I know seem to have been jaunting off to for the last few years: Mexico City. Friends, it knocked my socks off.

Dubbed “The Friendly Island,” St. Martin/St Maarten is world’s smallest dual-nation island. Its 34 square miles are split between France (Saint Martin) and Netherlands (Sint Maarten). The Netherlands side lends itself to a more touristy/party atmosphere; the French side insists it has better beaches and cuisine, and it’s the side known to host celebrities.

I was struggling with nothing to look forward to: no visits home, no trips to plan, no idea if we’d get to celebrate the holidays with our family. Just months stretching ahead, calendars empty, the two of us sharing custody of our one task chair. This is very clearly heading in one direction, right? We wanted something to look forward to, so we booked a trip.

Tulum is a beachy, bougie destination. Located about 70 miles south of Cancun, it’s an easily accessible beach paradise for those of us who prefer to avoid big resorts. While it’s one of the more expensive spots to visit in Mexico, it can be done affordably if you’re willing to do a little extra work.