Sunday Summary - 1.8.23
After the wild holiday freeze, it’s been gorgeous around here! We’ve been taking more than our usual two walks a day while we can, because it may be 2 degrees tomorrow. Who knows!
Reading & Watching
One goal I have for 2023 is to read more non-fiction books, so I’m starting the year with The Psychology of Money. This isn’t your “typical” personal finance book, though!
Here’s the idea: “Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.”
I just love this series, and Book #3 absolutely delivered. Katharine McGee has this crazy ability to make you feel sorry for someone in one book that you despised in another without you even knowing it’s happening. She is also a master at writing cliffhangers — equal parts frustrating and impressive (only because a 4th book has officially been confirmed and set for release this year!)
It had been over a year since a finished the second book, so I looked up several Book #1 and #2 summaries online before I dove into this one. I was able to recall most of what went down with that refresher, and I highly recommend reminding yourself of the details because she doesn’t do a lot of recapping!
For all the non-book readers out there, here are articles, podcasts, and TV shows I enjoyed this week:
Article: The ‘Social Omnivore’ Lifestyle - While Bryan and I have adopted a much more vegetarian diet over the last few years, we never put a formal label it because our diet as a whole never fit nicely into a box. While our menus each week are largely vegetarian, we still cook some meat based meals at home, we enjoy eating meat in restaurants, and we don’t ever want to make it a “thing” with our families, so we remain flexible. Turns out there are a lot of people like us, according to this article! You don’t have to be 100% one way or the other, so if you’ve ever been curious about a “flexitarian” lifestyle, or if you never knew there was a word for it, I think you’d enjoy this article.
Podcast: Money, Friendships, and Quality of Life: Spending on “High ROI” Activities & Experiences - Contrary to most personal finance advice, this podcast episode encourages you to think critically about what’s worth more to you: Money or Relationships? The answer to that question may vary depending on the situation, but I think this episode does a great job of reminding you to live your life today, instead of focusing solely on the future.
TV Show: Chef’s Table: PIzza - This hasn’t been proven, but I think I’m married to the world’s biggest pizza connoisseur. Bryan will never turn down a slice of pizza, and he has a power ranking of all pizza joints within a 5 mile radius of our house. Through the power of Netflix’s algorithm this show was advertised to us no less than 100 times before we clicked on it, and I don’t know what took us so long! It’s about the lives of the chefs known for their pizza around the globe, and it’s fantastic. If you’re looking for a really interesting take on a cooking show that will make you feel more than just hungry, don’t skip this one.
Cooking
This week’s menu is focusing on lighter fare. After months of heavy soups and hearty crockpot dishes, we’re ready to hit the reset button like the rest of the world and lighten up our plates a little bit.
Chicken Tzatziki Bowls - Depending on the amount of greens we have left over from the other dishes, I may turn this into more of a greek salad. (See, a meat based meal!)
Kale Caesar with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Chickpeas - We leave off the avocados and brussels. I’m weird and don’t love avocado on salads, and I think raw brussels are hard to eat.
Quick + Simple Pasta “Risotto” with Herbed Roasted Chickpeas — We’re replacing the cauliflower with broccoli and using orzo again, just like the first time we made it!
Weekly Favorites: Kitchen Edition
While we do have a dishwasher, there are quite a few things in our kitchen that have to be hand washed, like our good knives, coffee dripper, certain insulated cups, etc. We usually have drying pads from Ikea spread all over the counter, and this helps keep our dishes contained and close to where you’re washing. This handy gadget can also be used as a cooling rack, the utensil caddy can be used as a small colander, and the whole things is dishwasher safe. We love it!
I’ve had some flexible plastic cutting boards since I graduated college almost 8 years ago, and they’ve seen better days. The Defined Dish shared these several times recently, so I took advantage of recent holiday sales and got 3 of these. They did NOT disappoint. They’re really high quality, dishwasher safe, the colors are gorgeous, and my knife doesn’t make awful noises when I cut on it (IYKYK). It’s also made entirely of kitchen plastic scraps and sugarcane, so that’s cool!
If you’ve ever searched for anything food related on the internet, this has likely been advertised to you. After a lot of reading, I decided to order the ‘Drizzle and Sizzle’ bundle, and I will say the flavor and smell of this oil are incredible. We learned to top some of our dishes with olive oil after watching Chef’s Table: Pizza, and the drizzle oil has such a rich flavor and really adds a little zing to your meals! The squeezy bottle makes it easy to pour with no drips and messes, and the price point is really fair! So far so good!
The Latest
Rebecca, who you may have read about on the September 4th edition of the Sunday Spotlight, turned 30 on Friday! You can read more about her and her book, TV show, movie, and NOLA restaurant recommendations here in celebration of her big milestone. If you’re planning a trip to Mardi Gras this year, she has some great, off-the-beaten-path recommendations for you to check out!