Two fantastic books! A delicious and lazy recipe! And ROYAL HOLIDAY events!
It's a Monday newsletter and I have all sorts of news for you! First, I have a whole bunch of Royal Holiday events coming up, because it comes out just two weeks from tomorrow! I will be on the road for a whole lot of October, so please come out and see me if I'm coming to a city near you! Said cities are:
Oakland, October 1, at East Bay Booksellers with Daniel Ortberg;
San Francisco, October 2, for the Bad on Paper Live Podcast at Cobb's Comedy Club;
San Francisco, October 3, at Books Inc. Marina with Caille Millner;
Mountain View, October 4, at Books Inc. Mountain View with Kathy Wang;
Portland, OR, October 5, at Barnes and Noble Portland/Bridgeport with Sarah Smith;
Seattle, October 6, Third Place Books Seward Park with Nicole Cliffe;
Los Angeles, October 7, at the Studio City Library with Alisha Rai;
Boston, October 20, for the Boston Book Festival;
New York, October 21, at Word Bookstores Brooklyn with Christina Lauren and Hannah Orenstein;
Baltimore, October 22, at Greedy Reads;
Washington DC, October 23, at East City Bookshop, with Andie J. Christopher;
Winston-Salem, NC, October 24, at Bookmarks Bookstore;
Austin, TX, October 26, for the Texas Book Festival; and
Portland, OR, November 9, for the Portland Book Festival!
Details and updates about the events will be on the events page of my website! You can preorder the book now from any of the bookstores listed so it'll be there for you at the event, or you can order a signed copy from any of the stores and I can sign it for you when I'm there and they'll ship. And you can always preorder it from any of the places listed here!
I have two book recommendations for you today, and both books come out tomorrow! The first is Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson's new book. This is a slim book, just over 200 pages, and every square inch of it is perfect. It's about a complicated family, and love and sex and shame and joy and sorrow, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since I opened it. I get to be in conversation with Jacqueline Woodson about this book next week, at Booksmith in San Francisco, and I have no idea right now what I'm going to ask her because all I can think is "How did you do this? How did you write such a deeply emotional book that made me think and cry and feel so much?" It's a true joy to read, and I can't wait to talk to all of you about it. And the second book, is Josh Gondelman's Nice Try, a collection of essays that are as hilarious as they are thoughtful. Josh is truly as great as he seems from Twitter, where he goes around giving people pep talks, and his book is as kind and introspective and just plain funny as he is.
If you, like me, are the kind of person who gets over excited at farmers markets this time of year and buys all of the tomatoes, and then realizes a few days later that you have to do something with all of them, this is a recipe for you. (Or, as was the case with this recipe, pick a bunch of tomatoes from a friend's garden and then have that same realization). I've found it's very useful to keep a few recipes in my back pocket that are ways to easily cook a whole bunch of fruit and/or vegetables so I don't waste them all, and I'm so glad I found this one for slow roasted tomatoes years ago. All it takes is olive oil, salt, and time, pretty much, and the ability to have your oven on very low heat for a long time, which is another reason why it's a great recipe for this time of year -- there are still tons of tomatoes in the markets, but it's cooled down enough to actually turn on your oven. (I've sometimes done this overnight and set an alarm for when they need to come out of the oven if I don't want to heat up the house during the day.) I've seen many versions of this recipe (some of them use garlic, some of them use fresh herbs, some of them use dried herbs) but the standard is olive oil, tomatoes, and salt, so that's what I gave you (and have in the oven as I'm typing this). Feel free to toss in your own additions at the beginning! And...seven hours later, here's what they looked like. If you're ambitious, you can pluck off the skins as soon as the tomatoes are cool enough to touch (they're easy to peel off when warm), which I only do about half the time, because I'm lazy.
Slow roasted tomatoes
1-5 pounds of early girl or plum tomatoes (basically however many will fit on however many baking sheets you've got; for me one baking sheet full was about 30 early girls)
4-5 tablespoons of tomatoes per baking sheet
kosher salt
Preheat oven to 200 F. (If your oven doesn't go that low, which some don't, preheat it to as low as it'll go, and then shorten the cooking time). Drizzle 1-2 tablespoons on the bottom of a rimmed baking sheet. Carefully wash and dry the tomatoes. Cut in half, and place each half cut side up close on the baking sheet. Put the tomatoes close together, and do this until the baking sheet is completely covered or you're out of tomatoes, whichever comes first. Drizzle the tomatoes with another 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, then sprinkle with kosher salt. Slide into the oven and roast for 6-8 hours; the time depends on whether you want them a little juicier or with more of an intense flavor. Cool, and then either put in a mason jar with more olive oil and pop them in the fridge, or lay flat to freeze and then put them in a freezer bag. They keep for a long time in the freezer (I've pulled them out, chopped them up frozen, and tossed in a skillet with olive oil and garlic to make a quick pasta sauce, and added them to soups and stews), or for weeks in the fridge to throw in pasta or eat on top of bread or just by themselves.
Have a great week, everyone!
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, and The Wedding Party and preorder Royal Holiday!