Friends, good Sunday to you!
This week’s five begins with me taking inventory: the cinnamon jar, the beauty products I have officially scraped to the bottom, a few of the dozen or so open Substack tabs, and some bad news about Hootie.
• Fresh cinnamon, please and thank you.
In some recent recipe testing I realized I was baking with very old cinnamon. Certainly not catastrophic, but indeed some spiritually dusty cinnamon. I wrote about refreshing your pantry for fall and apparently needed to take my own advice. I especially love Burlap & Barrel Royal Cinnamon, which is like reaching for the good cinnamon like you might reach for the good olive oil.
And while we’re here and talking cinnamon: I make Ina Garten’s Apple Pie Bars every fall and, friends, it is time.
• I bought 25 vanilla beans. We should probably talk about it.
I have recently fallen straight down a vanilla bean rabbit hole and, instead of climbing out like a reasonable person, I invested in twenty-five organic vanilla beans to make my own vanilla bean paste. I have developed Opinions about vanilla lately, chief among them being that vanilla bean paste is far superior to extract when you really want vanilla to show up and do some work. I have much more to say about all of this soon. For now, please know there are twenty-five beans in my house and I’m poised to order even more.
• Beauty empties, postpartum edition.
I’ve reached the bottom of a handful of products I’ve been using through this postpartum stretch. Empties are useful in the way that they raise the question: Am I going to spend money on this again?
First: I really thought I had escaped postpartum hair loss. LOL. At six months postpartum, the shedding has arrived hard and fast. The Kitsch Rosemary & Biotin Shampoo and Conditioner Bars have not stopped the shedding, but they have made my hair as manageable as possible through it: soft, fluffy in a good way, and decidedly less tragic. Repurchase.
I’ve also finished the Naturium Retinol Complex Serum, which I think is fantastic for the price. It’s earned a permanent spot in the cabinet without requiring a twelve-step nighttime ritual, so also a repurchase.
And now that I have my retinol locked in, I think it’s time to splurge on the Coleman Compound for postpartum melasma. You guys….. we’re laughing and we’re buying creams I DON’T KNOW IT’S FINE. (I can share more of my empties if this sort of thing is of interest to you!)
• A little stack from my Substack stack.
My open tabs are feeling particularly cozy. Here are a few Substacks worth clicking:
Family-Style French Onion Soup from Someday in Sonoma — bookmarked for a cool weekend afternoon when we need onions to warm the house.
When Crème Brûlée & Brioche Meet from June & Sundays — I mean, come ON.
18 Things I’m Very Into for Fall from Emily Schuman — I am always susceptible to a well-edited fall list, especially from our girl Emily.
Brown Buttered Squash Bake with Shells from Colu Henry — in rotation November thru March.
A Back-to-School Checklist for Adults from Platonic Love — becauseI will forever respond to the back-to-school impulse despite not actually going back to school.
• Hootie
It has been two full weeks since I learned that the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish is not, in fact, named Hootie. His name is Darius Rucker. I’m sorry, WHAT!? (It came up because Darius Rucker’s song Wagon Wheel came on the radio and I naively said, “This sounds like Hootie from Hootie & The Blowfish.”
“It is Hootie, but his name is Darius Rucker,” Will said.
There’s no Hootie!? Next I’ll find out Santa isn’t real.
Anyway, Let Her Cry remains one of the great heartbreak songs of the ’90s, even if I now have to live with the unsettling knowledge that no man named Hootie was involved. Maybe it’s better than way.
Enjoy your Sunday, friends! Make it a good one.
xo Joy
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