Setting the Table: Vol. 19
Ballet buns, chili butter & the space between...
Every Thursday, I'm setting the table for your weekend…a little collection of reads, recipes, fun things, and whatever else caught my eye this week. It's the moment before the chaos when you get to decide what kind of experience you want. NOT a to-do list…just really sweet possibilities.
The bobby pins are sorted…the tights are laid flat & we are officially in the season of the large Mary Poppins-esque tote bag, the bun that’s begging to be perfect & the last few weeks before everything changes.
Broadway Dance Center’s end-of-year showcase is this weekend...a culmination of Millie’s weekly dance classes since last August. Costumes and buns and the particular organized hair-pulling chaos of getting a newly-hormonal eleven-year-old “stage-ready”. She’s danced at BDC since we first came to the city back in 2020, and I truly LOVE watching this child dance…the way she clicks in and does the damn thing, it’s really empowering. This year’s performance is hitting differently knowing it’s the last one before she’s officially a middle schooler.
After the show, she heads to her dad’s for the next few weeks until graduation. I always have BIG feelings when she leaves….ones like sadness, absence, etc., and yet...I also feel some feelings…the ones I guess you’re not really supposed to say out loud, but…
I have genuinely come to LOVE having a split/custody co-parenting schedule.
Equal time, set weeks, clean handoffs. It was so hard at first...I don’t think I have the words for how hard in that first season fresh off of our divorce…those were the weeks when the apartment went quiet and I spiraled into deep depression and guilt and shame. But somewhere in the years since, this time has become something else entirely.
The weeks Millie is with her dad are the weeks that we reset. Yas and I get to go on dates...we are AMC A-List members so movies are basically a weekly “after work” hang for us. The laundry gets done, the apartment gets deep-cleaned, Millie’s room gets decontaminated…and my nervous system gets to exhale in a way that feels impossible when I’m in full-on mom mode. And when she comes back, we all come back better. She comes back to us having had full quality time with her dad and Emily. And, Yas and I come back to her fully reset and rejuvenated. Quality over quantity isn’t only something people say. For us, it’s genuinely just how this works.
I know many of you are in it, or dreading it, or just entering it. It gets different…not necessarily easier or best in every way, but different in some really good ways.
Before she goes, though...WE DANCE.
Come set the table.
THE GRAZING PLATE
(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)
Tom Colicchio is closing Craft.
25 YEARS…Easily one of the most quietly influential restaurants this city has ever had...the restaurant that made component cooking a conversation, that shaped how a generation of cooks thought about ingredients…restraint…letting things be what they are. When a place like Craft closes, it’s worth sitting with what it’s actually telling us. The economics of dining in this city are genuinely brutal right now, and when titans with 25 years of earned reputation, awards, etc., decide they’re done, that’s not just a restaurant closing. That’s a signal…what does it mean? It deserves more than a news item and a sad Instagram post.Men’s Weaponized Bad Moods from Bad Woman
This one I sent to three people before I even finished reading it. The way it names what it’s naming...mood as a weapon, silence as a punishment, walking on eggshells as the intended result...it’s so precisely said. Read it, share it with the person you’re thinking of right now.
There Is No Way You Knew All This by Anna Lena van Iersel
She makes illustrated recipes...hand-lettered titles, painted kitchen objects, collaged newspaper backgrounds, ingredients rendered like small paintings on a page. I found her a few weeks ago and I am an absolute fan-girl of her work. The torta di ceci piece last week was a chef’s kiss. If you believe food is its own kind of visual act (I do), you need to check her out.
THE UTENSILS
(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)
Çilbır: Turkish Poached Eggs
Turkish eggs and I are having a moment. This one is in regular rotation in my kitchen and it should be in yours, too.
Poach your eggs (here’s my reel on getting a perfect poach every time). Mix plain Greek yogurt or labneh with a half clove of microplaned-garlic, salt and white pepper until smooth. In a small pan, melt butter over medium heat, pull it off the heat, and add a generous pinch of red chili flakes, the remaining half clove of garlic microplaned right in, and thinly sliced scallions. Let it sit for a minute...the residual heat does the work.
