Eyes on the Prize
With Halloween just around the corner, I’ve been deep in party-planning mode. The theme is locked in, the playlist is shaping up, and naturally, people are coming in costume. Which brought me to the age-old host dilemma: To contest, or not to contest?
My initial thought was, Of course we need prizes! But then my core Millennial instincts kicked in. I instantly began calculating how to ensure no one went home empty-handed or feeling snubbed for their effort. What if I create personalised, hyper-specific categories on the fly? “Best Feline” for the person in cat ears, “Most Elaborate Headdress” for the guest with the biggest hat, “Best Use of Cardboard,” and so on. Everyone gets a custom ribbon, everyone gets a goody bag full of treats, and nobody leaves feeling like a runner-up. A literal win-win-win situation. What could be better?
Then I caught myself and paused: Is this just my wimpy Millennial heart ruling my brain? Am I overthinking a room full of adults who just want a cider, snacks, and a fun night out? Or is there actually a place for “everyone gets something” when the stakes are literally zero? To figure that out, it’s worth untangling where this whole debate comes from in the first place—and why the narrative around it gets so twisted.
If you grew up in the 90s, you’ve almost certainly heard the standard cultural critique: Millennials are soft because they were raised on participation trophies. We were allegedly pampered with plastic ribbons for 7th-place soccer finishes and gold stars for just showing up to the science fair, leaving us unable to handle second place in the real world. But let’s pause and do a quick timeline check. In the 1990s, who was making the rules? Who was ordering the custom ribbons, organizing the Little League banquets, and setting up the science fair guidelines? It wasn't the kids. It was the Boomer and early Gen-X adults—parents, coaches, teachers, and school boards. If participation prizes became a cultural standard during that decade, it wasn’t because eight-year-olds staged a union walkout demanding ribbons. It was because the adults wanted to encourage kids, keep them engaged, cushion bruised elbows, and ensure sportsmanship didn't turn into tearful car rides home. The irony of blaming an entire generation for a system created for them by the generation above them is one of the great head-scratchers of modern pop culture history.
When social critics rail against participation trophies, they are usually talking about competitive environments—sports, academics, or careers—where objective standards and clear winners drive improvement and reward excellence. And in those contexts, sure, a clear 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place makes complete sense. But a low-stakes Halloween party in a living room with your friends is not the Olympics. Nobody is competing for a medal or a college scholarship here; they spent three hours gluing felt onto a sweatshirt after work on a Tuesday. And I think those three hours deserve candy. Lots and lots of candy.
When it comes to casual gatherings among friends, hyper-specific or non-competitive prize categories actually serve a totally different purpose. They acknowledge effort over outcome, which, again, in this context, is really the name of the game. Some people have weeks to craft a screen-accurate cosplay; others had twenty minutes after work to pull together a clever pun. Acknowledging a niche detail ("Best Hand-Crafted Accessory" or "Most Creative Use of Household Items") celebrates the labour and humor people are bringing to the party. Plus, these kinds of prizes break a little ice between strangers. Calling out playful, ultra-specific categories at the end of the night turns into a shared joke and a moment to applaud everyone’s personality. And finally - it’s a party! Goody bags are just plain fun! Getting a small bag of treat-size candy, a spooky enamel pin, or a funny ribbon triggers a universally joyful nostalgia. Nobody is walking away thinking, "Aha, my 'Best Feline' title proves my costume was objectively superior to all others! Mwa ha ha!" They’re just thinking, "Yay, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - my fave."
So, is handing out custom, hyper-specific prizes or goody bags to everyone a sign of "Millennial soft-heartedness"? Maybe a little bit—and honestly, what’s wrong with that? Warmth, hospitality, and making sure your friends feel seen and appreciated for showing up are good things. Hospitality isn't about setting up an elimination bracket for your friends; it’s about making sure everyone has a good time and leaves feeling glad they came. So if you’re throwing a casual Halloween party, I say go ahead and award Best Headdress, Most Dedication to a Pun, or Best Feline. Hand out those treat bags with zero guilt. After all, we didn't invent the participation trophy—but if we choose to turn it into an excuse to give our friends extra chocolate, maybe the 90s got something right after all.
Jennifer
Grape Jelly, Apple Butter
This week, we learned that grape jelly was a staple for the 1950s "PB&J" lunch, even more so when grape jelly became increasingly available and consistent when it was a product you could buy off the shelf at your local supermarket, rather than having to make it from scratch all by yourself. Now, I appreciate that for many, making jam at home is a pretty substantial undertaking - possibly a bit too much for us (and yes, I include myself in that number!) However, I offer you this recipe, dear reader: if not for you to actually try in your own kitchen, then to appreciate just how much work women in the early 1950s and before put into household and resource management, economy, and food preservation before we could all bring home those shiny, mass-produced, predictable jars of grape jelly from the supermarket. So one way or another, I hope you enjoy perusing the ins and outs of this recipe, dear reader - whether you actually take on the task of making the grape jelly or not!
Ingredients
4 lbs ripe Concord grapes (I’m afraid you do have to use Concord grapes here - other types of grapes don’t have the same flavour or pectin content.)
1/2 cup water
5 cups granulated sugar
1 box (approx. 2 oz) powdered pectin (e.g., Sure-Jell or Certo, or whatever brand is your preference)
Instructions
Stem and wash the grapes. Crush them in a large preserving kettle with the water. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 10 minutes.
Pour the hot pulp into a jelly bag suspended over a large bowl. Let it drip undisturbed for several hours or overnight. Do not squeeze the bag, or the jelly will be cloudy.
Measure exactly 3 cups of the strained juice into the kettle. Stir in the powdered pectin. Bring to a "rolling boil" (one that cannot be stirred down) over high heat.
Quickly stir in all the sugar at once. Bring back to a full rolling boil and boil hard for exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. A small tip from the 1950s: to make the jelly even clearer, many women would add a small pat of butter (about ½ tsp) to the fruit and sugar mixture while it boiled. This reduced the amount of foam that formed, resulting in a sparkling, transparent jelly.
Remove from heat. Use a metal spoon to skim off any "foam" (the cloudy bubbles on top). Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal immediately in sterile jars with air-tight seals.
It’s quite a labour of love, isn’t it, dear reader? I admit that yearly jelly making is not likely to be in my future, but I will also say that I find myself appreciating jam and jelly from the store quite a bit more, and even turning my hand to apple butter, a comparatively simple recipe which follows below. This one is particulaly good in my part of the world because we are inundated with apples at the moment, and it turns a truly astonishing quantity of fruit into a manageable amount of delicious, spicy-sweet spread that is delicious on toast, oatmeal, yogurt, and in baked goods, but also makes a good gift.
Apple Butter: Ingredients
6 ½ lbs apples - Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or Fuji, cored and sliced (you can peel them or not, to your preference)
1 c granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar lightly packed
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
Place the apples in a slow cooker. In a medium bowl, combine sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg cloves and salt. Pour the mixture over the apples and mix well.
Cook in slow cooker on low for about 10 hours, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thickened and dark brown. If you do not have a slow cooker, you can do this in a large pot on the stove over low heat for the same length of time, but you will need to check on it frequently - do not leave it alone for the full ten hours!
Uncover, stir in vanilla and continue cooking uncovered on low for about 2 hours.
Use an immersion blender to puree the apple butter until smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then simply transferring the apple mixture into a regular blender works well too.
Spoon the mixture into sterile containers, cover and refrigerate for up to two weeks or freeze for up to several months.
Serve on breads, muffins, with pork chops, mix it into baked goods like muffins or quick breads, give it to your friends, or just eat it with a spoon. Enjoy!
Jennifer
The Forgetting Plague
We live in an age that demands post-mortems for everything. Give us a five-part true crime docuseries, a deep-dive podcast chock-a-block full of drama, or a memoir teeming with details. Yet when it comes to the two of the biggest biological interruptions of modern life - the polio panics of the mid-20th century and our own recent, sourdough-scented encounter with COVID-19 - there is a ringing silence. Sure, we got a brief flurry of pandemic-era lockdown comedies and Zoom-parody sketches that aged like warm milk left out in July. But true, enduring art? Great novels or music or sculpture or films that grapple with the existential dread of squinting across a restaurant table at your date’s nose? Epic cinematic treatments of iron lungs and corrugated cardboard home-schooling setups? They’re strangely sparse. It’s almost as if collective trauma comes with a built-in ‘select all + delete’ button. But why? And more importantly, what happens when we pretend the pandemic just didn’t happen at all? Well, as usual, the past might have some clues that will help us answer this question.
