I wish I could give all of you a hug right now (or a warm handshake, if you aren't a hug person)
Oh boy, it sure has been an awful week, hasn't it? I mean, I feel like I've started this newsletter like that a lot in the past year and a half I've been doing it, but it's still so hard every time. I'm so angry and sad. I hope we can all take some time this weekend to talk to people we love, do something joyful, eat something delicious, do something creative just because it makes you happy, take a long hot bath with a very soothing book, and whatever else you need to do to take some space and time away from this terrible world.
Speaking of long hot baths, I had drinks with a friend last night who greeted me with "you look great!" and I said "I feel terrible!" (I'll get to the bath part in a second, I promise). First, I'm so glad to have friends I can say that to, and where we can talk for two hours about how hard life is right now and how incredibly angry we are and afterwards I get home and feel energized. And second, my skin does look particularly good right now! I was trying to figure out why, and I realized it might be this weird green mask I bought on a whim a month ago. It's a powder, and you scoop some of it into your hand with the included plastic scoop (which I immediately lost, I just use a spoon) and then add some water and rub it all over your face as soon as it's the right consistency, and then you let it sit there for 10-20 minutes. It never gets super crunchy and drying like mud and clay masks often do, it smells all earthy and herbal, and it's a fun bright green, and that alone makes me happy. I've been doing it about two or three times a week for the past few weeks, and my skin seems to love it. It's pretty messy (I mean, if you're like me) so I do it in the bathtub, so that if it spills, oh well, my bath is green, no big deal.
Look, here's a delightful thing you can watch right now that might bring you some joy. If you haven't seen the videos about this day in September, they're just the perfect burst of goodness. Here's the first one, and then here's the one from last year, and the one from today was so good it made me cry a little, and I know I'm not the only one.
This week I've been thinking a lot about The List. It's a book about a bunch of high school girls, and the way they get treated at school, and the story and the writing are both fantastic. High school girls, and the way we treat them, and the way we treat the women they become, have been on my mind a lot lately.
Earlier this week, I was eating my lunch -- farro with chicken sausage, roasted garbanzo beans, and roasted broccoli -- and realized I was picking out and eating all of the broccoli first. So I tweeted something about my love of roasted broccoli. BOY did I not expect people to get that excited about broccoli. As I type this, over 1300 people have liked that tweet, and I think it's gotten more replies than anything I've ever tweeted except for that time I asked for people to tell me about buying their wedding dress. I am so glad to see all the broccoli love out there! I think where most people go wrong when roasting vegetables is either not using enough olive oil, or not making the heat high enough: I'm always somewhere between 425 and 450, and I use enough olive oil so there's a good sheen. Honestly, my roasted broccoli recipe is not much more complicated than that tweet -- I usually add some chopped garlic, I often add chopped anchovies, I almost always add red pepper flakes, I sometimes grate parmesan over it as soon as it gets out of the oven, and I do like a hit of lemon juice at the end, but I don't always want that. I like some of the other suggestions people have given me: miso paste, sesame oil, smoked paprika (a spice I adore for almost everything), sherry vinegar, sesame seeds. Enjoy your broccoli!
I also needed to bake the other night, so I made a pan of the brownies that I gave you the recipe for over a year ago, after a good week. The great thing about these brownies is the recipe tells you to beat the mixture vigorously, and that was a REAL delight to do this week, let me tell you. Cooking is excellent at getting out your aggressions sometimes.
Have a good weekend, everyone. I really really hope you do.
Jasmine
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