It has been a doozy of a week and I hope you’re taking some time to scramble some eggs, char some tortillas, sip from your coffee cup, and take some time for yourself this morning.
Here’s how we lived this week:
• We’re here. All of us, and we’re not going anywhere. (Actually we’re going to go home to our families and jobs, but we’re like this in spirit all the damn time because we can multi-task, beast-mode like you wouldn’t believe.) Pictures From The Women’s March Around the World.
• Let’s read this: Nice Girls vs Kind Women.
• This is strong and beautiful. Ten letters a day made it to President Obama’s desk. Ten letters that wove the fabric of America… first read by intern, then brought to the President. “No filter. The handwriting, the ink, the choice of letterhead — every letter was a real object from a real person, and now you were holding it, and so now you were responsible for it.” To Obama With Love, and Hate, and Desperation
• President Obama’s last words to us as president, ironically / not ironically over Twitter: “It’s been the honor of my life to serve you. You made me a better leader and a better man. I won’t stop; I’ll be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by your voices of truth and justice, good humor and love. I’m still asking you to believe – not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. I believe in change because I believe in you.”
• You will be called out on your pettiness and lies, Mr Trump. We see you.
• Sara Kate Gillingham is making boob pendants from clay and 100% of the proceeds go to Planned Parenthood and you best believe I have one, ok?
• Helpful and necessary. Secret to Success: a positive attitude.
• How To Never Run Out Of Ideas Again. Seems like the trick is to lower your standards, try and try- make and make- think and think. No one said it would be easy.
• Quick-to-learn new hobbies in 30 days Instagram doesn’t count as a hobby. Wait… does it?
• Experimenting with this book for my next cookbook club: Handmade Pasta Workbook and Cookbook.
• Come to the Paper Flower Making Workshop on January 28th!
• I went on a small road trip to Birmingham Alabama this week for work. Turns out Birmingham is so sweet (not surprised) and I had a really lovely meal at Chez Fonfon (that coconut cake!) and fantastic coffee at Octane. On the way home I did my self a favor and tested out this theory: America’s Best Chicken Nugget. I land in the Popeye’s camp. America is GREAT!
• If you have one skillet and one banana on hand: Banana Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake.
I love you. That is a real sentiment.
xo Joy
Bob Robbins
Sunday is special for all and for me too. I had free time on Sunday only. So I can’t do everything what are all I want to do in a single day. Sometimes I do cooking, or I spend time with my friends or go for parties and all. Reading your post is good. Thanks for sharing this buddy.
Emanuel Logan
Whatever the topic may be, your blog has the fantastic solution for it. I love your way of presentation, the unique thinking and admire your innovative thoughts. Thanks Joy, keep on sharing wonderful topics.
Caroline
Love your Sunday roundups and look forward to them every week! They are thoughtful and diverse and uplifting and grounding and real and fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to make them! Hoping over to pre-order your book after I am done reading! :)
Libby
Nice girls vs Kind Women is… EXACTLY what my heart needs. A good friend of mine told me recently that she’s working on being a “peacemaker” instead of a “peacekeeper”. I see a lot of these same concepts at play. Thank you for sharing it!
Kate
Great post Joy! Wonderfully curated. Thank you for being an informed, multi-dimensional, compassionate human.
PS–Can “Chill out Mary” be the new “Bye Felicia”?
TAM
Hi Joy! I’m a longtime reader but I think this is my first time commenting. I really super appreciate that you don’t shy away from events outside the kitchen. It would be easy to say ‘this is a cooking blog so of course I should only post about non-political cooking/lifestyle stuff’ but of course, not engaging with reality beyond our countertops and cutting boards would be just as political a choice as talking about it is (& a lesser one, in my opinion.) Thank you for the food, the wit, the glorious photos, AND the politics (and especially Drake on Cake.)
Nicole @ The Dirty Oven
Love your post yesterday. I bought two boob pins to make a donation to Planed Parenthood and made a promise to myself after going to the march that I am going to do one little / or big thing each day to help with this movement. Today I emailed my House Rep asking for how I can help. If anything this makes me feel like I am not stopping and will keep marching everyday.
Andrea
Imay be reading this on a Monday, but it is still inspiring me to sip coffee, scramble some eggs, and do the damn werk. Thanks for the excellent reading list as always :)
Nancy
Joy, as so many others have said, thank you for showing me things I never would have found – like the wonderful post about “kind women” rather than “nice girls.” I’m 67, and it took me a long, long time to learn that life lesson. I’m a nice woman, so I choose to say a couple of things here about the grief so many of us feel right now.