As it turns out, historically, we’re just following the script: humanity has treated massive plagues or disease outbreaks the way my cat sometimes treats me. If she closes her eyes real tight and turns her back on me, she can pretend that I’m not really there, making me easier to ignore when I’m calling her. That’s called object impermanence, a thing that cats and babies have in abundance - if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Look back at the Black Death or the 1918 Influenza. The 1918 flu killed upwards of 50 million people worldwide, wiping out entire communities right as World War I was nearing its end, and yet it slipped into distant, fuzzy obscurity with terrifying speed. Historians sometimes even call it ‘The Forgotten Pandemic.’ Writers of the era were too busy writing about disillusioned expatriates drinking gin in Paris to talk about the millions of people who had just coughed so much blood into handkerchiefs that their lungs finally said, “all right, that’s enough of that.” But maybe that’s not quite fair - perhaps those writers weren’t writing about gin in Paris by accident: maybe that kind of jolly debauchery was just about all they - and their readers - could handle, after so much death: and I mean so much death. The Great War and the 1918 ‘flu combined killed somewhere between 65 million to 122 million deaths worldwide. Those numbers are too large for the brain to fully process, to even really comprehend. Perhaps it makes sense that people turned to lighter, easier subjects in their art and literature - it was, at the very least, the sort of thing their minds could wrap around and understand.
Polio in the 1950s followed a similar trajectory. Parents lived in a state of low-grade, hyper-ventilating terror every summer. Public swimming pools became ghost towns; movie theaters were viewed as incubators of doom; children were confined to rooms behind screened porches. And yet, once Jonas Salk’s vaccine arrived like a white-coated cavalry charge, society did a collective hair-flip, tossed the crutches and junked the iron lungs, and sprinted straight into the technicolor optimism of the 1960s. Polio, who? We don’t know her.
We don't make art about these events precisely because remembering how scared we were is deeply, aggressively uncomfortable. It’s embarrassing to recall how easily we turned on each other over swimming pools, or toilet paper, or hand sanitizer, or masks. It’s painful to look back at the friends and family we lost, or the months we spent staring at the popcorn ceiling of our bedrooms, wondering if the air itself was an enemy combatant. So we sweep it under the rug. We adopt a stiff upper lip and pretend we’ve always been normal, business as usual. But that kind of selective historical amnesia always sends an invoice later - and it always collects.
When we refuse to process a mass trauma, it doesn’t disappear; it just changes clothes and moves into the basement. The polio panic taught a generation a hyper-vigilant, medicalised anxiety about cleanliness and public spaces that simmered beneath the surface for decades. Similarly, our brush with COVID-19 left behind a fractured social fabric: a low-humming baseline of irritability, institutional distrust, and a strange, phantom loneliness that no amount of ‘return to office’ mandates can quite cure. If we don’t write books, paint murals, or make weird, messy art about what it felt like to be trapped inside our own neighborhoods and our own minds while our government played high-stakes Russian roulette with public health, we lose the language of resilience. We are left stranded in a perpetual present, doomed to act like every minor cold is the apocalypse, because we never properly cataloged the actual apocalypse we just survived. Plus, we’re left blaming ourselves for burnout and that bone-deep exhaustion that seems to plague (pun intended) so many people. '“What’s wrong with me? Why am I so tired?” we hear each other and ourselves ask openly, bewildered. Well, here’s an idea: maybe we’re feeling stretched so thin because we limped through a terrible, years-long pandemic of uncertainty and dread, and then we all collectively decided to pretend it didn’t happen and expect ourselves and everyone else to carry on, like running a marathon and then having to keep on running - forever. No wonder we’re collectively shattered.
So how do humans pick up the pieces after a plague? Well, I’m afraid to say that the answer is, mostly: not very well at all. We overcorrect. After polio, America built a suburban paradise centered around isolation, private automobiles, and air-conditioning, so that sealing ourselves away from the germy public became the ultimate luxury. And while a lot of polio survivors did wonders for disability advocacy in America, a lot of folks tended to read any visible disibility as contagious, something to avoid, to sequester. Yuck. After COVID, we tried to compensate with a manic frenzy of "revenge travel," packed airports, and forced social calendars, smiling so hard our jaws locked while secretly wanting nothing more than to go home and lie face down on the carpet. We may not fully understand the total impact of COVID for some time: we’re still in the middle of unpacking and unpicking the aftermath. It’s a messy process.
Maybe that’s where the art should live. Not in grand, sweeping epics about heroism and virology, but in the small, absurd, tragicomic truths of how we coped - or didn’t. Art doesn't need to make us noble; art needs to make us feel seen. Until we can laugh and cry at the sheer ridiculousness of sanitising our mail while ignoring our crumbling mental health, just as our grandparents likely laughed and cried over the surreal summer bans on public ice cream parlours in 1952, we’re just sleepwalking through history, waiting for the next bug to drop by.
Jennifer
Hamburg Steak
Hamburg steak, sometimes called Frikadellen or Butellen in German, is still a reasonably common dish auf Deutschland. And if you take a look at this recipe, or indeed taste the resulting dish, you’ll see some family resemblance between it and the standard American hamburger - at least the homemade kind. Call them long-lost cousins. Unlike the handheld sandwich so popular in the US, Hamburg steak is eaten with a knife and fork and plate and the whole nine yards: this is much more likely to be a sit-down dinner food than something you eat on the go. So if you are looking to add a little delicate eating (delicat-essen) to your winter meal rotation, this may be a good place to start. Los geht’s! Let’s go!
Ingredients:
½ lb ground beef
½ lb ground pork:
Stale white bread roll (or 2 slices of white bread)
¼ c milk or warm water
1 egg
1 medium yellow onion, very finely diced
2 tbsp Fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp German mustard (or Dijon)
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 ½ tsp Salt
¾ tsp black pepper
Pinch of ground mace or nutmeg (optional, but historically authentic)
2 tbsp oil + 1 tbsp butter for the pan
Instructions:
Tear the bread roll into small pieces and place them in a small bowl.
Pour the milk or warm water over the bread and let it soak for about 10–15 minutes until completely soft.
Take the soaked bread and use your hands to squeeze out as much excess liquid as possible. Discard the remaining liquid and set the mushy bread aside.
Heat a small splash of oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the finely diced onions and sauté for 5–7 minutes until soft, translucent, and just beginning to turn golden.
Remove from the heat and let them cool slightly so they don't scramble the egg in the next step.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, ground pork, squeezed bread, cooked onions, chopped parsley, egg, mustard, marjoram, paprika, salt, pepper, and mace (if using).
Using your hands, thoroughly knead and mix everything together until the mixture is uniform and slightly tacky. (Traditional German home cooks note that thorough kneading helps the patties hold their shape without falling apart).
Divide the mixture into 6 to 8 equal portions.
Roll them into balls with your hands (wetting your hands slightly helps prevent sticking), then gently flatten them into thick, plump discs—they should be thicker than a standard American hamburger, more like a flattened meatball.
Tip: If you have time, let the shaped patties rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to firm up.
Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet (cast iron works wonderfully) over medium heat.
Place the patties in the pan. Fry them for about 4 to 5 minutes on the first side until deeply golden-brown.
Flip the patties, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes until cooked through and golden on the second side.
There are two ways to eat these Frikadellen. The first is to serve them, hot or room temperature, accompanied by a hearty scoop of German potato salad, (Kartoffelsalat), a pool of mushroom gravy, a side of pickled cucumbers, and a generous dollop of sharp mustard. Or, they pair well with rice, or mashed potatoes, or fries, or… you get it. These, like other ground meat dishes such as meatloaf or meatballs, goes with a LOT of other things. But, if you want a meal that is somewhere between the German original and the American version, go for Imbiss style - the German form of street food. Instead of a plate and knife and fork, tuck your warm Frikadelle into a crusty white bread roll (Brötchen) slathered with extra mustard and eat it like a sandwich. Guten Apetit!
Jennifer
Weaving
There is a specific kind of patience required to create a woolen blanket from scratch: the kind that cannot be rushed, faked, or bypassed. Before you ever get to the satisfying rhythm of actual weaving, you must confront the demanding discipline of dressing the loom. It is a process that is intensely fiddly and notoriously time-consuming. You wind your warp threads, meticulously measure every strand, and thread them one by one through the reed and heddles. The weaving guild where I learned to weave even had a song describing the process, starting with the lyrics “I’m forever threading heddles…” sung to the tune of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” And they were right. Every single thread must pass through its proper slot in a precise, non-negotiable order. One miscounted thread or twisted strand can disrupt the tension of the entire piece. It is an exercise in meticulous concentration, a long prelude of preparation where no visible fabric is made, only the structure that will make it possible.
This prelude of preparation demands a quiet, steady mind - easier said than done. The repetition of threading the heddles becomes a meditative test, where your fingers work with minute accuracy while your eyes track the yarn. You are forced to surrender any sense of urgency. In a world accustomed to instant output, spending hours merely setting up the instrument feels wild, almost countercultural. Yet, you quickly learn that respect for the warp is respect for the final cloth; skip a step or rush the sleying of the reed, and the loom will ruthlessly expose your impatience later on.
Then comes the moment you sit down to weave, and the entire experience shifts into movement. You discover the cadence of the work: press the treadle, throw the shuttle, beat the yarn into place, switch shed, throw back. Press, throw, beat, switch, throw. Press, throw, beat, switch, throw. It’s a five count, loud and percussive. When the rhythm catches, it feels almost hypnotic. Your hands and feet take over the mental burden, operating in a synchronized dance that fills the room with the mechanical click-clack of wood on wood.
