Feed Yourself

I never learned cooking basics, so I’ve relied on recipes for most of my life. You want a grilled cheese sandwich? Let me pull my recipe card. Crap. We don’t have any basil.

Anyway, I finally figured out how to make simple, healthy dinners with prep time under 10 minutes. The below links aren’t recipes so much as skills I failed to acquire from my mom. Apologies if this is derp to you, but I keep coming back to these links, so I’m just putting them all here.

There are a LOT of words on those pages, so my cliff notes versions are below the links. For all of these, line your baking pan with aluminum foil so you can just throw the mess in the garbage and you don’t have to scrub the pan.

How to Bake Salmon from Better Homes and Gardens
Preheat your oven to 450. Salt and pepper the fish on both sides. Bake 8-15 minutes. It’s done when it’s “flaky and opaque,” i.e. you can flake bits off with a fork, and it doesn’t look raw inside. There’s probably a YouTube video somewhere if you feel hesitant.

Baked Chicken Breasts from Gimme Some Oven
I skip the brining, but you do you. Preheat to 450. Rub oil on the chicken, wash hands. Season both sides with salt, pepper, and maybe one other spice (parika, rosemary, thyme are good). Wash your hands again, raw chicken is like slimy poison. Wonder why we eat this. Bake 15 minutes.

Perfect Pork Tenderloin from Food.com
Preheat to 500. Before you throw it out, check the meat wrapper to see how much your tenderloin weighs. Season tenderloin with salt and pepper, maybe some mustard if you’re into that. Bake exactly 5.5 minutes per pound.

While the meat is baking, I steam a veggie, and dress some mixed greens. Bam! Food.

If you have ten-minute prep meals, please tell us. All of us are hungry.

Cozy

Mysig – A Swedish work that means snug. Literally, “to smile slightly with contentedness or comfort.”

Thanks for the elephant cozies, Laura.

Advent Grab Bags Are Pretty Fun

** SOLD OUT ** See you next year!

Making happy things! For happy fun times!

Advent Grab Bags are ready to order. The kit is a tiny Santa bag with a blindfold included. Every night, you or your kiddo can reach in for something that will make you nostalgic for your childhood.

Parents, this means you will not have to drive to three different stores to find toys that don’t have licensed cartoon characters on them. Big kids, you will not have to buy a dozen wishing fish just to get one for your significant other. Merry Christmas.

This year 20 percent of proceeds go to IntraHealth International. We hope to donate enough for a one-year training scholarship for two nurses. Those nurses go to a community that doesn’t have enough access to health workers, and then people can get better when they get sick. Ideal.

We only made 100, and unless demand is unexpectedly intense from the get-go, that’s all we’ll have time to make. So if you think you want one, get one! They are super fun.

Order Your Advent Grab Bag
Ages 4 and up
$35, plus shipping
20% of profits support IntraHealth (Hooray!)

Better Than Before, by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin is the author of The Happiness Project and she was a Mighty Summit attendee a few years back. Gretchen has a shiny brain — she’s globally curious, a voracious reader, knower of obscure and provable facts. Her most recent book on habits, Better Than Before, is the next best thing to sitting next to her at a dinner party.

The premise is that habits give you an autopilot option to help you through tough times, and preserve energy by lifting the burden of choices. The best parts of Better Than Before:

It’s helpful to begin with habits that most directly strengthen self control… We do well by tackling the habits hat help us to:
1. sleep
2. move
3 eat and drink right
4. unclutter

Counterintuitively, I often find it harder to make myself do something that I enjoy than something that I don’t enjoy… For some of us, it takes discipline to take pleasure.

Now is an unpopular time to take a first step.

The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

If I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn’t selfish.

We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.

VOCAB
inanition – lack of mental or spiritual vigor and enthusiasm

Booooooze! Halloween Drink Recipes Roundup

My Halloween drink recipes all in one place. Here’s to you and your sexy Ira Glass costume.

Bourbon Pumpkin Shakes

Persimmon Bobs

Halloween Spiked Cider

Vampire Wine

Killer Bloody Mary with Mushroom Skull Garnish

Halloween Jack O’ Lantern Cupcakes

I’m always looking for cute baked goods that don’t require a pastry chef course to execute. I found these jack’o’lantern cupcakes on Pinterest last year.

The full tutorial is over on The Bearfoot Baker. They were fun to do, did not frustrate me, and were a huge hit with the kiddos. Endorsed.

Acquisition! Highballs

I’m finishing a morning errand with Ozzy and he falls asleep just as I buckle him in to his car seat. He’s been ticked about car trips lately, so my first thought is, “I could go anywhere!”

We drive to my favorite antique store near Sebastapol. He wakes as we arrive and babbles in his carrier. He tries to sing along with the big band music, which is the best.

He laughs at everyone who stops to talk to him, and the counter ladies pass him around while I buy this set of highballs. Heavy in the hand, five bucks a pop.
Then we get a grilled cheese sandwich.

Advent Calendar Grab Bags

I know Halloween hasn’t even happened yet, but this is just a heads up. I’m making advent calendar grab bags again this year. So you finish glue-gunning your costume together while I stock up on rocket balloons and mini airplane gliders.

Twenty percent of the proceeds will go to a global health charity, I’ll let you know who when I have specifics. Unless there’s unexpectedly bonkers demand, I’m only planning to make a hundred or so, so mark your calendars for Monday November 2 and I’ll meet you back here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. If you haven’t decided on a costume yet, allow me to suggest sexy ghost.

Arms Up

Thanks for the photo Jenny!

I’m forty years old this morning, typing this while the sun comes up. When they learn I’m turning forty, people mostly ask if I’m okay with it. They have concerned faces because they can see the bony fingers of decrepitude encircling my neck.

Thanks for the photo, Miss Bex!

But I feel happy. Life is on a major upswing right now, and I’m riding this rollercoaster hill to the mothrafrocking top. I can barely even see the flags from here.

P.S. Everyone needs a giant pool flamingo.