Whatnot Glossary - 01

Pants, bows, laughter-as-medicine & more

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Hi. I’m playing around with breaking up my long-winded Saturday posts into two installments; something during week that’s more frivolous and Saturday posts that are more considered. Below are a few delightful things that won’t be sent via email, Substack app only. Cheers!

A COOL-AS-HELL COOKBOOK

I collect cookbooks. The world has a lot of cookbooks to offer, I own a lot of them, and yet, when I go to the bookstore there are still soooooo many cookbooks I do not and will not own. I’ve had to start being a lot more discriminating because I’m running out of space. Here’s what I look for in a cookbook: 1) Point of view - I don’t need a celebrity chef, but I do need to feel something about the author, and I need to be able to quickly understand what they’re about 2) Almost no hard-to-find ingredients. If the first page I land on has ingredients that I’ve never heard of or would need to go to a specialty market to procure I will pass 3) Simple but imaginative. I don’t want something that needs three pages worth of ingredients and directions, but I also don’t want/need another recipe for a chicken Caesar salad. 4) There must be photos, and they should be clear, show what the finished product will look like, and not too artsy.

This is how you develop a cookbook that makes it into the Jen Klee private collection. I’m sure there are a million amazing cookbooks that do not meet this criteria, and I trust they will all find good homes, just not mine.

Matty Matheson captured my heart by looking cool as hell and including a recipe for Broiled and Burnt Roasted Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Crostini Thing. Plus the title of the book is my personal holy trinity of foods: soups, salads, sandwiches. Sold.

BOWS

Is everyone smitten with this ‘of another era’ loopy bow motif right now? It’s all I want. I want swirly bows in my hair, on my Christmas cards, on a sweater, on my kids, on my holiday gifts. On my phone case? Yes, YES! I am not a particularly frou-frou type person but I contain multitudes, and I just love these.

FANCY PANTS

Did you want to try the deeply controversial High Sport pants but maybe were not up for parting ways with $860 over pants? Same. I tried on these Staud pants at a boutique and I LOVE THEM. To be fair, I have not tried on the High Sport pants, but I’m not sure what more a pair of pants could do for me. These are comfortable, slimming, the seam down the front looks SO good. At 5’4” these are not cropped on me, but they’re not a full-strength top-of-shoe length either. They fit me (length-wise) exactly how they fit the blue/red model below. I might have them hemmed to be a bit more cropped because I am a very ‘cropped pants’ sort of person. TBD.

PS:

Lindsay Sword

has a superb post about pants.

I got the navy, but I have my eye on the red/orange. The middle pair is not tan or grey, they’re actually a small houndstooth. Also v. cute.

HAH!

Nate Bargatze is good for my mental health. I’ve posted about him before, and I’m going to keep writing about him. Then when his book comes out, I’m going to buy it and use it as an opportunity to say even more nice stuff about him. He is a standup comedian who is very clean, very understated and very mood-boosting. Try this 14 minute compilation and see if you don’t feel happier. Nate is great. I’d endure Vegas for one of his shows; do you wanna go?

JANE POPE RINGS

I’ve had one of these in emerald or sapphire on my wish list for a while. They are fine jewelry and the price reflects that, but I think they’re so unique and beautiful and would be just-the-thing to gift yourself or someone else after hitting a big personal milestone like a promotion, a graduation, writing a book, taking a risk or just generally being very awesome.

CATCH UP

This past weekend I saw Wicked, which I will have more to say about on Saturday, but in the meantime—know that it exceeded my expectations. I also ate Pho and a killer papaya salad. The weather in South Florida has been perfect, so I’ve been taking longer walks outside vs. doing Tracy Anderson workouts in my garage.

I’m excited about Thanksgiving, and I will be making this potato Corn Flake casserole, this stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts and maybe my Aunt Marge’s rum cream pie.

On Thanksgiving Day I like to: walk/jog a 5K by myself or with any family members who feel like joining me, but not as part of any organized event because those are too chaotic and they’re too early. I also like to watch the Macy’s parade, and in recent years I have become very invested in the National Dog Show. Our whole family also works on a 500-piece puzzle which MUST be completed in a timely manner in order to not be in the way of Christmas decorating which begins promptly at whatever time I say it begins on Friday or Saturday.

I do not engage at all with Black Friday at all unless there is a big appliance that needs replacing.

Here are some lovely gift guides that are delightful to browse even if you don’t buy:

• Laurel Pantin
  with gifts for your snobby sister.

• Jess Graves
  with gifts for the high end homebody and gifts for the coolest girl you know. The homebody one…do they give Pulitzers for gift guides? Should they???

• Big Salad
  / Joanna Goddard with a reliably dazzling gift guide

• Jennifer Cook
  has the definitive guide to excellent merch (is cool merch the best thing to gift? I think it might be…)

• John Jannuzzi
  with - not a gift guide, but not not a gift guide, for guys. Basically if you don’t know what to get a guy, you need John’s guide

  

  Thank you reading. Thank you for “liking.” Thank you for commenting. Thank you for sending to your friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you.