Of course, that rhythm is rarely uninterrupted. Handweaving is a continuous dialogue with error. You spot a missed thread three inches back, or realize a selvedge edge has pulled in too tight, and the shuttle comes to a halt. What follows is a heart-sinking moment before you resign yourself to un-weaving, laboriously picking back through dozens of rows to correct a mistake, only to do the work all over again. The loom demands honesty, one that accepts setback as part of the process, teaching you to treat errors not as failures, but as the price of working with the loom.
Once the final row is beaten into place, the true transformation begins. Releasing the tension and cutting the fabric free from the frame is a moment of catharsis, as the rigid grid of threads instantly relaxes into a pliable, living textile. The work, however, is not quite done. Through the process of wet finishing and fulling, the warm water and agitation cause the raw woolen fibers to blossom, felting slightly together and closing the tiny gaps between warp and weft. It is during this final wash that the draft truly comes alive, settling into its ultimate softness and density. Congratulations - your blanket is a blanket!
After finishing - washing, fulling the wool, and watching the loose threads bloom into a cohesive, tactile cloth - you are left holding something that feels extraordinary: roughly eighty hours of your life, mapped out in warp and weft, condensed into a single physical object. Today, that woolen textile resides on the sofa, where it has officially been claimed as my cat’s absolute favorite sleeping spot. There is a lovely irony in taking eighty hours of precise, challenging labor and turning it into a bed for a sleeping pet, but seeing it curled up under a purring cat feels like the most natural, satisfying completion the fabric could ever have: and like as good a vote of confidence for which a weaver could ask. I’ll take it.
Jennifer
Some Pig
There is a distinct, low-to-the-ground magic to the farm section of a childhood zoo. While everyone else rushed toward the grand spectacle of the bears or the leopards, my loyalty was always rooted firmly at the wooden pens of the Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.
Compared to the other towering livestock of the farmyard (very tall horses, very tall cebu, very grumpy goats) pot-bellied pigs offered something delightfully accessible. They stayed manageable—for adult pigs, anyway. This breed of pig tends to cap out at about 100 pounds, and they are roughly knee-height: a scale a small child could actually process. I loved everything about their construction: the coarse, scratchy black bristles that felt like a worn broom head beneath your palms, the deep, accordion-fold wrinkles set into their delightfully serious faces, and the endless, rhythm-keeping swish-swish of their tails as they navigated their pen.
They were creatures of pure sensory joy and singular focus. If you stood by the enclosure long enough, you’d find that they were absolute masters of multitasking. A pig could have its moist, snuffly nose thoroughly invested in the trough, searching out every last grain of food, while simultaneously leaning the full weight of its body against the wooden fence to accept affection. They loved scritches right behind the ears or at the top of their shoulders. If you reached your little pair of six-year-old hands through the slats, they would press into the contact with deep contentment, never once interrupting the crucial work of eating. A massage and a meal, at the same time? Now that’s living well - high off the hog, you might say.
Like most kids, my idea of a pig was initially shaped by storybooks and cinema, in addition to those pig-centric trips to the zoo. I loved Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, with his little pink jumper and wiggly, nervous ears. I had (and still have) an excellent picture book about pigs called All Pigs are Beautiful, a sentiment to which I still adhere. I adored the film Babe, and watched it till the my parents went a bit mad. But it was likely at that very zoo farm where the gentle illusion of the Hollywood pig dissolved for me. Babe and Wilbur were, at my best guess, Chester Whites—and those pigs start out as adorable pink babies with their dark, limpid eyes and impossibly long eyelashes and fine pink ears that glow when light shines through them. But they don’t stay little pink babies for long. They quickly grow into 700- or 800-pound hulking, substantial animals. Seeing full-grown commercial breeds up close brings a sudden, practical realization: these are massive, formidable farm animals, not creatures you could ever imagine cozying up to on the sofa like a lap-dog.
And, despite the rather horrible market for ‘teacup pigs’ as a sort of pink version of a puppy, pigs do not make great house pets. They experience the world through their noses, and those noses are powerful: they are designed to root up food, shovel bedding, and corral their young. A pig will happily turn a phone book into a heap of shredded paper or tear up and spread around a bale of hay as their bed, and they are prone to nosing, ripping, digging, shredding, chewing, and generally destroying, the surfaces of their environment: it’s how they find food. They’re not dirty though, despite the stereotype. They wallow in mud to protect their skin from bugs and the sun, because pigs can get sunburnt, just like humans. Actually, we have rather a lot in common with pigs: as Winston Churchill once said, “A dog will look up to you; a cat will look down on you; a pig will look a man right in the eye and see his equal.” Wise words. They are monogastric omnivores (one-stomached everything-eaters) with digestive systems very similar to those of humans. They can basically eat what we eat, which is why people have kept them as part of waste management systems for so long - they’ll happily eat our food scraps, as Wilbur does throughout this novel. And pigs, like people - okay, most people - are extraordinarily intelligent. You cannot leave a pig in a barren environment and expect it not to go a bit crazy. Pigs left without proper and sufficient enrichment get frustrated and violent: if they do not have appropriate things to nuzzle, nose through, and chew on, they will chew on themselves and each other - and a pig’s bite hurts. All this to say that, just like a thousand-pound cow or horse, or indeed any domesticated animal, pigs belong in environments suited to their needs: a paddock or field with lots of interesting smells and plants and hay and toys to explore, and other pigs about to have a good circle of friends. They do not belong in a house as a pet like a dog or cat, and there is no such thing as a ‘teacup pig’ - that’s just a piglet, who will no doubt grow into something quite substantial with time.
One of the few exceptions to this ‘pigs are generally giant’ rule is, as mentioned, the pot-bellied pig, like those charming little (well, for a pig) piggies on the farm at the zoo. I loved pigs then, and I love them still—for their stubborn focus, their absurd seriousness, for the ways their share so much of our nature, and for the memory of the texture of coarse black bristles under small, eager hands.
Hot and Cold
Look, dear reader, I am not going to tell you that cold cereal isn’t good. It is. Even after this week’s episode and knowing all the ins and outs of dangerous plastic toys or the Kellogg’s whole debacle with sugar, I still look forward to digging into a bowl of Cheerios - what can I say? They are comforting, delicious, and, perhaps best of all, you can eat cereal at just about any time of day. Sure, it’s a breakfast food - on paper. But the world is your oyster, and when it comes to milk, bowl, and spoon, you make the rules. Step into your power, dear reader, and eat cereal at night!
On the other hand, it can be helpful when learning what something is, to figure out what it isn’t. Perhaps our appreciation of icy cold milk and perfect little oaty-o shapes in our bowl would be increased if we knew to what cold cereal was reacting. With that in mind, dear reader, here is a recipe for the hot stuff; old-fashioned, stove-top, stir-till-your-arm-aches oatmeal. This is the stuff mothers all throughout 1950s America traded in for the cold, easy, kid-friendly version: no stirring required. But it’s possible that they gave up something kind of important when they ditched hot, homemade breakfast for boxed cereal. I appreciate that you can still have hot oatmeal, out of a packet with fancy flavours, straight from the microwave - but I also think it’s possible that the resulting half-heated, watery gloop may not be the same experience as a bowl of hot, creamy oatmeal, dished out for you by someone who cares, your portion swimming in cream and brown sugar. On a chilly January morning, facing down the inevitable commute to work and the toil of the day, that steaming bowl might actually be quite a good defense against the cold and drudgery, in a way that no bowl of mass-produced flakes ever could.
So, with that in mind, let us turn our attention to the old-fashioned, stick-to-your-ribs bowl of breakfast of yesteryear. This recipe makes one serving, so feel free to size it up for a bigger crowd.
Ingredients
½ c Old-fashioned oats (do not use microwave or ‘minute’ oats here: the original stuff is what you want)
1 c Liquid - water, milk, or a mix
1 pinch Salt
Instructions
Pour 1 cup of water or milk into a small saucepan. Turn the stove to medium heat and bring the liquid to a gentle boil.
Stir in 1/2 cup of old-fashioned oats and the pinch of salt.
Lower the heat to medium or medium-low so the mixture bubbles gently. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally so the oats do not stick to the bottom of the pot.
Remove the pot from the heat. Let the oatmeal sit covered for 1 minute to absorb any remaining liquid and reach a creamy consistency before serving.
Oatmeal on its own is quite plain tasting (although it does have a subtle nuttiness which some folks like all by itself). But that plain flavour is a feature, not a bug. You can add all manner of things to make oatmeal delicious - milk or cream, seasonal fruit, maple syrup, cocoa powder, nuts and seeds, chia seeds or hemp hearts, brown sugar, dried fruit like raisins, spices like cinnamon or nutmeg or ginger, honey, and nut butters. And that’s just the sweet version - popular, but not your only choice. For a savoury version, consider toppings like a fried or soft-boiled eggs, bacon or sausage, smoked salmon, baked tofu, edamame, or roasted chickpeas, all manner of veggies and greens, grated parmesan, a drizzle of olive or sesame oil, chili crisp, hot sauce, tamari, toasted sesame seeds, or black pepper. This is a more Asian approach to oatmeal, treating it a bit like the savoury rice porridge congee. Here’s where cold cereal cannot compete at all: it is very squarely set in the sugary camp. So give this oatmeal a try and see just how many topping combinations you can come up with - possibly sweet AND savoury at the same time? Again, dear reader, the world is your oyster: at breakfast time, at least, you make the rules! Enjoy!
