August 8, 2025

“The Dove” by Pablo Picasso. Interspersed throughout this issue are artworks that struck me during a recent trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Picasso’s “The Dove” was selected as the poster art for the post-World War II World Congress of Partisans for Peace, and it quickly became a symbol of peace around the world. The day before the congress started, Picasso’s daughter was born, who was named Paloma, or dove in Spanish. (I learned this listening in on a guided tour at the museum. The tours seem great. Also, the museum cafe’s matcha lattes are excellent).

Putting Ina’s amazing food aside for a second (though I don’t think I can talk about her without mentioning my favorite Barefoot Contessa recipe: her capellini with cherry tomatoes), her life is a fascinating study of bravery. At least I think so. I keep saying to Jake, “She left her job at the White House! To buy a food store in the Hamptons! When she had no experience!” This is one of three major ballsy moves Ina’s made that had me gripped, listening to every word while I sat at my kitchen table and my Libby audiobook played out of my iPhone speakers. The second ballsy move was when Ina briefly separated from her husband Jeffrey, for the sake of resetting their gender dynamic even though he was the love of her life, a decision which she calls “the hardest conversation she’s ever had,”; the third, when she sold the Barefoot Contessa store because it just wasn’t doing it for her anymore, even though she had absolutely nothing else lined up.

Here’s the thing: I already know I don’t have the balls that Ina Garten does.

What is it about life — about adulthood — about forced participation in a late-stage capitalist society — that lulls you into deadening your most basic instincts? Instincts about what it is you really want to do, what you secretly know you’re capable of, what would light you up and be (and this is the key word here) fun.

After a particularly painful all-hands work meeting this year, a friend and colleague sent me a list she wrote of ideas for starting her own business. I was almost shocked at the audacity of it — starting your own business?! Risking money and security and striking out on your own? That was something we only fantasized about in our early twenties, right? Meanwhile, this friend is incredibly talented, hard-working, and savvy, someone I would back any day. Why wouldn’t she make it? Why does it seem so very crazy for us to believe in ourselves? Ina Garten quit her successful 18-year ownership of Barefoot Contessa specialty food store because it wasn’t making her happy anymore, and she spent a miserable year doing absolutely nothing while she waited for her next venture to reveal itself to her.

My friend’s list of business ideas reminded me how important dreaming for the sake of dreaming is, so much so that I drew up plans for “Sarah’s gluten-free cafe” one morning just for the sake of getting in touch with that spirit, and because that exercise sounded fun. (At my cafe, if you order coffee it’s delivered in a French press that you plunge yourself at the table. And one of the breakfast dishes is “Latke Platter For Two, or One Ambitious Person.”)

Dreaming has so much merit in its own right before action even comes into the conversation. Continuing to dream into adulthood is a subliminal form of self-love. What might the effect be of spending years whispering to yourself that you really do have good ideas, that you really are creative and capable, that you might be worth taking a risk? Ina Garten could have stayed in her D.C. job. She could have so easily listened to her father, who told her buying the store was a bad idea.

In the end, Ina bought the store and changed her whole life because she was miserable at her current job and the store sounded exciting and fun. In other words: She followed her basic instincts. Does something feel mind-numbing? Believe yourself. Does something else sound fun? Believe that, too.

I recently listened to an eight-minute meditation from Gretchen Rubin, wellbeing expert and author of The Happiness Project, that introduced me to the concept of drift. In Gretchen’s research, drift continually emerged as one of the biggest barriers to happiness. Drift can be described as settling for the default, or maybe as the fallacy of believing that not making an active choice means you’re avoiding decision-making all together. Gretchen describes it as following your parents’ profession without questioning if you’re even interested in it; taking a job because someone offers it to you; getting married because your friends are getting married; moving to the suburbs because your friends are moving to the suburbs.

I can’t think about drift without thinking about Jake, the person in my life who suffers from the least amount of drift. It’s been a year and a half since Jake quit his full-time job. I remember his feelings leading up to the quit: he was frustrated with his manager’s approach to the business; he felt he was providing way more value than he was getting compensated for; and ultimately, I think he just couldn’t stand being under the thumb of people who he felt were letting him down. So he quit. And if that move alone isn’t impressive enough, it’s been a year and a half since Jake did any sort of traditional work at all. He started streaming online, growing his audience to the point where he has a niche group of fans and a nice check from Youtube and Twitch every month; he reached out to a gamer in the space who he admires and now does contract work for him creating short videos; and he started his Substack, a blog which so captured an editor at a nonfiction video game publishing imprint that Jake just signed himself a book deal.

