A gift guide (of sorts) and THE WEDDING PARTY!
Good afternoon! As promised last week, I present The Wedding Party!
Here's more about the book, including an excerpt, over at Bustle, and this page of my website has lots of preorder links! I love this cover so much (especially how sparkly it is!). It comes out on July 16, 2019, and I'm excited to share it with all of you! I genuinely can't believe my third book is just a few months away from publication; this has been a wild few years, and I'm so so grateful for all of you who have been there for the ride.
A friend was asking me for some gift ideas earlier this week, so I thought a good idea for my newsletter this week would be a tiny gift guide of books and other things I've loved (and have either been given or purchased for myself) over the past few years, with some suggestions of who to give this to. Many of these things I've mentioned in my newsletter in the past, so where I have, I'll link to that original recommendation as well as where you can purchase the item. (And fyi, I don't get anything for any of these recs, and none of these are referral links, I just do it to share the goodness with you all!)
For your teenage cousin: The Aztec Secret mask, along with a bottle of apple cider vinegar and a squeeze bottle of honey -- I love this mask, which is a pretty heavy duty pore cleanser mask. The directions say to combine it with apple cider vinegar or water; I use apple cider vinegar, but I also add a drop of honey, which makes the mask a little more moisturizing and less harsh, and also makes it smell good.
For your friend who loves The Great British Baking Show: One of the double handed oven mitts they always use on the show. I really wanted one and got one for Christmas last year and I LOVE it, and use it constantly.
Anyone who needs a good hug: an Ugg robe, which I splurged on a few years ago and have never regretted. It's so warm and cozy.
For your friend who loves Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat on Netflix: the cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, of course! Some other cookbooks I love and recommend: Zuni, Cravings, and Baking From My Home To Yours.
For your dad, or for anyone who likes things like true crime or loved Homegoing: Bad Blood or There There, two books I recommended in the same newsletter earlier this year!
For your mom, or anyone who loves stories about women and the choices we make and race in America: An American Marriage, or Becoming, or All You Can Ever Know.
For anyone who needs a good laugh: We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, which made me laugh so hard I almost blacked out.
For your friend who loves mysteries: all of the Sherry Thomas Lady Sherlock series. I love these books so much; I wrote about them in this newsletter last year after I read the first book, and I've since read all three and they're all so good.
For your friend who loves good books and also football: Intercepted. I loved football for many years, and now I can't watch it anymore because of the domestic violence and the concussions and everything else, and all of that made me love this book so much. It's a really fun and warmhearted book about a woman who falls in love with a football player, but it doesn't ignore all of the difficult stuff about football. And I just finished Fumbled, the next book in the series, and it's fantastic, so you want to be ready for it when it comes out in April.
For your sister in law who is always talking about self care: this face mask (which I talked about in this newsletter a few months ago) and some of these terry cloth headbands I bought myself and absolutely love.
For your cousin in grad school: a heating pad. I told you all about a heating pad a while ago, but I would like to formally retract my recommendation of that heating pad and tell you to get this one. That one broke, and when I got my new one I realized how much better the new one is, because the old one always got disconnected from the plug, and I would have to plug it back in and then unplug and plug it in at the outlet again, but my current one literally never does that, and is far superior in every way.
For your friend with a whole lot of curly hair: the Shhhower cap. I love this thing; I only wash my hair every five days or so, which means I use a shower cap the majority of the time, and I know this shower cap is super expensive, but this is why it's a great gift, because no one wants to spend that much on a shower cap for themselves, but everyone who uses a shower cap a lot will realize how superior this one is. It can hold a ton of hair, it dries easily, and the elastic hasn't stretched or broken for me (and I got mine for Christmas last year, and have used it consistently since then).
I have so many more books and products I could rave about I could go on for twice as long, but I've been ignoring the rest of my to do list for way too long. I hope you found something for someone in all of that!
Now for a recipe that I got from one of the above cookbooks and then...tweaked a lot. I've made the Scalloped potatoes from Cravings a number of times for holiday meals, and while the recipe as written is great, the way I did it for Thanksgiving this year I liked even better. First, she uses both bacon and ham in her recipe, which was a little too heavy for me for a holiday side, and also taking that out made the dish work for the vegetarians at the table. Second, the original recipe calls for 5 pounds of potatoes, which is way too much for the number of people I usually cook for, so I cut it in half. And third, this year, I decided what this recipe needed was cheese, so I added a layer of cheese in the middle and another layer on top, and it was perfect.
Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes
2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 3/4 cup whole milk
6 ounces gruyere, shredded
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Peel the potatoes, halve them crosswise, and slice each half as thinly as you can get it (I do this by hand because mandolins often seem like more trouble than they're worth for me, but you can do it any way you want to). Rinse and dry the potatoes well, and transfer to a large bowl and combine with the onion. In a heavy bottomed pot, melt the butter on medium low heat. Add the garlic and the salt and pepper and stir for about a minute, then whisk in the flour until smooth. Slowly whisk in the milk until the mixture is combined and has no flour lumps, then bring to a boil, and keep whisking for about five minutes and remove from the heat.
Grease a casserole dish* with butter, then layer half of the potato and onion mixture in. Cover the potatoes with half of the sauce, and then half of the cheese. Repeat with the rest of the potato mixture, sauce, and cheese. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for an hour and thirty minutes, and then turn the heat up to 400, uncover the dish, and bake for another 15-20 minutes.
*You could use a variety of sizes here; I used a deep-ish oval one this time, but a few different sizes would work fine.
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date and The Proposal, and preorder The Wedding Party!