Iced Summer Elixir
An elixir for pesky summer colds + 5 Dinners in Real Life
Hello, friends!
I was knocked down by a nasty cold virus this past weekend and it’s taken me all week to get back up to speed. Head colds have become an end-of-the-school-year tradition in our family, arriving just as life gets really busy. The kids reminded me that last year both of them were so congested on the last day of school they could hardly taste their celebratory ice cream cones.
Summer colds are such a bummer! There’s something extra miserable about feeling hot and congested at the same time. Luckily for me, the heat of summer didn’t hit until yesterday. For the past month we’ve been cocooned in the seasonal marine layer that keeps the spring weather in LA pleasantly cool and overcast.
But today, the sun is out. Goodbye May Gray and June Gloom and hello long, hot summer!
While I was feeling lousy I made myself a batch of my winter elixir, which I initially drank warm but have now started sipping over ice. I guess now it’s a summer elixir, for whatever might ail you in the warmer months.
The blend of cinnamon, ginger, honey, apple cider vinegar and lemon is a refreshing pick-me-up and very easy to make in your Instant Pot. Just combine the ingredients with water and cook for 5 minutes at high pressure. You can also make it on the stove top - find the recipe for both versions here.
No promises that this elixir will cure you, but it can be soothing (warm) or invigorating (cold), and makes you feel like you’re taking care of yourself.
(The recipe also adds turmeric, but I skipped it this time)
5 Dinners in Real Life
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? I hope that my week of real life dinners will provide a few helpful recipes & cooking ideas for your family. Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Monday: We enjoyed a Memorial Day potluck with friends, they grilled burgers and I brought a Little Gem green salad with creamy herb and horseradish dressing and a farro and chickpea salad with lemon miso dressing.
RECIPE: To make a quick farro and chickpea salad, combine cooked Trader Joe’s 10-Minute farro with 1 can of drained chickpeas. Add a crunchy raw vegetable (celery, bell pepper or cucumber) and chopped parsley. Instead of dressing, you can just use a generous squeeze of lemon and drizzle of olive oil plus salt and pepper.
Side Note…our friends have a mini ping pong table which was really fun and perfect for small back yards. Highly recommend!
Tuesday: I grilled salmon, which I had to put on foil because I still haven’t cleaned the grill grates. Sigh. I also boiled corn on the cob and made white rice. This was a simple dinner but everyone like it.
Wednesday: I made the ambitious decision to make homemade falafel, a decision I’ve made in the past and always regret. Falafel is now officially on my list of foods that we only eat at restaurants because it tastes so much better! My effort at home produced the world’s ugliest falafel, that were definitely edible but not nearly as good as a deep fried restaurant version wrapped in fluffy pita with creamy tahini sauce.
Thursday: Still on my search for a new chicken marinade, I tested a soy sauce and honey marinade that gives chicken thighs a sweet and salty teriyaki flavor. It was pretty good, and some version of it might be coming to paid subscribers in the next few months if I can perfect the recipe.
Friday: I roasted a batch of pork and ricotta meatballs and roasted broccoli on a second sheet pan. Luckily, I made the meatballs early in the day and they could just be heated up for dinner because by evening I was in full head cold mode and in no mood to cook.
Reading
The only upside of being sick is that I had more time read, thanks to older kids who could entertain themselves and a husband who could pick up the slack. It’s been a long time since I could completely immerse myself in a book, instead of just reading it in short bursts right before conking out at bedtime.
Homecoming by Kate Morton was the perfect choice. I fell deeply into the slow unspooling of a fictional tragedy that quietly took a young family on Christmas Eve in 1959. The secrets surrounding the tragedy reverberate through generations of the family and townspeople until reaching Jessica, the modern-day descendant unexpectedly investigating her family’s past.
This atmospheric book transported me across the globe to Australia, to the cool jasmine-scented breezes of Sydney and the dry brush and eucalyptus in the searing heat of the Adelaide hills. I love books with houses that are characters (like The Dutch House or The House at the Edge of Night) and in Homecoming, the grand homes named Darling House and Halcyon are places of both comfort and despair.
This book slowly twists and turns until the very last page. It kept me up way too late when I should’ve been getting to bed early but it’s not a thriller or even a mystery, really. It’s more of a study of human behavior and grief, about how people love each other and hurt each other and about how time changes the way we see people and their actions. Even so, the heaviness of this book doesn’t weigh it down. Homecoming is enjoyable and easy to read, I flew through the pages and always looked forward to picking it up again.
Curious if anyone else has read it? Let me know!
That’s it for this week! I’m looking forward to not feeling sick this weekend. What do you have planned?
xo
Jenny
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I find human behavior and grief fascinating, what a great review! I’ll have to check this one out 👍