Jennifer
Country Pride
I have never felt that particular brand of civic pride that makes people tattoo city skylines on their arms or fiercely defend local sports teams. Ask me where I’m from, and I’ll happily tell you, but the name of the town or the boundaries on a municipal map don’t quite capture the truth of it. My allegiance isn't to a postal code, a telephone number, a downtown core, or a grid of suburban streets. Instead, my sense of self are tangled in something much older and much wider: the land itself.
At my core, I am a prairie girl. A specific kind of quiet lives in the open country, a silence that doesn't feel empty but rather full and heavy with possibility and breathing. People who didn't grow up here often look at the landscape and see nothing: just miles of flatness stretching out toward a distant horizon where the earth meets the sky in a seamless, unbroken line. But what looks like emptiness to an outsider is, to me, actually an abundance of space, a place where the air feels lighter and my lungs remember how to expand properly. There is, after all, so much air to breathe!
I’ve met the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and stared up at towering mountain ranges, recognising their majesty without ever feeling a flicker of belonging. Mountains feel disordered to me, casting long shadows that box the world in and cut off the view, leaving me closed in and restless. The ocean, with its endless churning rhythm and unpredictable depths, is overwhelming, a force demanding constant vigilance. They are magnificent landscapes, to be sure, but they belong to someone else’s story, not mine.
Give me the big, wide, flat expanses every single time. Out here, the sky is the main event, occupying two-thirds of your vision and shifting through a masterclass of weather over the course of a single afternoon. You can watch a thunderstorm form thirty miles away, tracking the dark, bruised bellies of the clouds as they roll over the plains, trailing veils of silver rain. The light hits the earth differently here, unobstructed and raw, painting the fields in tones of gold, amber, and deep burnt orange as the sun dips low.
Then there are the textures of the earth swaying in the breeze. Tall grasses whisper in constant, low motion, rippling in the wind like the surface of a green-and-bronze sea. And amidst that sea, finding a shock of brilliant red prairie poppies or singing blue cornflowers or black-eyed susans or waving wild wheat thriving against the odds in the dry, stubborn soil always feels like a quiet rebellion. They are resilient, delicate yet tough, blooming fiercely in spaces that demand endurance.
This connection isn’t born of mere nostalgia; it’s a cellular recognition. When I am surrounded by this landscape, everything in my nervous system settles into place, whispering that this is where I make sense. It’s a deep-seated knowing that doesn't require a monument or a city's history to validate it. The horizontal pull of the land grounds me in a way vertical things never could. You can take the girl away from the plains - and so often, it seems, life does exactly that - but that horizon stays etched behind your eyelids, a permanent internal compass. My loyalty is to the clay, the wind. It’s a quiet belonging, rooted not in human lines on a map, but in the vast, breathing expanse of the grass and the light from an endless sweep of sky.
On Garbage and Grief
The black plastic contractor bags sit in the hallway like oversized, heavy boulders. They are filled with forty years of someone’s life, now reduced to what the city waste management system refers to simply as “refuse.” Sorting through a late relative’s home after they pass away is an exercise in brutal prioritisation. You stand in the center of a living room that once felt infinite, holding an empty cardboard box in one hand, staring around at a lifetime of accumulated material. It takes roughly three days to realise that most of what we own is just garbage waiting for its cue.
There are three distinct categories of things we leave behind. The first is obvious waste. This category is comprsied of cracked Tupperware, expired coupons, dried-up ballpoint pens, and instruction manuals for appliances long discarded. This goes into the bag without a second thought - except perhaps to wonder why these objects were kept in the first place. Next, you’ll find the second category, littering every horizontal surface - the keepsakes. These are the items that carried real, resonant memory. A well-worn watch, a handwritten recipe card, a photograph with the corners folded. These fit easily into a single small box. But the vast majority comprises the third category: the heavy middle. This is the endless expanse of items kept purely out of fear, guilt, or obligation.
That third category is where the true weight of a house lives. It’s the fine china set used twice in thirty years, saved because it was an engagement gift from an aunt no one liked. It’s the stack of unused notebooks kept because throwing away blank paper feels wasteful. It’s the collection of souvenir mugs, the half-finished craft projects, the extra towels "just in case." We hang on to these things during our lives because discarding them feels like an admission of failure. Getting rid of the fine china means admitting the grand dinner parties will never happen. To toss the unused exercise equipment is to relinquish a future version of ourselves we still hope to become. So we keep them, letting them collect dust, confusing physical possession with emotional preservation.
Standing over a trash bin with an armful of someone else’s guarded treasures is deeply humbling. You realise that memory doesn't actually adhere to plastic, ceramic, or cloth. The obligation to keep something ends the moment it no longer serves a purpose or brings joy, whether the person who bought it is still here or not. You hold a chipped porcelain figurine or a pristine stack of stationery from 1984, and you feel the phantom weight of the care that went into preserving it. Someone carefully dusted that figurine for decades. Someone saved those note cards for an occasion special enough to warrant them—an occasion that simply never came. We convince ourselves that memory adheres to plastic, ceramic, and cloth, mistaking the physical artifact for the sentiment that inspired its purchase. But objects are terrible vaults for memory; they crack, they fade, and mostly, they just take up space. The obligation to preserve an item ends the moment it ceases to serve a living person or bring genuine comfort. Letting go of an unwanted heirloom isn't an act of betrayal or disrespect to the person who died; it's a recognition that their legacy lives in how they made us feel, not in their unused dinnerware.
Eventually, the final contractor bag is tied off, the estate sale tables are cleared, and the key turns in the lock one last time. The house, stripped of its clutter, feels unnaturally large, the echoes softening into a hollow, neutral quiet. Driving home through the quiet streets, a strange, creeping realization settles in. You walk through your own front door, drop your keys on the counter, and look around your living room with entirely new eyes. You see the crammed closet in the hallway, the stack of unread magazines on the bottom shelf, the boxes of "someday" items tucked under the bed. You realize how easily we begin building our own monuments to fear and obligation, quietly accumulating our own future inheritance of clutter. Standing in the middle of your own home, surrounded by your own curated life, you can't help but wonder how many heavy black bags you are currently living alongside, and how much lighter you might feel if you released them instead of leaving them for someone else.
Jennifer
The Sacred Art of the Summer Road Trip
Pack the cooler, check the oil, and find that old Motown tape. The open road is waiting. There is a specific temperature at which the air slipping through a car window, fully rolled down, ceases to feel like a breeze and begins to feel like freedom. It usually happens somewhere around mid-July, right about the time the asphalt starts baking off its noon heat and the dashboard radio settles into a gentle, warm hum. If you are lucky, you are heading toward a lake. If you are exceptionally lucky, someone has just slid a worn plastic cassette tape into the dash, and the opening high hat of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" is now blasting through the speakers. This sound tells you that it is summertime, and that you are on the road, facing an adventure. Buckle up.
A summer car journey is not merely a method of transportation; it is a temporary, self-contained civilization governed by its own laws, its own economy of snacks, and its own uniquely surreal emotional physics. In every vehicle, there exists a delicate, unspoken dictatorship regarding the tape player (or the aux cord, for the modern unenlightened). The driver controls the steering wheel, but the passenger seat, the co-pilot’s throne, holds absolute, non-negotiable dominion over the soundtrack. To breach this rule is to invite total cabin anarchy. And yet, when the trip is true, and the destination is water, there is only one acceptable sonic currency: The Big Chill soundtrack. As Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and The Temptations roll out across the speakers, something magical happens to the landscape. The flat, unending stretches of highway cease to be boring; they become cinematic. You aren't just sitting on warm vinyl seats with sticky legs; you are cruising through a montage of summer itself.
No matter how old you get, how educated you become, or how many adult responsibilities sit waiting for you in your inbox, there is a primal instinct that takes over the moment a car crosses into rural territory. The rules are simple, ancient, and mandatory: if you see a cow or a horse in a field and you do not loudly announce ‘COWS!’ or ‘PONIES!’ to the rest of the cabin, the trip is legally void. It doesn't matter if the conversation was deep, intellectual, or solemn. A herd of Black Angus grazing on a sunny hillside takes absolute precedence. "Pass the map—COWS!—as I was saying, about my career..." It is a joyful, childish impulse that reminds us why we left the city in the first place. For three glorious seconds, as the field flashes past the window, nothing matters except the collective recognition of four-legged rural residents. Bonus points if you ‘moo’ or ‘neigh’ at the creatures in question.
