Giving you all a great big hug from 6 feet away
Hi Friends,
This is all really hard. Here's a secret: sometimes I send out a cheerful version of this newsletter when I'm not in a great and feeling far from cheerful, and let me tell you, it's absolutely not in me to do that right now. I hope you're all safe and staying home as much as humanly possible, unless you're a health care worker or grocery store employee or someone else essential, in which case thank you so so much for everything you're doing. All I'm going to do here is give you some book recommendations and some recipes that might help you distract yourself and nourish yourself in the coming days, and I hope they help.
Four years ago, during the 2016 election, I made a big list on Twitter of books I love. Someone reminded me of that last week, so I've started doing daily book recommendations again. Here's the link to the thread (which also links to the 2016 thread); many of the books are ones I've recommended in this newsletter before, but not all, so I hope you get lots of new books to read during this time. Lots of independent bookstores are offering free or low cost shipping right now, and if it's at all possible for you, it would be great to order from them, since so many are hurting and will hurt for a long time to come. My local indie bookstore, East Bay Booksellers, is doing so, and I love this bookstore a lot and would be really happy if you ordered from them, but also you can do this from whatever indie is in your city or state.
If you have a bunch of food now and more time at home and want to do more cooking, lots of people have been jumping in to give advice. Julia Turshen has a bunch of advice on her saved Instagram story highlights, Helen Rosner (food writer for the New Yorker) is asking people to email her questions, Alison Roman has been answering lots of questions on Twitter, Samin Nosrat is doing a podcast just for this, and I'm sure there are lots more. I have nowhere near the same level of expertise any of those people do, so here are a collection of recipes I'm going to make soon (all links are to previous newsletters, so scroll down): pork chile verde, enchiladas, brownies, Samin Nosrat's foccacia, butternut squash stew, golden buns, and Nigella's dense chocolate loaf cake. I'm going to try to soothe myself by making cinnamon rolls this weekend; if I manage to do it, I'll send you all the recipe for those next week.
Take care of yourselves. Video chat with your friends and family, hug your kids, cuddle your dog, hide under the covers, wear your coziest pajamas, do what you need to do. Sending you all so much love.
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party and Royal Holiday.
And preorder Party of Two!