Happy Friday!
While I listened to president Obama’s farewell address on Tuesday night, I got a chicken and vegetables roasting in the oven, fennel braising on the stove, and a pot of cauliflower soup simmering. I wasn’t always this kind of kitchen multi-tasker. But the book A New Way to Dinner has changed my game, as I wrote for Quartz.
“The whole goal is to make your time in the kitchen well spent,” said Merrill Stubbs, who wrote the book with her Food52 co-founder, Amanda Hesser. “Let’s get our arsenal in place for the week ahead.”
A New Way to Dinner achieves this by showing readers how a few solid of kitchen time over the weekend can help them create meal components—like garlicky white beans and roasted chicken—to mix and match all week long. Unlike traditional cookbooks, it includes not just recipes but grocery shopping lists, organizational tips, and meal plans.
I can’t recommend the book highly enough. If you’re not yet ready to commit, this post from Food52 previews their approach to making sure your time in the kitchen—and dollars at the market—are well spent, and your week is spent well nourished.
About that farewell address. In his final speech as president, Obama urged Americans to engage with public life.
“If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life,” he said. “If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself. Show up. Dive in. Stay at it.”
Later that evening, the president tweeted: “My last ask is the same as my first. I’m asking you to believe—not in my ability to create change, but in yours.”
How to embrace your civic duty? For some, as Obama suggested, it may mean running for office or gathering signatures. For others, it may mean volunteering to mentor a student who could use some help with her college applications. Quartz’s Indrani Sen wrote a helpful, grassroots guide to getting started, which includes links to organizations seeking volunteers, such as the Boys and Girls Club and AmeriCorps. In cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the user-friendly app Golden can help volunteers connect with opportunities in their area. And for a really easy place to start…
Make plans to attend the Women’s March, one week from tomorrow. If you believe women’s rights are human rights and that there’s strength in diversity, then this worldwide demonstration of unity is for you. If you can’t get to Washington, DC, where the main march will take place, hundreds of sister events are planned around the globe on Saturday, Jan. 21. Find a local march here and contribute to the Amplifier Foundation’s Kickstarter for public art supporting its mission here.
What’s the point of marching? Beyond demonstrating to those in power that a significant portion of the electorate cares about marginalized people (and you know, women’s rights), it might help you tackle feelings of helplessness—a dangerous, power-draining emotion, as Amanda Crowell, a cognitive psychologist and improvement coach, wrote this week for Quartz. Gathering with fellow citizens can help foster the courage and connections necessary to keep showing up for future work, whether that means attending community meetings, calling representatives, or volunteering for causes you believe in. As put simply by Ann Friedman: “A march can change your life.”
Sister lessons. For the cover story of Interview‘s current issue, Beyoncé interviewed her younger sister Solange, about Solange’s 2016 album A Seat at the Table—a personal and political meditation that also made it to No.1 on the Billboard charts.
In addition to discovering that “Cranes in the Sky“—my favorite song on the album—is not about birds in flight, but rather about towering construction equipment and personal rebuilding, I learned Solange was rigorously involved in the album’s production. She wrote and co-produced all the songs, played keyboards and drums, created all the video treatments and choreography, and art-directed the visuals.
“Society labels that a control freak, an obsessive woman, or someone who has an inability to trust her team or to empower other people to do the work, which is completely untrue,” Solange told Beyoncé, who obviously knows a thing or two about running the show. “It’s something I’ve learned so much about from you, getting to be in control of your own narrative. And, at this point, it should be an expectation, not something that you’re asking permission for.”
Partner power. Solange also discussed how her husband, Alan Ferguson, helped her execute her vision for the album’s videos, “literally crossing waterfalls with million-dollar equipment strapped to his back … Alan was there to say, ‘Hey, the light is fading. Everybody is telling us that we can’t get this much light in the aperture. We need to wrap. But I think that this is when the light is just beginning. This is the color the sky needs to be.'”
This has been quite a week for showing the love. In his Golden Globes acceptance speech, Ryan Gosling expressed gratitude to his wife Eva Mendes, who was raising one daughter, pregnant with another, and caring for her dying brother while he was shooting his winning performance for La La Land.
Obama, of course, gave a heartfelt tribute to his wife, Michelle, ”girl of the South Side,” on Tuesday night. And two days later, he awarded his partner-in-crime Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom in an endearing tear-jerker of a speech that revealed some excellent personal details. (Jill Biden once hid in the overhead compartment of Air Force Two to scare the senior staff.)
If you’re lucky enough to have a supportive partner—whether the context is romantic, professional, creative, emotional, or otherwise—say thanks.
Stay grounded, and have a great weekend!
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If you’re looking for an easy and inexpensive escape, pick up Andi Teran’s 2015 novel, Ana of California, and head to the fictional northern California town of Hadley (mapped by Teran below). This modern-day Anne of Green Gables is what some would call a “young adult novel,” which basically means reading it will make you feel like a kid again. Much like Ana, a 15-year-old punk-loving orphan from Los Angeles, I found unexpected refuge in the foggy fields of Hadley, California.