Setting the Table: Vol. 20
Knicks by 1, Master Flop & a 28-day Kitchen resource JUST for you!
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 costumes are back safely in their garment bags, and Millie is at her dad’s for the next couple of weeks.
Broadway Dance Center’s end-of-year showcase was this past Sunday, and Millie was amazing on stage. Simply beautiful ballet performance and a goofy jazz number, both SO representative of the spectrum of awesome of our girl. All the dancers were amazing, but when the contemporary group hit the stage, the entire room was in awe. These kids were dancing their truth...full bodies, nothing held back, the type of dance you feel in your chest even from twenty rows back. It was extraordinary and totally something I think Millie NEEDS in her life…that’s the therapy I want her to experience. Hell, maybe I want to experience it, too…(looks up adult summer dance classes…)
Millie has been all ballet and buns since her early days in Charlotte and then in New York at BDC in 2020. She turned to me at the end of it all and said she DEFINITELY wants to do contemporary next semester. Needless to say, I already had it in my BDC cart before we even left the building.
There are these small but incredible moments where you watch your kid see a thing she wants and just...asks for it. No secondhand embarrassment, no wondering if she’s good enough, no surveying the room first. She saw something she wanted and moved toward it…ugh, I want to be more like her when I grow up.
After the show, she headed to her dad’s until graduation, and Yas and I had the apartment to ourselves. We used this time to make spectacularly lazy and leisurely decisions, seeing multiple movies in the span of days. In particular, Masters of the Universe this past Monday night. I will explain more fully below, but suffice it to say: we came home and put on the 1987 version to cleanse our minds of the trash they call a remake, and I have never been more grateful that the ‘87 version still streams.
We are counting down until Yas, Millie, and I head south in a few weeks to visit family in SC. We will drop Millie off for her annual week at Camp Nonni & Poppi’s, and then Yas and I will escape for a few days in Charleston…just the two of us. He’s never been, and I cannot wait to show him one of my favorite southern cities (and former home!). Chubbys and R Kitchen are already locked on the schedule. If you have a hidden gem we simply CANNOT miss, let me know!
Now, let’s set the table for the weekend…
THE GRAZING PLATE
(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)
Masters of the Universe (2026)
In what was supposed to be a modern version of the mythology I grew up with, but as it were…this film was abysmal. I was hoping for a retelling of the 1987 story with actual stakes and actual heart. What we got was He-Man played as someone who was dumb as bricks…there were jokes where gravity should’ve been, and a plot that seemed ashamed of its own source material. We came straight home, put on the original, and immediately felt better. I spent years watching this film as a child and loved it so much…save yourself the money and the 2 hours of life wasted …stick to the 80s:)The Conundrum of Cook or Get Off the Pot from Tamar Adler
About designing a dream kitchen and freezing completely at the blank slate of choices. Her answer: start with one heavy, impractical, beautiful object you already love (a stone sink from Craigslist, a Viking stove from a late-night auction) and let the kitchen grow from there. Start with the life you already have in motion and let the design catch up to it. She also writes about her borrowed and inherited kitchens over the years and what they all had in common, and I loved that part most. The whole piece is an argument for constraints as the most generous place to start.Every Blooming Thing from Large Hope
Jes Scoville pulls a Clarissa Pinkola Estes quote that’s hanging out in my mind this week…“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul…shines like gold in dark times.” She writes about going up a canyon and literally trying to notice every blooming thing...trying to light herself from the inside out when the outside is too much. Read this one ideally somewhere outside. I needed this.
THE UTENSILS
(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)
The 28-Day Kitchen…FOR YOU!
If Crying in the Walk-In landed for you this past Sunday, I have built a tool this week for what comes next. The Freckled Fork 28-Day Kitchen resource is live this week, and paid subscribers get first access. I’ve been working on this for a bit, and it’s meant to be something you actually return to, week after week, as the cycle moves, and will get updated seasonally!