For many of us, this is not about party or partisanship, so it’s not something we can just “get over” because we “didn’t get our own way”. It’s about the man, as evidence of a change in society that makes us sad and very, very worried. It’s not anger and it’s not whining because one candidate lost – it’s profound sadness. We keep hearing about how angry people in large swaths of the country are, and that’s behind these election results. Nursing anger and holding onto it is corrosive, and I think it leads to a willingness to enter into the kind of hateful chanting we’ve been hearing at rallies for months. I hope this man we elected can grow into the position, but as I write this, he has again rattled senior leadership in Congress in a meeting by going back and perseverating on his idea that he was somehow cheated, despite winning the presidency, and that 3-5 million illegal votes were cast against him. I will give him time, because I respect the office he holds. But I do not yet respect the man, and he will have to earn that respect. I hope he can learn to look outside himself and his own needs for approval and adoration, but I have seen no evidence of it.
But more important is the fact that I will not hate, and I will not allow anger to consume me. I am a nice woman, and I will speak out against injustice. I will not hate anyone. I will continue to help my neighbors and friends and those who need help, as I hope our country will continue to do. We need to care for each other, and so very many of us do. We do not live in “American carnage,” and we need to make our voices heard.
teachersu45
Amen, Nancy!
Ellen
Thank you Nancy. You have very eloquently stated what is at the core of why I have not “gotten over” this election.
Molly
Thank you so much for a) that chilaquiles post, which I made that night and was so so good, and b) using your platform to comment on our current political reality. A sign I saw at my local march read, “This is not normal, this is not normal, this is not normal…” and it’s so true. I certainly understand that folks want a break from the news sometimes, but expecting non-political bloggers to be completely *apolitical* all the time, just to preserve the illusion that everything is sprinkles and cream cheese, is not ok. Burying one’s head in a cloud of escapist content is exactly what this so-very-not-normal administration wants us to do.
Ashley
Hi Joy — A long time fan-girl here of your recipes and general badass-ness (that’s a word, right?)!! I adore the nature of your posts and outlook on life (including what is going down in your kitchen). Thanks for expressing yourself with positivity, light, and ideas for great food and drinks — it is much appreciated! Hope YOU are also having a great day!!
kristadeedot
I just want to thank you for your ‘Let it be Sunday’ articles. You do such a nice job of editing the world into a bite size chuck for me to enjoy each Monday! Keep up the awesome, compadre!
Madison Weir
Thank you for these Sunday posts – there is always something that I haven’t seen and it’s always something I needed to see/read. The Nice Girls vs. Kind Women is beautiful and exactly what I needed today.
Also – loving your food in a bowl series! I live for bowl dinners (one of my favourite’s is Smitten Kitchen’s broccoli and sweet potato bowl with miso & tahini) so I’m always excited to expand my repertoire.
Lucy
Joy, you make us better people for staying informed. I applaud you and other bloggers who use their voice to call out injustice and share the words of the marginalized, who likely don’t have this platform for others to hear. “We all do better when we all do better.”
Ellen
Joy, I also enjoy your blog thoroughly and applaud you for addressing the very volatile subject of politics. Mary, when you comment you open yourself to response. My response to you would be that we are at a crossroad as a nation, do we follow the new path whose tone has clearly been set as divisive and angry? I say absolutely not! At the tender age of 55 this election cycle has shown me that we absolutely cannot afford to be complacent, complacency implies acceptance. You have to look no further than the extreme vitriol of Trump tweets, the upcoming defunding of Planned Parenthood that is the major source of reproductive health care for women of lesser means, the ever-present threat to Roe v. Wade (now more troublesome than ever with Sessions coming in as the new AG and a certain appointment for a yet-to-be-named ultra conservative supreme court justice), unqualified cabinet appointments (Carson and DeVos), anti-Semitic top level advisors (Bannon in particular), and now the coup de gras – appointing John Gore to head the civil rights division of the DOJ (he supported and defended the NC ‘bathroom bill’ and is known for being an expert at political redistricting against civil rights claims – bet that inspires confidence that he’s looking out for anyone’s civil rights). Really???? Can anyone look at these people and feel good about them in some of the most powerful positions in the US? Sorry, Trump has, and continues to, show himself to be unfit in word and deed for his current position. He has made it glaringly obvious that he is not interested in unifying this nation. I’d also remind you that 2.7 MILLION more people voted for Hillary Clinton. I’ve been against the electoral college for at least 20 years for this exact reason, it doesn’t accurately represent the choice of the people. BTW, Obama won his popular votes handily so your electoral college example doesn’t really say what you want it too. This has even sparked my 76 year old mother into political activism. It is more important than ever to be aware and be engaged. Write letters to your reps, make phone calls to their offices, attend peaceful rallies (violence is never the way), lend your voice to an organization fighting for what you believe in. Oh, and if your views differ that’s o.k. You don’t have to read anything that you don’t want to.