Now, let us speak plainly about car snacks. Nutrition does not generally exist between highway exit ramps. The moment your tires hit two-lane blacktop, the standard food pyramid collapses, replaced entirely by items wrapped in crinkly foil or cellophane. You must, of course, have some kind of salty anchor, usually pretzels or potato chips that are slowly turning to powder as they get passed back and forth. You might also find a little packet of gummy worms that have fused together into a single mega-worm under the windshield’s concentrated sun. There is very likely a warming can of soda or a bottle of something sparkly in the middle console to keep the driver satisfied - eating and steering being rather difficult. Once in a while, you might encounter a local specialty to delight the taste buds: slushy frozen drinks, enormous cookies with bizarre, exuberant flavours, fancy chicken sandwiches, not-to-be-missed drive-throughs, even cult-status gas stations with unusual offerings to surprise you. These may not occur on every drive, but when they do happen, it’s best to take part - these sorts of special treats can be few and far between.
Speaking of gas stations: stopping for gas is never just about fuel; it is a ritualistic leg-stretching moment, crucial for the journey’s success. You step out of the air-conditioned cocoon onto the shimmering, hot concrete of a rural service station. You do a strange penguin walk on stiff, protesting legs, toward the door. You peruse the keychains and the stuffed toys, you buy two bags of chips you would never eat at home, and a sweating bottle of iced tea from a chill chest. Purchases in hand, you lean against the hood, watching distant hawks, barely more than sharp black shapes against the sky, float on air currents and soar over the tree line, or, perhaps more prosaically, you stare down the gulls who are steadily approaching, eyeing your bag of snacks greedily. You can feel the heat radiate through your sneakers from the near-melting asphalt.
Once back in your seat, you’ll very likely find that there are conversations that can only happen in a moving car. Something about staring forward at an endless ribbon of asphalt, rather than looking each other directly in the eye, unlocks a rare, gentle vulnerability. Side-by-side, moving at sixty miles an hour through open country, the normal conversational barriers dissolve. You talk about childhood fears, abandoned dreams, old heartbreaks, and strange middle-of-the-night philosophy. You lay out secrets you’ve kept for years, buffered by the hum of the engine and the distant whistle of the wind against the side mirror. And when the conversation naturally lulls, there is no awkwardness: only the comfortable silence of shared travel, punctuated by the soft clicking of the tape mechanism turning over to Side B.
As the late-afternoon light turns to liquid gold, a heavy, hypnotic drowsiness descends upon the backseat passengers, who have carefully sprinkled their crackers and fruit snacks in a thin layer across the seat. There is a very specific technique for sleeping in a moving car: wedging a rolled-up sweater between your temple and the cool, vibrating window glass. You drift in and out of consciousness. Through half-closed eyelids, you catch fleeting vignettes of the countryside: a leaning, hollow red barn, an abandoned tractor overgrown with wildflowers, a single crop-duster dipping low over a cornfield, the distant blue line of trees that marks the edge of the county. And then, suddenly, the tires hit gravel. The smooth hum turns into a rhythmic, crunching rumble. The air in the car changes instantly—cooler, damp, smelling unmistakably of pine needles, freshwater, and summer evening. You sit up, rubbing the wrinkles of your sleeve off your cheek, and look out the windshield. Through the trees, the lake is glinting like scattered silver coins. You’ve arrived.
Jennifer
Easy as Pie
You might well be expecting a recipe for a standard apple pie this week, dear reader. And who could blame you? This week’s episode is all apples and lattice crust. But you’ll note that in Charlotte’s Web, the pie in question is actually a blueberry pie. And whoever said that a task was ‘easy as pie’ meant eating pie, not making it! The good news, dear reader, is that there is a delightful dessert that gives you all the flaky pastry and bursting berry goodness you could ever hope for, with a lot less hassle than a standard pie. And that dessert is galette. Just like pie, this dessert comes to us from Europe - specifically, France. It’s a delicious disk of pasty, starting out with a similar base to regular pie, but instead of all the shaping and cutting and careful placing in a pie dish, this base stays a simple circle on your baking sheet, with the scrumptious filling plonked directly in the middle of the disk, and the edges folded in with that characteristic French laissez-faire which is so chic (and so much easier to manage than a fussy pie crust!) And what of the blueberries? Well, unlike apples, blueberries are actually native to North America - so maybe we ought to say ‘as American as blueberry pie!’ If you prefer other berry types, or have other fruits in season, those will work well too: stone fruit, berries of all kinds, and yes, apples, will all play nicely in a galette. Try them all! You’ll notice that the crust here is elevated with buttermilk and cornmeal. The buttermilk lends tenderness to our crust, and cornmeal adds extra bite and flavour, creating a hearty, rustic, distinctly North American flavour: corn is also native to the Americas. If you prefer a straight-ahead pie crust flavour, use your favourite crust recipe up to the point of rolling your pastry out unbaked, then carry on to the filling. Let us turn our attention to the ingredients to get started.
Buttermilk Cornmeal Crust
1 1/4 c (156g) all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1/4 c (30g) fine cornmeal
3 tbsp (38g) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c or 8 tbsp (113g) cold unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 c (60ml) cold buttermilk, plus more as needed
Filling
4 c (about 600g) fresh or frozen blueberries (do not thaw)
1/4 c (50g) granulated sugar
1 tbsp (7g) cornstarch
2 tsp lemon zest
1 tbsp (15ml) fresh lemon juice
egg wash: 1 large egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk
optional: coarse sugar for sprinkling
Instructions
Whisk the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt together in a medium bowl. Using a pastry cutter, a fork, or your own clean fingers, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse, pea-sized crumbs. Add the buttermilk and stir until the flour is moistened and the dough clumps up. Mix in 1 more tablespoon of buttermilk if the dough seems dry. Pour crumbly dough onto a lightly floured work surface and bring it together with your hands. Shape the dough into a ball and flatten it into a 1-inch-thick disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, up to 3 days (or freeze for up to 3 months).
Mix the blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, and lemon juice together in a large bowl. Stir gently until the berries are evenly moistened (no powdery lumps of cornstarch or sugar). Place in the refrigerator until ready to use. Don’t mix the filling too much ahead of time—10 to 15 minutes is fine as you roll out the dough. You do not want the blueberry filling to sit for too long, as the berries will release too much juice.
Preheat oven to 425°F (190°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set aside.
On a lightly floured work surface, roll the chilled dough into a 12- to 14-inch circle. A little rustic, a little uneven is totally fine here - preferred, even. Transfer dough to the prepared baking sheet.
Remove the filling from the refrigerator and spoon it into the center of the dough, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Gently fold the edges of the dough over the fruit, overlapping the dough as necessary. You will be able to see the fruit filling in the middle - this is the goal. Press gently to seal the edges. Brush the edges with egg wash and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
Bake until the filling is bubbly and the crust is golden brown, about 28 to 32 minutes. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before slicing and serving. Served warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, and feel quite free to eat the slices like pizza, with your hands. How French! Enjoy!
Jennifer
Friendship Bracelets
When I close my eyes and think back to summer camp, my mind doesn't go straight to the mess hall or the chilly lake first. It goes to my hands. It goes to the feel of safety pins anchored to the knees of faded denim shorts or six strands taped with masking tape to a worn out table or bench. To the gentle, rhythmic tension of pulling a square knot tight on a lanyard, or the quiet focus of separating six strands of DMC embroidery floss with your teeth. At ten, twelve, fourteen, my summer universes were constructed from the simplest materials imaginable: plastic pony beads, translucent thread, and cheap cotton thread. Yet somehow, those mundane craft-cabin staples became the ultimate currency of connection—the physical manifestations of girlhood and the glowing, ephemeral friendships that define it.
There was a distinct geometry to camp crafting, an unspoken progression as we grew. Early on, it was all about tactile abundance: the satisfying, clackey sound of plastic pony beads dumped into a tray. We strung them onto elastic or woven cord to make keychains—lizards with pony-bead spines and tiny, meltable googly eyes, or thick beaded bands designed to clip onto heavy canvas backpacks. They were loud, bright, and impossible to lose, mostly because they were so large. Then came plastic lace. The double-barrel, the cobra stitch, the intricate round weaves: we worked on them incessantly, whether walking to archery, sitting on the cabin porch during rest hour, or waiting in line for dinner. A half-finished lanyard hanging from a zipper pull was proof that your hands were never idle, that you were in the middle of making something meant to last beyond July. As teenagers, the craft became delicate, almost secretive. The transition to friendship bracelets was a rite of passage. We graduated to the chevron, the candy stripe, the diagonal band. We pinned thread to our jeans or taped it down to wooden picnic tables warped by years of winter snow. To knot a bracelet for someone was an act of quiet devotion. It took hours. It required sitting shoulder to shoulder on a dock, legs dangling over dark water, trading secrets while your fingers worked on autopilot.
Looking back, those bracelets and keychains were never just trinkets. They were tangible proof of belonging. In the unique microcosm of summer camp, social boundaries melted away under the heat of the sun. You could meet a girl on Sunday, share a tube of Lip Smackers and a skein of pastel floss on Tuesday, and by Thursday, she was the keeper of your deepest secrets. Giving someone a bracelet was a way of saying: I see you. You are part of my summer. You are part of my life. Wearing a wrist stacked with frayed, faded thread—each one tied on with three wishes—was an armour of affection. We wore them until the colours bleached out from chlorine and lake water, until the threads frayed and snapped, taking their unspoken promises with them.
