Friends! Hello. Happy Friday. Today I’m telling you what’s saving my life, a term from the great Barbara Brown Taylor that describes those things, big or small, that are getting you through. What’s making your days a little better? What’s making you feel a little more like yourself? Here are some of mine in these spring days.
Whatever your spring days look like, I hope something’s saving your life. I think you’re doing great.
(Heads up that I’ll be on vacation next week, and so will Heart Eyes. See you on the other side!)
What’s Saving My Life:
I’ve recently been on a kick of buying a whole pineapple every Sunday, cutting it up, and snacking on it all week. I adore fresh pineapple, especially while I wait for the cherries and the peaches to come to me; cutting it up and carving the eyes out takes me about ten minutes and can be moderately sticky, but having pineapple whenever I want it is such a top-tier treat, maybe because of the work it requires.
I went on a whole straight-jeans journey this winter, and after many years of skinny-jeans life it took my eyes a while to adjust to the ones I landed on…but something shifted recently and now I’m so happy with them. They’re comfy, they’re cute, everywhere I go I’m thinking “why yes, these jeans are great, thank you for noticing.” Which is a lovely way to feel.
I have been piling Trader Joe’s Sweet-Hot Jalapeños on everything lately, because why wouldn’t you, and recently the internet encouraged me to try slicing up fresh jalapeños and putting them in the jar of brine when I run out, to keep the party going. Have I discovered the fountain of sweet-hot jalapeño youth? Time will tell, but it can’t be bad, right?
Ooh, have you been listening to The Recipe with Kenji and Deb? It’s the new podcast with my beloved Smitten Kitchen Deb and all-around food wizard Kenji Lopez-Alt, and I’m enjoying it so much. It’s just cozy cooking chatter with two obvious good eggs; my favorite thing is how they’re clearly both excellent cooks and recipe developers with the utmost respect for one another, yet Kenji has A Science for everything while Deb is running mostly on vibes, the requirements of her children, and the whims of her own highly specific palate. It’s nice! There’s room for all of us here. I especially liked the pancake episode, maybe because I do in fact love Deb’s tall, fluffy pancakes.
Knitting-specific, and apologies to those of you who understand none of these words in this order: I’m furious at the way the current “add a strand of laceweight floof” trend is just a ploy to get us to buy twice as much yarn per sweater, but I also just cast on Hannah Fettig’s old-school Lightweight Pullover in some speckly Into the Whirled Pakokku Sock held with undyed Black Squirrel alpaca laceweight—and I would be lying my head off if I said this fluffy, watercolored, probably-too-warm situation wasn’t giving me life. I cannot stop knitting “just to the next speckle,” to see how it looks, and I hope I never get over the thrill of yarn changing color.
I’ve pumped the brakes a bit on my winter nail polish overhaul, but not before acquiring a few more colors that have proven to be literal bright spots in recent months: Nuance (a great everyday peachy-pink), Can’t Lose (perfectly bright/ultraviolet in a way that doesn’t come across in photos), OJBH (gold: it’s a neutral!) and OBVI (can only be described as a party in a bottle). I also keep coming back to the aforementioned Honest & True (baby blue, a surprise hit for me). Who knows? Maybe you also need some color in your life, to match the flowers busting out all over.
What to Bake: Strawberries-and-Cream Biscuits
Are you ready for an easy, can’t-lose spring side to either treat yourself or bring anywhere and everywhere? I’ve made these Smitten Kitchen Strawberries-and-Cream Biscuits many times and they’re always a hit—because really, what’s not to love?
Deb calls these biscuits, but they’re close cousins to some of her excellent scone recipes—that is, cream-enriched and tender. (There are many uninspiring scones out there, but Deb’s aren’t among them.) And the sliced strawberries are…not the icing on the cake. They’re the strawberries in the biscuits! They’re sweet-tart little jewels for you to happen upon mid-bite, and therefore perfect. In my life, a batch of these recently made themselves at home among an Easter spread of egg dishes, veggie tarts, and salads, but as I said, they seem quite welcome wherever they go—and we’re just entering their peak season. You might like them, too.
(I suppose this is also where I talk to you about my pastry blender, which was a gift from Friend of Heart Eyes Sharon twenty years ago and which I believe to be the One Pastry Blender to Rule Them All. It has stiff, sturdy blades instead of wires, it does the job quickly and with no bending or warping or fuss, and I consider it a real quality-of-life upgrade for anyone who bakes.)