Simple Meals + Honest Book Reviews + Practical Living
Welcome back to another Soup Day! One of my favorite things about winter? A weekly soup + sour dough night. Give me a hearty soup any day of the week. This week we went with a hearty and flavorful lentil soup, slow cooked all day in my beloved slow cooker. The pay off for peeling and dicing in the morning is well worth the pay-off 8 hours later. I hope you enjoy this soup as much as I do!
This weeks parsha speaks powerfully to life inside a home. So much of motherhood and marriage is lived in the tension between planning and surrender—doing what we can to prepare, while knowing we cannot control outcomes. Joseph models foresight without fear; Jacob models the pain of letting go; Judah models what it looks like to step forward and take responsibility when it matters most. We are not asked to be perfect parents or spouses, only to become more honest, more restrained, and more willing to carry responsibility with courage when those we love are at stake.
Winter slows everything down — whether we want it to or not. The walks are shorter, the days are darker, and even the simplest errands feel heavier when you’re buckling car seats with numb fingers, navigating icy parking lots, and wrestling winter coats + gloves onto small bodies, small hands. December, January, and February ask a lot of us, especially when we’re caring for little kids and still trying to keep everyone fed, warm, and steady.
During seasons like this, I’ve learned to lean into rituals that make the weeks feel gentler instead of harder. One of those is soup night — one dependable evening each week where dinner is warm, nourishing, and uncomplicated. Five years ago, during another especially hard winter, my best friend challenged me to plan one new soup recipe a week. It gave the season shape. So here we are again, returning to what works.
We are officially in the home stretch of 2025, and as we close out the year, I think it’s worth pausing—just for a moment—to feel grateful. Even if you’re in the middle of a very hard season. And honestly, December does feel hard this year. The sun disappears by 4:30pm. I’ve been leaning hard into one-pot and one-sheet-pan meals. Anyway, while right now, things feel a bit heavy, I’m going to stop, and take a moment to feel grateful for all the amazing books that fed my soul this year — because there is nothing like a really good book. The kind of book you curl up with and cannot put down. A true page-turner that pulls you out of the fog and reminds you why reading feels so nourishing.
This year, I read 55 books, and I expect to close out the year around 57. What follows is my curated list of the books I loved most—books that stayed with me, challenged me, comforted me, or simply delighted me.
This is one of my recent favorites, not only because it’s easy to throw together, but because it’s jam packed with delicious, complimentary flavors: thyme, rosemary, coconut milk, lemon juice. It’s warm, it’s hearty, and very low fuss. I’m extra lazy, and will always pay the $4.99 for two-pounds of pre-diced butternut squash. I almost never purchase pre-diced anything from the grocery store (including pineapple and watermelon), but there’s something SO ANNOYING about cutting butternut squash that to me, it’s worth the overmarked price tag. This has become a Friday night favorite this winter.
I was just telling my mother on the phone last night, after Shabbos ended, that I realized, that day, the first night of Chanukah is…. tonight. And even though it’s written on all three of my calendars, Chanukah always has a way of sneaking up on me. Every year. We’ve had the Chanukah PJ’s in rotation since Rosh Hashana, so at least there’s that. And so today, in addition to packing school lunches, baking sandwich bread for the week, and Sunday Stuff, I’m going to add homemade latkes to the list. We got our menorahs out, the dreidels, and magically found three unopened boxes of candles (another Chanukah miracle!), and threw last minute invites out to our two local cousins to join in tonight. Latkes + Chicken Taco Bowls. Cheers, Happy Chanukah, everyone!