Camp friendships have a very specific light to them. They are glowing, glimmering, and often brief—shimmering like sunlight catching the underside of birch leaves or the delicate lemon sun pennies on calm water at dusk. Because we knew our time was capped by the calendar - two weeks, four weeks, a single golden month - we loved each other with a ferocious, unmeasured intensity. There was no time for the slow-burning reservations of the school year. We traded keychains, clipped beaded lizards to each other’s duffels, and tied knots that we swore would never break. And even when the summer ended, and the bus pulled away, those small plastic and cotton tokens went with us. Long after the tan lines faded and the lake water was washed from our hair, a stray pony bead at the bottom of a backpack could bring it all rushing back: the smell of pine needles, the sound of crickets through the cabin screen, and the pure, uncomplicated magic of being young, tangled up in string, and entirely alive to the moment.
Jennifer
Capture the Flag
If you, like me, went to sleepaway camp in the Whiteshell in the mid to late 1990s, you know that the Canadian Shield isn't just a geographical feature: sometimes, it’s a battleground. Between the ancient granite outcrops, towering pines, and damp moss, summer was a time for shedding the polite rules of suburban life and tapping into something far more primal. Nowhere was this more obvious than during the holy grail of camp activities: Capture the Flag. Looking back, the game wasn’t actually a game at all: it was a sociological experiment disguised as an afternoon activity. And if you paid attention, it revealed a hilarious, deeply fascinating divide in how 10-year-olds choose to spend their freedom.
For the boys, at least the boys at this particular camp, Capture the Flag was serious business. It was life or death. It was full-throttle. It was Gladiator. The second the whistle blew, any remaining social grace evaporated into the mid-August humidity. The objective wasn't just to snag a piece of fabric; it was to wage total, uncompromising war. Strategy meeting? They didn't seem to need one. Their strategy was strangely simple: just rain down pure, unadulterated chaos, and hope for the best. They would hurl themselves off granite ledges, scramble through patches of poison ivy, and tackle each other into mud pits with a level of commitment that I found bewildering. A "tag" was rarely a gentle tap on the shoulder; it was a full-body flying dive into the brush, and the captured victim was frog-marched back to the other team’s ‘prison’ with his little arms pinned behind his back. They’d emerge at campfire that night dripping with sweat, caked in dirt, proudly displaying scraped knees and bruised shins as if they were purple hearts earned on the front lines. To this day, I cannot fully explain why a group of pre-teen boys, given twenty minutes in the woods, will immediately decide to physically tackle their best friends, a la Lord of the Flies. What is going on? I couldn’t begin to tell you, dear reader.
While the boys were busy beating the daylight out of each other in the brush, the girls were taking a decidedly different, and arguably far more sophisticated, approach to the game. Yes, the flag was protected. The defence was impenetrable. But guarding a perimeter leaves a lot of time for, well, society. While keeping a sharp eye out for stray, mud-covered boys charging through the trees, the girls set to work building an entire parallel universe. A fallen log wasn't just cover; it was a kitchen counter where elaborate "meals" were prepared out of crushed leaves, pine needles, and birch bark. A quiet clearing became an atelier. Pinecone art was crafted, intricate secret languages were invented, and coded messages were passed back and forth through clandestine network lines. We weren't just playing a game; we were founding a matriarchal micro-nation with its own trade, art, and diplomacy. And we kept our clothes clean.
This brings us to the ultimate mystery of the sleepaway camp ecosystem: Why do little boys choose to beat each other up while little girls build entire civilizations and exchange friendship bracelets? There is something delightful about the contrast. On one side of the woods, you had raw, unfiltered kinetic energy—a need to test physical limits, hit the ground hard, and make as much noise as possible. On the other side, you had the quiet, magical alchemy of female friendship, where bonds were forged through creation, shared secrets, and strangely witchy ritual. While the boys nursed their battle wounds in the mess hall, the girls were arm-in-arm, perfectly harmonizing the lyrics to The Rickibamboo and three other obscure camp songs passed down through generations of campers. One group found joy in the physical clash; the other found it in the weave of embroidery floss, plastic pony beads, and the rhythmic repetition of a song everybody knew by heart.
As a ten-year-old, I didn't overthink it. I just fell into the role required of me - stockpiling pebbles to use as currency, and trading pink beads for orange ones. The boys got their bruised glory, the girls built their birch bark empires, and the Whiteshell swallowed all our noise, keeping our secrets safe beneath the pine-and-poplar canopy. Decades later, the bruises have healed, and the friendship bracelets have long since frayed and fallen off. But the memory of those wild, sunny afternoons remains: a testament to a time when a simple game in the woods became a microcosm, and felt like the centre of the universe.
Jennifer
Screen Door
There is a specific kind of magic reserved for childhood summers spent in a cabin that hasn't changed since 1974. For a week or two every year, my entire world shrank—and beautifully expanded—at The Lake. We didn’t have Wi-Fi, we didn’t have cable, and most importantly, we didn’t have air conditioning. What we did have was time, thick and slow-moving as the currents that rocked our green aluminum and fibreglass canoe on a windless afternoon.
To this day, if I close my eyes, I can hear the definitive soundtrack of those weeks. It starts with the screen door. It was stiff, slightly warped by decades of Manitoba humidity, and hung on a tight, rusty metal spring. Whenever I burst out toward the dock or ran back inside with sandy feet, the door played its familiar two-note song: a sharp, wooden thunk as it cleared the frame, followed by the metallic, vibrating sproing of the spring snapping it shut. It was the boundary marker between the shaded safety of the cabin and the wild freedom of the lake.
Inside, the main room belonged to the overhead fan. It didn't so much cool the air as push the heavy warmth around in lazy, rhythmic circles, its gentle hum a constant undercurrent to our board games and afternoon reading. When the heat inside became too heavy to bear, the lake was the best escape. I would practically live in the water, swimming for hours until my fingers pruned. I'd plunge off the end of the wooden dock into the cool, dark depths, or just float on my back, ears submerged, listening to the muffled, watery heartbeat of the lake while looking up at the passing clouds and the odd by plane. The water was the only place where the summer heat couldn't touch me, and I stayed in until my shivering forced me back onto the warm, sun-baked boards of the dock to dry off.
Outside, the air was alive with voices. There was the soft, rushing hiss of the wind through the boughs of the tall white pines and trembling poplar leaves. If you walked down to the water's edge, the scent of the lake would hit you—that rich, earthy, green perfume of duckweed. Our days had no schedule, only rituals. Armed with nothing but plastic tubs and boundless optimism, I would spend hours wading through the reeds, hunting for painted turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs. We’d save the heels of our bread loaves to feed the geese at the shoreline, laughing as they jostled for soggy crumbs. If I sat quiet enough on the dock, I’d spot the elegant, low-riding silhouettes of loons in the distance, their haunting, crazed whoops bouncing off the water as the afternoon began to cool. Or I’d see the ballet of dragonflies whizzing over the water’s surface, pausing sometimes to rest in the shade of the enormous fringed vinyl umbrella, in eyecatching orange and yellow, before zipping off again in their aerial dance.
When the mid-afternoon heat peaked and the cabin felt like a wooden oven, salvation came in the form of cold watermelon. I’d eat it outside, perched on the cabin steps, the sweet, icy juice dripping down my chin and forearms. It tasted like ambrosia, like heaven—a sticky, cold contrast to the beating sun.
And then came night. Without AC, going to bed was sometimes an exercise in frustration and futility, as you tried to find the coolest patch of sheet. I slept completely spread out like a starfish, limbs flung to the corners of the mattress, blankets kicked all the way to the floor. But I was never lonely in the dark. Through the open windows, past the fine wire mesh of the screens, the crickets would begin their tireless, pulsating nighttime serenade. Lulled by their rhythm and the cool breeze finally rolling off Lake Brerton, I would drift off to sleep, dreaming of turtles, screen doors, and tomorrow's endless sun.
Jennifer
The Big Chill
Here are two offerings, dear reader, both from the era of the Frigidaire. Both of these, um, unique dishes require refrigeration, so if a 1950s American housewife put either of these recipes on her table, she was showing off the results of her pricey new Frigidaire, basically telegraphing to her guests that she was fancy. This explains, in part, why gelatinised, chilled foods were so abundant on the dinner table after the introduction of the Frigidaire. At least, that’s the reason that makes the most sense to me, because, dear reader, if I’m perfectly honest, these recipes aren’t very…good. If you twist my arm, I will admit that the ambrosia salad is significantly better than the tomato aspic - but neither would be my first port of call. But these two recipes may become personal favourites, so do not let me discourage you, dear reader. On that note, let’s start with the aspic.
Tomato Aspic
An aspic is a savoury jelly. There are some truly egregious ones out there, which I have mercifully ignored to spare you, dear reader. If you are strong-willed and even stronger-stomached, these horrors abound on the interwebs and are readily available with a quick search. Best of luck. But today, we are focusing on that slightly less off-putting version: a fairly straightforward tomato aspic.
