👋 Hello everyone!
This week, we took a couple of days to do a goals retreat (which we learned about from our friends J&W). We stayed at the Arrive hotel, camped out in our cute little room, and talked about everything from retirement accounts to meal prep. We managed to learn new things about each other and come away with a shared feeling of optimism and excitement for what’s to come.
One of the things we felt good about was that we can stop to question the big “rules” in life, and whether they are what we believe, or what society tells us to believe. We like making our own path. We do not want to have children. We do not want to own a large house in the suburbs with a green yard and a white picket fence. We do not think retirement has to be a certain way. We do not need to have the newest car or expensive jewelry. We do like to travel. We do like freelance work. We do value and spend more money on food, books, and things that bring us joy (like an awesome mountain bike or hand soap that smells like heaven).
It’s so easy to get swept up in society’s expectations on every little thing—I’m grateful that we have the ability to take a step back and assess exactly what we want out of life together. Aside from food, water, and shelter, the only thing I need in my life forever is him. Thank goodness he likes me, too.
What have you been up to lately? I’ve been…
🍙 Eating + Drinking
On the first night of our goals retreat, we had dinner at Vixen’s Wedding, one of our favorite spots. I don’t think we’ve ever had a dish we didn’t love here.
This was the gunpowder carrot with kashmiri yogurt and dates.
Now that we don’t drink very often (and only when we go out), we try to make sure that the few drinks we have are worth it—we stick to really, really great cocktails or wine. I had a perfect Aviation, cherry and all.
Fennel confit, cardamom yogurt, gooseberry, and pistachio.
Rutabaga noodles with duck, black garlic, and fennel curry. Justin ate the duck part. 🙊
Each morning, we had coffee and pastries from Cartel while we talked through goals and such. This was a chocolate croissant and a cinnamon swirl.
For lunch, we walked over to Via 313 for some Chicago-style pizza. This one is pineapple-jalapeño (and pepperoni for Justin). Yes, we like pineapple on pizza. What.
For dinner, we headed down to Matt’s, which we hadn’t been to since before the pandemic. It was just as good as we remembered! We shared some queso and our favorite dish, the veggie fajitas.
Sometimes I just can’t think about lunch. Lunch is the WORST. So Justin will just make something and bring it to me like the superhero that he is. This tuna salad toast was perfection.
We needed to use up some veggies, so I sautéed mushrooms and zucchini with garlic and such, tossed it with whole wheat noodles and parmesan, and served it over the last of the salad greens.
I made some griddled smoked trout onigiri (or jumeok-bap) and served it up with cucumbers. Not pictured are the seaweed crisps we had as well.
We met our friends for dinner at Nixta. We were really happy about our dishes—everything was so beautiful, fresh, and delicious! This was the eggplant tostada and the “corn ribs”—basically elotes that you gnaw off the quarter-cob. How fun is that?!
For dessert at Nixta, we shared the Persian rice pudding, which was ridiculously good. (Meticulous photo styling by my friend T.) 😁
📚 Reading
I started reading Crying in H Mart, which I had heard was brilliant. It is—but it is also very painful, as it’s a memoir of a Korean-American woman’s experience losing her mother to cancer. It’s pretty food-centric, which I loved, but I decided that I didn’t need to put my heart through the pain (I mean, we know how this story ends) to know it was a good book. So I didn’t finish it, but I would still recommend it if you’re up for painful memoirs.
Instead, I turned to Wow, No Thank You, a book of essays that are so funny that I laugh out loud every few paragraphs. Like, so funny that I have to set down the book and toss my head back and guffaw. Read it if you need an upper.
Vinny Thomas’ entire Twitter feed. I could not stop laughing! If you view anything, first look at this photo of what a baby alpaca looks like. Then watch this clip of Vinny as the alpaca’s mom. I just cannot.
This fascinating look at TikTok influencer culture. (Did you know there are “collab houses" where influencers live together in mansions and just create content?!) I was so impressed with the writing of this piece, and how it nonchalantly tore apart what seemed to be the simplest comments and claims. So good!
😂 Laughing
That’s it! Thank you for reading—hit reply and tell me what you’re up to.
--Crystal