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.

Oh crap...I didn’t send a Setting the Table last week...I didn’t even write on Sunday or Thursday last week....I was catching up from life...wrote more about it here this past Sunday: Season to Taste

And today I didn’t post this morning like I normally do...but it’s almost 9pm so I’m going to put this out tonight and it counts...although....nobody is literally keeping score :) I know...

I guess I’ve also got post-event exhaustion after last night’s Freckled Fork event at the Nomad Clubhouse...one with a reception for 70 followed by a 3-course dinner for 20…all with epic rooftop views of the Empire State Building...things are looking up for your girl and her little culinary venture, fingers crossed there’s more of that in the future!

Millie heads back to her dad’s tomorrow and this time, the two weeks just flew by...I feel like we were JUST getting into a groove, the sweet-spot of a settled routine and now she’s gone for two weeks and then we have to do the whole thing again. The first week is really a recalibration-week…to our household, our rules, our ways of doing things and then the second week is where the glory lives. The recalibration is tough, especially as Millie girl navigates tween-dom and emotions and hormones and middle school, etc. She also has to deal with her own version of code-switching between households...what flies with one household doesn’t jive with the other and vice versa. It’s a lot for an 11yr old to navigate, honestly…so we try to make it the best we can for her when she’s here and my writing time gets scaled WAY down as I’m running around more during those two weeks on with Millie...school drop-off/pick-up...dance multiple days a week, the homework battle (iykyk) and the bedtime negotiations...on top of working and said FF gigs...lots of juggling these two weeks and well...the writing just doesn’t happen as naturally.

So here’s what I’ve been reading lately on Substack...and by reading I mean, these are the pieces that caught my eye on the subway to and from work this week…these are the reads that kept me captivated or made me think twice, hope you enjoy them too!

Pull up a chair ♥

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

I Started Making a Magazine of My Year
Nicole makes an actual magazine of her year…saving what would otherwise get thrown away: a whimsical label from a wine bottle, birthday card envelopes and more. She's on her third issue now, and her memory has gotten sharper since she started. More present in moments because she's already thinking about how she'll document them. "It's less about documenting a perfect year, and more about proving to yourself that there's always something worth remembering." Be still my scrap-booking heart and my former graphic designer brain…this is right up my alley…starting mine tomorrow…maybe:)

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

The Mindfulness of Making
Jenna opens with one observation: anxiety lives in the future, peace lives in the present. Then one practice: pick up a single object and draw it. A leaf, a pinecone, whatever’s in front of you. Drawing demands close attention to what’s actually there, rather than what your mind assumes is there. “What better way to anchor yourself to the present than drawing from observation?” The goal is the attention itself, not the finished work. I need more of this stillness in my life for sure…
The Old Model Is Cracking and Creatives Are the First to Feel It
Emma sat down for coffee with fellow freelancers and they all admitted the same strange thing: none of them wanted new clients. Not because they’d stopped caring about their work, but because they didn’t want the old version of it, the one that ended in burnout inside someone else’s definition of growth. She pulls in Richard Rudd’s “new paradigm”: the shift from “how can I make as much money as possible?” to “how can I create something genuinely valuable?” The Freckled Fork is in this season RIGHT now…and in the midst of growth, I’m constantly focused on growing but with intention…with care.

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

Wait...Did Our Parents Have It Right All Along?
Ryan’s kindergartner throws tantrums when she can’t immediately master her seat work…Ryan called her mom about it…”take away all their little toys and stop talking to them like their opinions matter all the time.” She’s in therapy every week, after all, untangling her own childhood…and yet something about how she was parenting wasn’t working either. “Their feelings still matter. They just don’t always get to be in charge.” A momocracy, she calls it. (Full disclosure: I said “f*ck that noise” to my 11-year-old last week when she threw away pages 9-15 of her homework packet and just thought no one would notice. Every last gentle-parenting-Miss-Becky-ism went straight out the window. Blythewood/Southern Sass came out, I stand by it.)
When You Believe You’re Unworthy of Love
The belief takes root slowly…years of caring deeply and discovering, again and again, that the people you love don’t care as deeply back. The friendships you’re always the one keeping alive…the connections that meant everything to you and barely anything to them. She lays it all out, and then turns: haven’t you loved people exactly like that? Insecure, sensitive, falling apart, needing constant reassurance? And didn’t you love them anyway? Worth a consideration (and a strong read for this chronic people-pleaser).