Ingredients
½ c of room-temperature water
2 envelopes of gelatin
3 c of tomato juice
½ c of onion, finely chopped
½ c of celery, finely chopped
1 tbsp of lemon juice
2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp of pepper
½ tsp cayenne (optional, if spice isn’t your thing)
Instructions
Combine gelatin in room-temperature water. Mix well so that the gelatin is fully incorporated (no lumps!) and let sit.
On the stovetop, add remaining ingredients into a pot and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for about 15 minutes. Then add the gelatin mixture.
Stir to ensure all gelatin is fully dissolved.
Spray a 5-cup mould with nonstick spray. Let the mixture cool, then pour into the mould.
Chill in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours, or until aspic has set.
Traditionally, this is served with a mound of mayonnaise in the centre, on a bed of Bibb lettuce. You slice it like you would a Bundt cake, and eat it with a fork or spoon. I wish I could offer you more here, dear reader, something that would make sense of this monstrosity, but I’ve given you all I have. If you choose not to partake in tomato aspic, just know that I will not judge you.
Ambrosia Salad
This recipe produces a more palatable result. Ambrosia salad, sometimes called only ‘ambrosia,’ is a very popular dish in the American South, often considered a staple for picnics. In some respects, that makes sense: it is served cold, so it would make a nice, chilly mouthful on a hot day. It also explains the presence of things like coconut and pecans, which are popular ingredients in Southern baking. Rest assured, dear reader, you will not have to turn on the oven for this recipe. As with the above tomato aspic, this kind of recipe relies on refrigeration and only asks for combining - can we even call this sort of thing ‘cooking’? I’ll let you decide.
Ingredients:
8 oz whipped cream (you can use frozen whipped topping to be really modern)
½ c plain yogurt or sour cream
1 c shredded sweetened coconut
11 oz canned mandarin oranges, drained
8 oz canned pineapple tidbits or crushed pineapple, drained
1 c maraschino cherries, drained
½ c chopped pecans optional
1 ½ c mini fruit-flavoured marshmallows (you can use the plain kind, but the flavoured ones are more ‘authentic.’ There’s a brand-new sentence.)
Instructions
In a large bowl, stir together the whipped cream and yogurt or sour cream.
Using a spatula, carefully fold remaining ingredients into the whipped cream and yogurt mixture.
Chill before serving.
Now, you might notice that this recipe calls for almost entirely sweet ingredients: the sweetened coconut, all that tinned fruit, the marshmallows. And yet, this is not considered dessert. If you are bringing ambrosia salad to the function, expect to find it plonked on the table next to the hot dogs or corn on the cob. Again, I have no explanations for you, dear reader, but a whole subculture of America swears by it, so who am I to question it? I would say ‘enjoy!’ but I’m not entirely sure that you will. Perhaps I’ll say instead, ‘persevere!’
Jennifer
Stormy Weather
There is a universal truth when you live in the English-speaking world, particularly in places like Canada or the UK: weather isn't just an atmospheric condition; it is a cultural cornerstone. It is our default social currency, our icebreaker, and our collective obsession. If you are stuck in an elevator with a stranger in London, Manchester, Toronto, or Winnipeg, you don't talk about politics, art, or what you had for breakfast. You talk about the rain. You talk about the wind. And depending on the season, you debate the air's exact texture. But after years of navigating these conversations, I’ve come to a troubling realisation: I have a geographical bias. And as much as I love the changing seasons, I am officially drawing a line in the humid, sticky sand. I am never going to adjust to the summer heat in eastern Canada.
Before we get into the meteorological misery, let’s start with the linguistics. In the UK, weather talk is a complex, multi-layered dance of understatement. A torrential downpour that floods the high street is merely "a bit damp out." A grey sky that hasn't changed since Tuesday is described as "miserable, isn't it?" with a sort of grim satisfaction. In Canada, the tone shifts. It’s less about resignation and more about survivalist pride. We wear our extreme weather like badges of honour. If it drops to −35∘C, someone will invariably stand outside in a light hoodie, holding an iced coffee, just to tell you, "It's not the cold that gets you, it's the wind chill." People in Winnipeg routinely tell visitors that the -30 degree winters aren’t really that bad - it’s a dry cold, after all. And for the longest time, I agreed with that sentiment. Because I grew up understanding a very specific kind of climate: the unapologetic, dramatic extremes of the Canadian prairies. You don’t just get used to it: you start to like it. Winter in Winnipeg smells clean - clean as a fresh sheet of paper, even as the air stings your cheeks and makes breathing feel like a questionable choice to make.
There is a profound honesty to prairie weather. When winter arrives in the west, it is, in fact, a dry cold. Yes, it is sharp enough to freeze your eyelashes shut when you blink, but it’s a crisp, clear, blue-sky kind of cold. If you layer up properly - wool layers, insulated boots, only your eyes exposed to the cold like a sort of stealthy winter ninja, you can create a localised ecosystem of warmth. The air stays out; you stay dry. In fact, sometimes all that clothing, like a self-made, personal greenhouse, can be too warm, and you have to take your mittens off to let some of the built-up heat escape. The same goes for prairie summers. A 30∘C day in the west is a glorious, baking, dry heat. It feels like walking into an oven, sure, but the moment you step into the shade of an awning or a tree, the temperature drops. Your sweat actually evaporates, doing exactly what nature intended: cooling you down. It’s comfortable. It makes sense.
Then, I moved east. Living in the eastern part of the country, particularly during a July or August heatwave, is a completely different ordeal, and one that feels like a kind of water torture to me. Here, 30∘C isn't a number on a thermometer; it’s a physical weight. The humidity rolls off the waterways and settles over the cities like a damp wool blanket left in a trunk since 1994. It’s like breathing soup. There are moments when, in my distressingly sticky state, I cannot bear to have any part of my skin touching - not even my fingers, so I wander around or lay in bed at night with my hands splayed like starfish, trying to find relief - relief that is not there to find. In a dry heat, you can retreat into the shade, drink something iced, and breathe a sigh of relief. In humid heat, there is no escape. The shade offers zero help because the moisture is suspended in the atmosphere all around you, shade or otherwise. You step outside for four minutes to check the mail, and you return looking like you’ve just been fished out of a river. Your hair expands to three times its normal volume, and your skin becomes a stranger, behaving in ways that feel foreign and unexpected every summer. The air feels thick, heavy, and deeply, personally offensive. It’s like summer hates me - and frankly, I’m not too keen on it here, either. Every conversation at the local coffee shop or on the corner turns into a collective groan about the humidex. "It’s not the heat," a neighbour will sigh, wiping their brow, sweat staining their shirt in wide swooping arcs around their neck and under their arms. "I know," you reply, trapped in the script. "It’s the humidity."
They say the human body is incredibly adaptable. We can acclimatize to high altitudes, desert landscapes, and arctic tundras if given enough time. But I’ve officially given up on eastern summers. Every June, as the air transitions from "crisp spring" to "steamy laundry room," my prairie-conditioned soul rebels. You can keep your heavy air and your sticky afternoons. Until September - who am I kidding, late October - arrives to rescue us with some proper, brisk Canadian air, you can find me hiding from the heat, directly in front of the nearest air conditioning unit, daydreaming about the beautiful, dry winds of the West.
Jennifer
Molasses Cookies
Captain Ahab’s white whale was a literal white whale. Mine are soft spice cookies. People promise that they have the very best recipe for spice cookies, and I eagerly reach for one of their proffered treats, only to find it’s a biscuit as hard and stale as a hockey puck. Keep your ginger snaps and crispy, crunchy cookies to yourself. I want a cookie that is the texture and weight of barely-baked, damp sand. If it’s very slightly underbaked in the middle, and will bend under its own heft, that is the cookie for me. These are, so far, the best version of the soft, dense, chewy spice cookie, made dark and complex and delicious by molasses, inspired by the classic desserts we encountered in this week’s episode. Put on a pot of tea, make a batch of these, and you’re ready for any guest who might wander through your door. They are beloved by children, grumpy old ladies (including me) and just about anyone with taste buds. Enjoy!
Ingredients
2 1/4 c (281g) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c (170g) unsalted softened butter
1/2 c (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
1/4 c (50g) granulated sugar
1/3 c (80ml) unsulphured or dark molasses (do not use blackstrap - regular dark molasses is key here)
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 c (67g) granulated sugar for rolling
Instructions
Whisk the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt together until combined. Set aside.
In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and both sugars together on high speed until creamy and combined, about 2 minutes. Add the molasses and beat until combined. Then add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
On low speed, slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. The cookie dough will be slightly sticky. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour and up to 2–3 days.
Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator. If the cookie dough is chilled longer than 2 hours, let it sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. The cookies may not spread in the oven if the dough is that cold. Roll cookie dough, 1 tbsp each, into balls. Roll each in granulated sugar and arrange 3 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 11–12 minutes or until edges appear set. If the tops aren’t appearing cracked as pictured, remove the baking sheet from the oven and gently bang it on the counter 2–3x. This will help those warm cookies spread out and crack on top. Return to the oven for 1 additional minute.
Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Cookies will stay fresh covered at room temperature for 1 week.
These will make a welcome addition to any tea party, afternoon break, post-school snack, or indeed any moment when life demands a little something sweet and spicy. They are very more-ish, so be sure to have plenty on hand! Enjoy!