None of this came instantly or without pain — I know because I was living through it beside him. Ina Garten had pain, too, at the start of every anti-drift choice she made along the way, whether panicking about how to pay her employees during the early Barefoot Contessa years, suffering nights alone in an awful apartment when she separated from Jeffrey, or confronting restlessness and depression when she parted from Barefoot Contessa.

But I know, even without asking him, that Jake would never exchange his current reality for the path where he didn’t quit his job; and though I don’t know her, I’m going to go ahead and say Ina wouldn’t give up her cooking career to be back at that nuclear energy policy job in DC.

So that’s what Ina taught me. Not just how to smother hot cappellini with sauteed cherry tomatoes, olive oil, and red pepper flakes; but that it’s good to be clear on what you like and don’t like, with the courage to take a jump when the timing asks for it.

Risk is just our interpretation of what stands in the middle.

“Untitled Large Anxious Red” & “Untitled Large Bruise” by Rashid Johnson. You can see two eyes and a mouth repeated in these prints. Far from making me feel anxiety, the red one was my most feel-good piece of the trip — I think I just like looking at so much color.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Muffins + A Baking Powder Tip

A pumpkin muffin recipe in summer?! Read it and weep, bitches.

I developed this recipe myself so I’m very proud, and have made it three times to great success. What I like about it: the muffins are very moist, with an almost spongy, underbaked quality I can’t get enough of. And the sprinkling of pumpkin seeds on top go incredibly far towards providing extra flavor and crunch.

Now for a baking powder tip, as this recipe calls for two teaspoons of it: If you purchased and opened your baking powder more than 6 months ago, throw it away.

America’s Test Kitchen proved that there’s a significant difference in the rise of your baked goods when you use fresh versus old baking powder.

So, don’t hold your baking back and go ahead and treat yourself to a new can.

Sarah’s Gluten-Free Pumpkin Muffins

Makes: 9 muffins

Ingredients:

Dry:

1 ½ cups almond flour

½ cup tapioca flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp salt

Wet:

Half of a 15 oz can pumpkin (comes out to ⅞ of a cup, or just shy of a cup)

¼ c melted coconut oil

¼ c maple syrup

¼ c coconut sugar

1 large egg

Topping:

2 tbsps raw pumpkin seeds

Preheat oven to 375°F and liberally grease a muffin pan.
In a medium bowl, mix all dry ingredients together.
In a large bowl, mix together the pumpkin, coconut oil, maple syrup, and coconut sugar until well combined. And in the egg and mix again.
Add in dry ingredients until just combined.
Dollop into muffin pan and top each muffin with pumpkin seeds.
Bake for 23-25 minutes, until muffins have color on the edges and are just starting to pull away from the pan.

“Grotto of Laocoön” by Daniel Arsham. This work represents a fictional future where backpackers are exploring a grotto and find an ancient, crumbling sculpture of Greek mythological figure Laocoön.

Stuff + Stuff + Stuff: A Lunch Template

Here’s something we forget to focus on in our food, since we’re always preoccupied with protein/macros/calories/et cetera: hydration.

Ever heard “eat your water?” Me neither, until my appreciation of Sakara’s nutrition philosophy and particularly their podcast episode with Dr. Howard Murad, a dermatologist who coined the phrase. There are so many wonderful benefits that eating our fruits and veggies provide — vitamins, antioxidants, fiber — but one that doesn’t often get a spotlight is water content. Dr. Murad and the Sakara ladies claim that that while drinking water is of course important, there’s something about consuming water in a different form — trapped within the walls of a plant cell — that delivers hydration differently, often getting broken down by the body at a different point in digestion and providing longer-lasting H2O benefits.

All I have to share are anecdotes, not hard science, but I’ve noticed that eating fruits and veggies in their whole form makes my digestion a little smoother and, when I did it consistently for a week, my skin looked more even. And lunch seems like the perfect mealtime to forgo something cooked or fancy. Lately, I’ve been looking in my fruit baskets and fridge to see what I have, getting out my cutting board and knife, and slicing my way to a simple and nourishing plate. Enter: “Stuff + stuff + stuff,” a lunch template.

Start your plate off with ~30 grams of protein: Tuna fish, grilled chicken, eggs, cooked ground turkey, cottage cheese, beans, or a combination of a few. I like to put the protein in the center of my plate.
Surround your protein with all sorts of delicious fruits and vegetables you enjoy eating. This summer, I’ve been eating cucumbers, peaches, peeled apples, carrot sticks, pickled radishes, watermelon, and berries. As always, seasonal and local food tastes miles better if you can find it.
Plop down and enjoy your lunch plate — basic, but so much more.

Volume 2, Issue 3

Table of Contents

Volume 2, Issue 3

Table of Contents

Volume 2, Issue 2