Weekly Good Things 2024 - Week 24

Good Things, and the Weekly Meal Plan.

Hello! Hello! Welcome to another weekly episode of Good Things where I give you a peek into my everyday life during the week, and roundup my good links, ideas, books, and more.

Happy Weekend to you!

This week was a good one.

I’ve been having a generally relaxed weekend – yesterday I drove out to pick up some flowers at Fivefork Farm (I forgot to pick up my share on Wednesday!), connected with friends, and today was filled with errands, tackling a good amount of nagging tasks, catching up with reading, and as much time outside before it gets wildly hot this week.

Fathers day is a weird one for me as part of the dead dads club which is objectively a pretty terrible club to be part of. I’m thankful that this kind of holiday isn’t specifically grief-inducing for me – just took a little bit of extra time to think about my dad and what he’d be doing on a nice spring day like today. He’d probably have gone for a drive, read, tinkered on the stove with some sort of condiment - maybe his own Flo’s sauce, an onion relish he had perfected, made some cold salmon salad for lunch. We probably would have all gone out to dinner at Billy’s in Perkins Cove, or somewhere by the ocean, maybe the Carriage House. (Not too dissimilar from my ideal late spring weekend afternoon.)

Anyway, here’s a photo of the two of us.

👋 If you are new here, welcome! I try to fill these newsletters with a little something for everyone. (If you are just here for the food, it’s at the end! Feel free to scroll, I won’t judge!)

Good Questions: What does a good summer day look like for you?

Drop it in the comments!

Good Things This Week:

🔎 Quarterly Planning: Monday we met as a team to plan the next quarter for Ompractice. Unsurprisingly, I really enjoy the time to slow down and take a pause to assess things!

• We did a retro: what worked, what didn’t, what could be improved.

• We landed on quarterly goals – but also went the next step to make a grid of milestones week by week which is (very helpful) for my brain!

• We talked about motivation: what kinds of things motivate us each personally?

• 👥 Connection analysis: As part of my own prep for planning, I’ve been reviewing my own outreach, connections, zoom calls, event attendance, etc. over the past three months. It’s always an interesting practice to see who you’ve connected with visualized out in a chunk like this. Who did I spend time with who had an outsized impact on my life? Gave me energy? Left a strong impression? What connections did I miss?

My hydrangea bush is happy and starting to bloom!

⛽️ Silence the din: perhaps the most useful thing I can share with you if you are still reliant on the gas pump is that if you push the second button down from the top on the right of the mini screen, you can mute the terrible screaming commercials! I confirmed today this works, and then shared with another woman at the pump who was equally overjoyed at this discovery.

⚾️ Mid-Week Baseball! I went to a game at Fenway! Baseball is one of my mindfulness practices (really!) – when I head to the stadium, I drop into a different energy state. Nobody can bother me. I'm outside and can tune in and out the din of the crowd and focus on the game.

I try to watch without taking my phone out of my pocket and scrolling every three minutes. I drop in and out of focus and observe the crowd, find the time for a snack (this week I brought a lemon Levain cookie to the stadium and have no regrets.)

📞 Batch Cooking while on Zoom with a friend: I had the energy to do a little cook up on Saturday while on my weekly call with a friend. It’s been a while since I’ve felt inspired to cook multiple things at once like this. (Mostly was a “clean out the fridge” situation.) I also took the time to throw out some past-due items and clear a little bit of space.

🎁 Spending Out: I got a gift card to Trader Joe’s for my birthday, which reminded me that I had another one lying around (somewhere in my wallet) that I hadn’t actually used yet. (This is a reminder that it’s okay to “spend out” rather than saving for a rainy day!)

🛍️ Good Acquisitions: I love seeing new seasonal clothes and mentally cataloguing fashion – usually without buying things. This season I’ve actually found some things that I wanted to buy:

• I got this gorgeous green velvet blouse from Sézane, which I’m keeping.

• I would like to live in the current clothing lines of Spanx and Vuori.

• I was influenced by tiktok into buying one of those Korean collagen face masks, which was enjoyable (I liked this dermatologist science experiment re: hydration. They do something, but results don’t last.

• I don’t really wear makeup, but a single blemish sent me to Ulta to find some concealer. I opted for a NYX fix stick.

🔎 Good Inputs: kottke.org //

Emma Gannon

// The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) // Colossal (just take a peek at these stunning ice floes) (also this visual archive)

Slow Drip Gardening

This week, two of my lazy planters (dahlias I over-wintered in pots) have come up! I was going to dig up the ones that haven’t sprouted anything, but I think I’ll leave them be and see what happens.

I picked up some cosmos at Fiveforks farm this weekend when I went to rescue my peony share (and acquired a few more because why not?)

I need to get into the habit of actually trimming herbs for my dinners now that my plants are growing and happy. (I’ll be heading downstairs with a bowl and scissors when I press send on this newsletter.

What are you planting?

Week 2 of the Peony Share

More Good Things:

• 📖 Reading: In my “Year of Sanderson” we’re on to the Rythym of War (I’ve also downloaded Tress of the Emerald Sea to listen to). Working my way slowly through: William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, and David Burns’ ‘The Feeling Good Handbook’. And starting ‘This is your Brain On Music’ by Daniel Levitin.