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

From a Matriarchal Perspective, The Fascist Tech Bros Have Already Lost
Sarah Noack opens with a line she heard at a conference a year and a half ago: “Either matriarchy is the future, or there won’t be a future.“ In a domination-based system, power is measured by how much control you can exert over other people and resources. In a matriarchal framework, power is measured by how well you can sustain life. From that reframe, the current obsession with building AI powerful enough to potentially destroy humanity starts to look exactly like what it is. “Power doesn’t have to belong to anyone to exist. It can simply rest between us. It can rest in the relationships we build, the knowledge we share, the food we grow, the children we raise and the resources we redistribute.” Such an insightful read…say it louder for the people in the back…whether you agree or not…see below for more on the lost art of having an opinion…
I Laugh to Keep from Crying
Virginia’s grandmother Joy died seven years ago today…and still feels it so heavily. Virginia’s life has been marked by what she calls The Horrors: her mother shot in the head by her father when Virginia was six weeks old…her grandmother became her mother…and her father cycled in and out of prison for forty years…with Virginia eventually testifying to keep him in prison for live. She got through all of it the only way she knew how: laughing and crying, at the same time. “Had you told me five years ago I’d be writing my second book and sharing my love of thrifting with over a million people...that I’d pass that Joy FM billboard one day and smile because I would know, down to the deepest part of my bones, that she is so proud of me? I would have laughed. Hysterically.” I loved this one…couldn’t put it down.

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THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

You Could’ve Been Doing Whatever You Want
Hannah opens with the spotlight effect: researchers made people wear an embarrassing Barry Manilow t-shirt into a room of students. The wearers guessed about half the room would notice and remember the shirt. Fewer than 25% did. Same result with Bob Marley, Martin Luther King Jr., Jerry Seinfeld on the shirt instead. People consistently overestimate how much others are watching. The real cost is self-restriction: the outfit not worn, the thing not posted, the opinion kept to yourself, the hobby pre-rejected before anyone even saw you try it. “Whole possible versions of you never get enough oxygen to become real.” “You could’ve been doing whatever you wanted this whole time.” (I felt this one deep after missing last week. My four devout readers: I see you, I love you, and I know you have more grace for me than I have for myself. My mom, who actually DOES wait for this post every Thursday morning and called me out when I implied she didn’t…hi Mom, you’re my best cheerleader and I love you. ❤️)
We’ve Lost the Art of Having an Opinion
Emma opens with the disclaimer that now precedes every opinion piece online: “this is simply my own opinion, I understand other people may have a different experience from me, and that’s completely fine.” Then asks: when did we lose the ability to tell when something is meant for us? The world has split into opinions stated so ambivalently there’s no reason to respond, and opinions that polarize for clicks. “State your thoughts loudly or not at all.” I catered an event last night where the conversation ran right-leaning all night and I rode home thinking about hospitality for an hour: it’s for everyone, and so is the ability to sit across from someone who thinks differently and actually talk.
When the Substack High Wears Off
Reeze woke up every morning in her first months on Substack checking if the subscriber tooth fairy had come overnight. She laughed in bed at midnight with fellow writers…daydreaming up notes in the shower…then went to Hawaii for two weeks and swam with sea turtles and hiked Pololu Valley and shouted at the World Cup. What was been building under the surface: the notes required daily to stay visible, the posts that take hours, the reading and commenting and responding, the note you post apologizing for being “behind on your reading” as if anyone had the authority to demand that. People in her circle have disappeared without warning, people whose cats she knew, whose mother fights she knew, whose deepest shames she knew, and now they’re just gone. Maybe this was underlying my absence last week…maybe a little fatigue from the consistent and regimented writing every week since January 1.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

Season to Taste
I didn't write for a week…I spent it on my hands and knees building and installing new cabinets and an island in my kitchen, clearing out the Freckled Fork catering closet that's been making me quietly feral for the better part of a year. The piece is about what happened that same week: a book event where they walked us through a visualization of our ten-years-from-now selves, and my 53yr old showed up in the biggest, boldest, most asymmetrical earrings, wearing patterns that had no business together, completely calm. She asked me why I don't trust myself…I asked her if it was all worth it…hell yes, she said.

Happy Thursday, turkeys!
More of this next week <3

xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. Long-form essay on Sundays…
the perfect read for…I don't know…maybe with that cup of coffee you'll
have first thing in the morning. See you there. ♥

Setting the Table: Vol. 37