The Sunday Collection 7.12.26
Grab your picnic blanket, because today’s collection is food-centric! As we enter peak stone fruit season and our backyard raspberry bushes beg for daily pickings, my mind is on summer baking. (I also feel the need to bake all of our produce because who wants to get an intestinal parasite in the summer for goodness sakes?!!!) I’m also simplifying our meal plans by only prepping for two “real” meals per week, and it’s helped to decrease my overwhelm. After all, what is summer for if not to snack on bits and bobs for dinner instead of turning on the oven?
What are your favorite summer recipes or cooking hacks?
The Sunday Collection
The only non-edible item in today’s collection is my new favorite foundation. I’ve been wearing the Kosas Revealer Skin-Improving Foundation with SPF 25, and it’s perfect for summer. I used to have super oily skin, but as I age it’s more combination—so I prefer a light serum-like foundation with skincare nutrients over full coverage make-up, even if my dark spots and scars show through. Since using this medium coverage foundation, I’ve noticed my skin getting clearer and brighter. I wear extra SPF under it for outdoor days, but I appreciate the little boost of sun protection it provides.
If you’re a Wisconsinite like me, you know that brats are a summer staple. The best summers include a brat for dinner at least once a week. I grabbed Aldi’s Brioche Pretzel Buns for our last grill out, and they were a fabulous match for charred brats with sauerkraut.
As we entered a stretch of activities for last week’s holiday celebrations, I knew my meal prep needed to be 1. minimal and 2. filled with veggies. I made a simple tortellini salad with cheese tortellini, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, balsamic, and mozzarella. Since I already had the veggies for it, plus chicken breasts, I prepped white rice, grilled chicken, and store bought tzatziki sauce for Greek chicken bowls. I’ll definitely make this pairing of easy-to-prep meals again, next time with farmer’s market produce.
I just froze a bunch of fresh cherries, raspberries, nectarines and peaches. We’ll likely eat some up in smoothies next week, but I’m dreaming of hosting a backyard garden party with iced tea, scones, and a make-your-own-bouquet situation. Scone recipes I bookmarked:
Wreck by Catherine Newman
I read Sandwich when it came out two summers ago. I gulped it down in one sitting, immensely enjoying Newman’s humor and voice. I didn’t love it enough to read Wreck in a hurry, but I’m so glad I downloaded the audiobook on Libby last week. I found Wreck to be a more cohesive story, in which we meet the same characters from Sandwich in their “real lives” instead of their Cape Cod vacation cocoon. Rocky, with her wry wit and keen observations, narrates her way through everyday moments, a local tragedy loosely connected to her own family, parenting adult children, and facing one’s own mortality in the wake of parental loss and a difficult diagnosis. Newman excels at crafting an idiosyncratic narrator who is, in all her specificity, so easy to relate to. I thought of one of my favorite passages the other day as I opened a medicated cream from the doctor. Rocky, dealing with a new dermatological issue, thinks about how she adores her creams and ointments, keeps them in a bin in her bathroom, the ones with the pointy cap to open the tube. What a small, silly thing—but I’ll remember it each time I open a new prescription cream. I already wrote a piece on what to read if you loved Sandwich, and all of those recommendations fit Wreck as well, but I’d add A Suit or a Suitcase: Poems by Maggie Smith to the mix.
And Then There Was The One by Martha Waters
As a terminally online bookworm who keeps up with the publishing calendar, the biggest treat is to browse a bookstore and find new(ish) releases that fell off my radar. I got such a rush when I scanned And Then There Was The One in The Well Red Damsel last spring! It had all the made-for-me buzzwords: 1930s setting, quaint British village, amateur detective, roguish investigation partner, SCONES. This ode to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers made for cozy summer reading, with all the tropes and tricks you’d want in a golden age detective novel, plus smooching (open door, low steam—two peppers? I’ll give it to my mom). While I relished the reading experience for its novelty, banter, and British-isms, I would have preferred to follow the main couple through a few more mysteries. I wasn’t fully convinced of their relationship’s staying power by the end of one novel, and I would love to read a full mystery series of their exploits. This is a perfect read for fans of the Lady Hardcastle series by T.E. Kinsey, so long as you like a little swooning with your tea and small town murder.
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