Breakfast Pastries, Work Lunches, and the Perfect Lasagna
Every week, Healthyish editor Amanda Shapiro talks about what she's seeing, eating, watching, and reading in the wellness world and beyond. Pro tip: If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll get the scoop before everyone else.
Healthyish friends,
On the heels of a few days in Portland, OR and I’m still feeling the afterglow of old friends, new friends, good food, and, uh, jet lag. It was a very healthy and -ish weekend: I ran along the Willamette every morning—and accidentally ran the Portland Marathon for a minute. I followed up every run with a latte and a pastry. (Favorite drink: Never Coffee's Midnight Oil. Favorite pastry: the maple Danish at Barista.)
At Maurice, Aliza and I shared a nutty, vinegar-laced farro and cucumber salad...then meatballs and dumplings and a deliciously spoonable lemon pudding cake. Some friends, recently transplanted from New York, outdid themselves with Marcella Hazan’s utterly perfect lasagna, homemade pasta and all, which we paired with a bottle of R-18 I snagged from Ardor Wines. I hiked up the hill to the rose garden on an unusually sunny afternoon.
Amid all that, I met some amazing people at Roux, women doing all kinds of cool work in food, beverage, and wellness. You’ll see a lot of their faces and their products on the site in the coming months.
Back on the East Coast, it's raining, and people are talking about lunch. The Bon Appétit Guide to Actually Enjoying Your Lunch at Work is the most fun: Read Hilary Cadigan’s plea to step away from the microwave and Emily Schultz’s defense of eating in front of your computer screen, ogle all the random snacks we stash in our desk drawers, and make Andy Baraghani’s marinated lentils with feta stat. I did ‘em last night (subbed cauliflower for broccolini) and can confirm that this is the most packable, room-temp-enjoyable, vegetarian-friendly, healthyish-approved lunch on the planet. How’s that for a hard sell?
Meanwhile on Healthyish, Mandy Lee, the lady behind Lady and Pups and the author of The Art of Escapism Cooking, writes about the protests in Hong Kong and the privilege and guilt of being an escapist cook. Henry Dawson didn’t know how to show affection for his guy friends, so he learned to bake. And we talked to YA writer and poet Elizabeth Acevedo about fighting writer’s block in the kitchen, a much kinder way to describe procrastination cooking—a strategy I know all too well.
Until next week,
Amanda Shapiro
Healthyish editor
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