• 🎧 Listen: All Mirrors • Angel Olsen // Chappell Roan // Sabrina Carpenter // Sharon Van Etten // Fleetwood Mac ––– a vibe.

• 🚶🏻‍♀️Let’s Move + 🐶 Dog Walks with Friends: Month 2 of GVRAT. The weather is getting hotter so we’re doing longer evening walks as it starts to cool a little. (One thing to note is that I need to get a little more consistent with my at-home lifting days – they’ve taken a bit of a back seat and I need to get back into the habit!)

• 📺 Watching: Bodkin on Netflix: podcasters hit a small Irish village to solve a true-crime cold case mystery that isn’t actually cold. (It’s giving Psych vibes!) I’m finishing up Bridgerton this weekend, then moving on to the new season of House of the Dragon.

• 🤣 Memes and randomness of the week: Kate Middleton was actually spotted at Trooping of the Color (with multiple photos to boot). I’ve been so engrossed with the bad PR situation around her illness and subsequent complete media blackout, but relieved that she appears to be in good spirits. // I’m still fascinated by America’s part time cricket team.

The Weekly Meal Plan:

Why do I do this? I’ll note, my meal plans tend to be more of a directional support for me than what I actually end up eating in my week. (I think a lot of people who do meal planning feel obligated to actually eat the things they come with rather than just using as a placeholder/inspiration. I do not feel so constricted.)

🍒 Good Eats from this Past Week:

• On Monday, we had Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza for our offsite. Two slices of meatball ricotta were such a treat. (Also, their wings, on salad.)

• For my 🦞 Lobster Roll Quest, I took a side quest and got a Luke’s Lobster crab roll at Fenway. This was a nice amount of crab, but they forgot the butter sauce on top. (It’s a much better deal than the lobster roll.) I also had some Rhode Island style calamari, which I like because pickled peppers make everything better.

• Nostalgia meal: cheesy velveeta mac with ground beef, broccoli with shallot vinaigrette.

• Best meal: by far, the cold udon noodles from Yume Ga Arukara hit the spot. You go in, order, wait in line, and then eat in twenty minutes or less. I ordered extra noodles and an onsen egg. It was exactly what I wanted.

• Best dessert: after craving tofu pudding all week, I made my own at home. “New England Style” with ginger and maple syrup. (I love this because versions are in so many cultures: see douhua, etc.)

• Drink: a lemon Yakult slush from Ten One; which I ordered with extra citrus juice to make it a little more sour.

• Snacks: I’ve been dying to try the Levain Lemon cookie, which I ended up having at the Sox game. (Thanks to my sibling! He got himself the Levain baguette with jam.)

✍️ Every week I spend some (more) time working on a spreadsheet to expand this list (1000 fruits and veg to try). I’ve also updated a tab for my Apple Quest - tart apples to eat all season.

Bean of the week: None this week - still catching up!

Weekend prep: while on my weekly call with a friend, I managed to prep a dozen hard boiled eggs, some chicken breasts with taco seasoning, grated some taco cheese, roasted carrots with seeds (cumin and coriander), and some potato salad with parsley and shallot vinaigrette.

This week we’re gearing up for a HOT one, so dinners are likely to need to be more “assembly” than cooking.

• Sunday: black bass, cabbage with fresh herbs, potato salad

• Monday: smoked meat, vinegar-y cabbage salad, barbecue beans

• Tuesday: big salad with chicken, cheese, fresh herbs, mango dressing

• Wednesday: cold soba noodles with shrimp (either peanut or tahini)

• Thursday: sushi dinner (alternately Ethiopian take out)

• Friday: kimbap, bulgogi, pickles in fridge

• Saturday: pancetta, peas and orzo (from Nigelissima)

Lunches: Bean backlog. Salmon with red peppers and marinated artichokes and beans. Marinated beets. Lamb vindaloo with yogurt, tadka dal and yogurt. Coconut chickpea curry. Trader Joe’s Kimbap. Montreal bagels. TJs Jumeokbap (Korean rice triangles) - very good! Shrimp Bao. 🦞 A lobster roll off the summer list.

Snacks: 🍒 Cherries. Blueberries. Strawberries. Yogurt and berries, yogurt with lemon and nuts, eggs, cottage cheese, cheese sticks. Turkey Chomps. Tart Cherry Juice and Spindrift Lemon. A single corn dog in the freezer.

Treat options: Mini mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches from Trader Joe’s. Apple Tartines. Trader Joe’s S’Mores in the freezer section. TJs dark chocolate mint cremes. Samoas in the cabinet. A single leftover gingerbread. Popsicles.

What are you eating this week?

Previous Years:

Something I really enjoy doing is flipping back in my journal or my blog to the week of the year over the past several years. When I write it out in a list like this, it feels like a nice accomplishment!

Observing the data this week: love seeing myself ease into the season.

• 2021: Learn something new every day

• 2016: The Weekly Meal Plan

• 2013: Easing into summertime (good reading, cookbooks, meals), Sunday Catch Up (and the weekly meal plan)

• 2009: Asking the universe for Le Creuset

That’s all for now! Hope you have a great week!

xo, Sam