Good stuff! 

Are you keeping cool? It’s hot and humid here, a good day to stay inside with a good book or maybe an organization project. Here are some bits & pieces I’ve been thinking about lately. 

This hat

I’ve been on the hunt for the right summer hat for years it seems. Something to shade my face, but not look like Scarlett O’Hara. Something that stays on my head but is more attractive than a baseball cap (my usual go-to). As a bonus, something that would work beyond the beach would be great. Thanks to a tip from Cindy Hattersley (check out her blog here and her Instagram here for serious inspiration) I ordered this hat by Wallaroo on Amazon. It’s perfect. I rolled it up & stuffed it into my backpack for our flights, and it readily snapped right back into shape. It’s cool and comfortable, with a drawstring inside the brim to tweak the fit. It came in a ton of colors. I ordered mine in this mid-brown, kind of tweedy look that goes with everything. Now, I’m thinking of a second one,  but I’ll have to start all over picking a color. 

Dressed up mac & cheese 

Good old mac & cheese is showing up on menus everywhere, often gussied up with lobster or shrimp, you name it. I previewed a menu at a Kiawah restaurant and read a review that raved about their mac & cheese side. (Southern cooks really do love their sides, with everything from a sandwich to fried chicken.) So, I ordered it. One taste quickly won me over, and my husband — who foolishly ordered fries with his pulled pork sandwich — accepted my offer of a taste and kept coming back for more! 

This was three-cheese mac with fresh basil. So now, of course, we experimented  here. I started with Ina Garten’s recipe for mac & cheese from Barefoot Contessa Family Style. She uses freshly shredded cheddar and Gruyerre. (I also used cavatappi instead of regular mac, per Ina.) Then once we got the cheese sauce on the cooked mac, we filled a ramekin with the cheesy mac and added basil chiffonade until we got the right taste. (We actually dumped the ramekin of mac into a bowl and then added basil for easy mixing and tasting.)  We  used 3/4 cup of fresh basil chiffonade per recipe to get the right flavor mix.  That’s a lot of basil, but we think we nailed it. I’m looking forward to serving it soon. (Plus, anything served in an individual ramekin is just so cool! )

These shoes

I love these shoes — this is my third pair. They are Tulip by Ilse Jacobsen. I bought my first pair, in a bright pinky-red, to take along on a trip to Europe as my alternative walking shoes. They were so comfortable I wore them almost every day on  a four-week trip thru France, walking over cobblestones, city streets and everything in between. The uppers are made from recycled microfiber; the outsole is natural rubber, and they are stitched, not glued. My only complaint was that by the next summer they were beginning to show some dirt that I just couldn’t clean off. I solved that problem by buying another pair in black; the red ones became my go-get-the-mail, water the yard, run to the store shoes. I’d been thinking of another pair this year, maybe in blue (to wear with jeans). But I found this green or mayube khaki color while on vacation. The saleswoman suggested they may be more versatile and I think she’s right. You can find them at Nordstrom, Zappos, Soft Surroundings or lots of independent shoe stores, which is where I got mine. 

What I read on the beach

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz is about Jacob Finch Bonner, a once promising novelist with a now floundering career teaching in a minor writing program at a remote college. Bonner borrows the can’t -miss plot of a former student who has died, develops it into a New York Times bestseller, now destined for the big screen. Not only has he found fame and fortune, he’s also found his soulmate. Life is good — until he begins to get mysterious messages accusing him of stealing the plot. This is a page-turner with an interesting take on writing, publishing, and especially social media with a cool twist at the end. 

Then I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. It’s on bestseller and “must read” list everywhere. My book group discussed it last week. The Vignes sisters are identical twins growing up together in a small, Southern Black community who run away at age 16. They stick together, struggling to find work and keep a roof over their heads until Stella discovers she can pass as white and, essentially, runs away again to create a new life. Desiree maintains her racial identity and, after years away, returns to her hometown with her daughter. What does it cost Stella to maintain her lifelong secret? And what does it cost Desiree to come back home?  Theire’s a lot to think about and discuss  here.

So, that’s the good stuff. I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks for stopping by.