This month’s recipes are late spring/summer forward, and for each phase, you get a list of foods to use and which to avoid. I’ll update it each month with new recipes and pairings, so for only $5/month for recipes that you can use and help on your journey of regulations and balance? I think it’s a steal <3
THE VESSELS
(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)
I’m totally knee-deep in the hormones and histamine rabbit hole over here…it’s all SO connected…
The Shared Biology of MCAS, Histamine, (h)EDS, POTS, Endometriosis, PMDD, Neurodivergence, CPTSD, Chronic Pain, and Lipedema from Amanda Panacea
I know that title is CRAZY long…but read this piece when you have a moment. If you’ve ever carried a collection of symptoms that didn’t seem to belong together, that doctors kept treating as separate and unrelated, this piece will feel like someone finally sat down and mapped all the wires running through the same wall. Amanda draws the shared biological thread underneath conditions that appear together far more frequently than medicine has historically been willing to acknowledge. This is the one that’ll make you feel less like something is wrong with you and more like you’ve just been working with incomplete information all along.Why Do Women Respond to the Same Hormone Fluctuations Differently? from Liminal Medicine
Sara, RN goes deep on histamine, GABA receptor sensitivity, PMDD, and perimenopausal AUDHD, and why two women with the exact same hormone panel can be living in completely different bodies. What she argues is that the whole “hormone balance” conversation has been starting in the wrong place...the hormones matter, absolutely, but so does the terrain they’re landing in. The gut, the GABA receptors, the accumulated histamine load...all of it shapes the outcome before the hormones even arrive. Pair this one with the piece above and give yourself a couple hours.
THE GLASSWARE
(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)
Nostalgia, You Sneaky Thing from Kate Bowler
Kate names the science behind something I’ve been feeling for weeks now. There’s a thing researchers call the “reminiscence bump”...the songs you loved between ages fourteen and twenty-two. They are the ones that become anchors for your sense of who you are for the rest of your life. The music might not have actually peaked in that window, but YOU did. You were forming, and those songs were there when it was happening, and they carry the shape of who you were becoming.She builds this into a summer practice around nostalgia, using it as a way of remembering who you still are. She also asks readers to share: what song takes you straight back to summer at seventeen the second you hear it? Mine is already cued up in the playlist. You know the one.
THE NAPKIN
(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)
When You Stop Chasing Potential — In Jobs, Men, and Versions of Yourself
from A Tiny Bit of Advice
Jenae Green made her vision board smaller this year...fewer images, more commitment. And then she wrote about the pattern underneath it: falling in love with what something could be, what someone might become, what version of yourself you keep planning to eventually build...and then staying. In the job that overpromised, waiting on the dynamic that kept underdelivering, eyes still on the same board year after year, giving every big scary thing a revised deadline instead of a real one.
“Stop donating your potential to things that aren’t ready for it,“ she writes. “The energy you extend to jobs that overpromise, relationships that underdeliver, and versions of yourself you keep drafting but never build…redirect it. It was always yours.”
Taking things at face value isn’t pessimism…it’s self-respect…and sometimes the most honest thing you can do for yourself is just believe what’s actually in front of you.
THE DESSERT PLATE
(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)
The Summer Solstice Pantry Box opens for pre-orders NEXT WEEK.
Everything I love most about this exact moment in the season, all in one adorable box (or bag or something, let’s see what it all fits in!). I’ve been testing various market finds and pairings for the past couple of weeks and there are some combos in here that will hopefully make you smile…BIG.
Full recipe notes and a printed recipe book in this one, along with another custom artwork card by my dear friend Rose and handmade pottery pieces by the ever-talented Sarah Buffaloe.
If you want to get in on the goodness, stay tuned for the order list...this is a SUPER small batch – only 15 available – and last time, they sold out in less than 24 hours. And for my people in the south, I’ll be in SC from June 26th-July 4th, so I could bring your goodies down with me! Huzzah!
The Knicks won Game 4 last night by ONE POINT.
OG with the tip-in…I watched the last 5 min. from my phone in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping…and I’m not even a sports person. I have been on record with "yay, go team" as my entire relationship to organized athletics for most of my adult life. And yet. This city has done something to me…to all of us…and I think we are all fully, completely, embarrassingly invested in this team right now. The energy in New York when the Knicks are in a playoff run is something I cannot explain to anyone who doesn't live here...it's in the subway, it's in the bodegas, it's in the way strangers make eye contact on the street when something just happened. The whole city is rooting for the same thing at the same time and it feels absolutely electric to be here for it. I'm a Knicks fan now. I said what I said. GO. KNICKS.
Happy Thursday, turkeys!
xo, Jess
Setting the Table drops every Thursday. This Sunday on The Steady Table: What You're Actually Hungry For...Your body isn't failing you…it's filing a report. I'll meet you there. ♥
Thank you for including me! I love these roundups!