Spoon the yogurt onto your plate, nestle the eggs on top, and pour the chili butter over everything. Serve with a thick slab of grilled sourdough or toasted pita. Top with more scallions and herbs. It’s good…don’t be freaked out by the hot eggs in yogurt thing…it’s REALLY good, and you might just surprise your tastebuds…for the better!
THE VESSELS
(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)
Histamine is Trying to Get Our Attention from Liminal Medicine
This piece connected a lot of dots for me, especially right now as I'm deep in research for Sunday's Steady Table on hormones and food. The body keeps talking...histamine, inflammation, all of it...and most of us have been taught to mute the signal instead of reading it. Worth a slow read, especially if you've been dismissing symptoms as just stress or just getting older.
THE GLASSWARE
(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)
Amy Poehler’s Good Hangs
I listened to two this week...last week’s Lena Dunham episode and then Tom Holland this week...and both times I ended up completely charmed and also a little emotional when you realize you just genuinely like a person. Good Hangs isn’t just good, it’s GREAT. Listen to it on a walk or while you’re cooking or while you’re driving to pick someone up from somewhere. It will make the time feel like a gift.The Knicks won Game 1 last night! I am not a sports person in the traditional sense...my relationship with sports is mostly “yay, go team”...but there is something about this city when the Knicks are winning that makes living here ELECTRIC. New York City in a playoff moment is its own experience. I’m here for it. Yay, sports. Go Knicks.
Are you SCREAMING w/Millie’s playlist yet?
Save it and share it…sing it with someone, loudly. It has the BEST energy for these warm days and there is something very good for the nervous system about just opening your mouth and screaming along to Alanis in your kitchen.
THE NAPKIN
(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)
Our Authentic Self??
This section is slowly transforming to “the truth bombs my therapist dropped on me this week” so in staying on trend…let’s keep going.
I had a couple not-so-great social interactions over the past couple of weeks and some were eerily reminiscent of the awfully lonely and isolated ones that shaped my early childhood. Each time, I felt a wave of feelings that were SO nostalgic and familiar in the worst ways. I was talking through these and my therapist stopped me for a minute to ask… “When you go into those social settings, would you say that you are being your authentic self? Or are you putting on the version of yourself that you think will be the most accepted in that situation?”
My jaw dropped. I was literally about to spill out with “of course, especially when I don’t know anyone there I try to be my truest self, my most authentic self…” but then a knot got caught in my throat…nope…as a recovering chronic people-pleaser, I totally put on the most amenable version of myself that I think will be the most pleasing to the people there…and when I do that, I’m actually betraying my true self, I’m selling a different version and that’s why I leave those events feeling so depleted, so underwhelmed and so disappointed.
What will it look like (for you and for me) if we stay true to ourselves, what we like/dislike, who we really are, what we really care about, etc., and not try to fit the mold of whatever is the trend du jour?
THE DESSERT PLATE
(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)
An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler
I started listening to this on Spotify this week and I am absolutely eating up every word. Her voice, her philosophy, the way she writes about cooking as something intuitive and generous and already within you...now I completely understand why my closest friends have been recommending this book to me for months now. If you've been sleeping on it too, this is your sign. Start it this weekend.
The Freckled Fork Summer Solstice Pantry Box is in full-on prep mode this weekend, and I am SO ready to tell you what's in it. Next week I'll share the full contents but here's your preview: rhubarb, green garlic, cherries & chive blossoms. A few of my very favorite spring things, all in one place. Stay tuned.
Happy Thursday, turkeys!
xo, Jess
Setting the Table drops every Thursday. This Sunday on The Steady Table: The 28-Day Kitchen...your hormonal cycle and food, and why what you eat…and when…matters more than you may realize. I'll meet you there. ♥