Jennifer
Cottage Core
I am, by all metrics, a city girl. I thrive on walkable sidewalks, the low hum of traffic, and the ability to get a perfect London Fog at 7:00 AM without having to look a single farm animal in the eye. And yet, if you look at my mood boards, my bookshelves, or my knitting queue, you’d think I was a woman longing for the agrarian life. Which, you know, I am.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how deeply entrenched I am in a very specific, very fuzzy kind of nostalgia. I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of cottagecore, historical fiction, and the idealised past. In this version of reality, the sun is always setting at a perfect, golden 45-degree angle. The air smells exclusively of sourdough and lavender. The linen dresses never get grass stains, and the mud is purely decorative. There are always ducks. It’s a beautiful fantasy. But let’s get real, folks - that’s all it is. A fantasy.
There is a profound comfort in the aesthetics of the past. When modern life feels overly digital, fractured, and fast, it’s easy to look back through a soft-focus lens. We romanticise the material culture of a simpler era—the heavy weight of stoneware pitchers, the rhythm of hand-cranked tools, the quiet satisfaction of a vegetable garden with picture-perfect produce, like something out of Beatrix Potter. In this imagined past, labour is always fulfilling. I imagine myself baking pies on wide windowsills or collecting perfectly clean eggs in a wicker basket. I consume "slow life" content as a digital balm for my very offline anxieties. But as much as I love a beautifully shot video of someone foraging in a misty meadow with the meandering beauty of Saint-Saens or Satie playing over it, the reality of the farm is entirely different.
True agricultural history and current farm reality aren’t a pastoral painting. They are hard, unglamorous, repetitive labour. It’s waking up at 4:00 AM because an animal is sick or a frost is coming. It’s grease, dirt, unpredictable weather, and the blunt, unsentimental facts of life and death. And as we saw in today’s episode, these days, it’s often huge, industrial-sized machinery in support of commercial farming. The historic "simpler time" we crave was often defined by gruelling physical toll, economic precarity, and a distinct lack of modern plumbing. Yuck. When we strip away the grit to create an aesthetic, we aren’t engaging with history or heritage; we are engaging with a fairytale.
So, where does that leave a city girl who still loves the look of a calico apron and a rustic kitchen? I think it’s okay to admit that the nostalgia we feel isn’t for the actual past, but for a feeling. I don’t actually want to milk cows in the freezing dark, much as I do love a good cow; I want a life of purpose and quiet focus. We don’t want the isolation of an 1800s homestead; we want a break from our screens. I’m learning to love the aesthetic for what it is: a beautiful, stylized fiction, while keeping my feet firmly planted on the pavement. I can knit my wool sweaters, read my cozy mysteries, and appreciate the craftsmanship of bygone eras without romanticising the harsh realities that came with them, or ignoring the plight of the people whose labour makes farming possible in the modern world. After all, the best part of a fantasy is that you can visit it whenever you want, but you still get to come home to city plumbing and a great bakery down the street.
Ultimately, I don’t think we have to choose between the cobblestone and the concrete. The secret third option is to treat the aesthetic as a curated gallery rather than a blueprint for living. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing rejection of modern life, nor does it need to be a delusion. Instead, we can approach it with the eye of an appreciative visitor: someone who can love the texture of a heavy linen textile, the rhythm of a slow craft, or the quiet focus of a handmade life, while fully acknowledging that these things are beautiful set-dressing for a very different, very modern reality. By letting go of the pressure to make the fantasy real, we can stop treating the past as an escape hatch and start using it as a toolkit: borrowing the best pieces of its warmth and craftsmanship to soften the edges of our vibrant, fast-paced city lives. We get to keep the sourdough and the subway. Lucky us, dear reader.
Jennifer
Hello, Dolly
If you looked at marketing campaigns from the nineties and early aughts, you’d think playing with dolls was a serene, maternal exercise. Little girls in matching pajamas gently rocking plastic infants, or neatly brushing the nylon hair of a Barbie before sending her off to a glamorous day at the office, or the space station, or the aquarium, or the ski hill. And look, sometimes I did exactly that. I had my moments of pure, textbook play. I tucked my baby dolls into their strollers with genuine tenderness. I meticulously dressed my Barbies in their finest velcro evening gowns, setting up elaborate, perfectly organized dreamhouse living rooms. But if you only look at that version of childhood, you’re missing the real story. Because the moment the bedroom door closed, things got weird. Dramatic. Dark. And occasionally, a little bit violent.
Let’s be honest: Barbie was never just a fashion icon. She was an actress in a high-stakes, prestige television drama that lived entirely inside my head. The "meant to be played with" rules quickly fell away to make room for complex, soap-opera narratives. Barbies weren’t just going to the beach; they were surviving shipwreck scenarios. This one fell of the ski hill; that one got stranded on an alien planet in space, and wept bitterly for her beloved pet cat at home. There were elaborate love triangles, sudden bouts of amnesia, and tragic, unexplained falls from the top of the bookshelf, very possibly orchestrated by an evil twin sister or villainous ex-best-friend.
While Barbie handled the high-society melodrama, the baby dolls were reserved for a completely different kind of psychological thriller. The classic baby doll is designed to evoke instinctual nurturing. But when you give a small child absolute authority over a silent, unblinking human replica, things can get surreal. For every time I sweetly fed my baby doll with a plastic bottle, there was another time where that same doll was subjected to extreme endurance testing. They were dropped from heights to see if their plastic heads would bounce. They were stuffed into dark, cramped drawers because "it was time for a very long nap." If badly behaved, they were made to sleep as far from me as possible, or locked in the laundry hamper, a sort of Old Testament punishment - read into that what you will, dear reader. They were left face-down on the carpet for days, victims of a sudden, total loss of interest that feels cold-blooded and neglectful in hindsight. There was a strange, thrilling power in controlling these small, silent figures. I wasn’t just playing "house"; I was testing the limits of gravity, biology, and social etiquette in a safe, completely consequence-free environment - namely, the floor of my bedroom.
There was a time when I believed that these tendencies were specific to my childhood, evidence of my early pecularities. But talking to friends now, I realize nearly all of us were running secret, chaotic doll syndicates in our bedrooms. We need that weirdness. The structured, perfect, pristine version of toy play is an adult fantasy. Kids don't just want to mimic a perfect world; they want to process the messy, dramatic, and chaotic elements of the real one. They don’t always want fairy tales: sometimes, they want telenovelas. Giving Barbie a botched haircut or putting a baby doll through a rigorous survivalist boot camp wasn't a sign of malice: it was the beginning of storytelling. It was creative autonomy at its finest, sharpest, and most hilariously unhinged. So here’s to the Barbies who lost their heads, the baby dolls who survived the dark depths of the closet, and the wild imaginations that made childhood so beautifully strange.
Jennifer
The Sole Dilemma
There comes a moment in every woman’s life when she stands in her closet, looks at a pair of gorgeous, towering heels or narrow, pointed flats, and thinks: Who was she? And what kind of pain tolerance did she possess?
Once upon a time, my criteria for buying shoes was simple: Are they cute? If the answer was yes, they came home with me. Breaking them in was treated like a minor hazing ritual, a temporary rite of passage involving a lot of Band-Aids and a bit of limping, all in the name of a great outfit. Fast forward to the present day, and my internal shoe-dar has completely shifted. Now, before a shoe even touches my foot, my brain runs a rigorous, multi-point diagnostic check: Does this offer actual arch support? Is the toe box wide enough for a human foot, or is it designed for a mythical creature? Can I walk three miles in these without questioning my life choices? More often than not, the shoes that pass this test are entirely functional. They are cushioned. They are sensible. They are... incredibly ugly. And honestly? My feet have never been happier. I can walk, run errands, and stand for hours without that deep ache that used to feel inevitable. I’ve embraced the supportive sneaker and the ergonomic sole with open, grateful arms.
But here is the truth, whispered from the back of my closet where the dusty heels live: I miss the cute stuff. I miss the sharp clack-clack of a proper heel on a hard floor. I miss the way a beautifully structured, slightly ridiculous shoe can entirely anchor an outfit and make you feel like a completely different version of yourself. There is a specific kind of sartorial joy that comes from footwear that serves absolutely no purpose other than looking spectacular, like wearing a Bronzino on your feet. When you choose 100% functionality, 100% of the time, it can feel a little bit like a concession. It’s the ultimate sign of growing up: prioritizing longevity and biological reality over aesthetics. But does being sensible mean we have to entirely forfeit our style? How do we bridge the gap between the supportive insoles we genuinely need and the aesthetic joy we still crave? Are we doomed to a lifetime of orthopedic-adjacent footwear, or is there a middle ground?
I could categorise my shoes by wearability: this pair is fine for a few minutes, chair to chair, car to restaurant, restaurant to car. That pair is suitable for walking for hours. They cannot be interchanged. I could decide to wear only the most supportive shoes and pair them with beautiful dresses and tailored trousers, intentionally mixing high and low and hope that it comes across as purposeful, the way people in 90s New York wore sneakers with their suits on the subway. Or, and this one is my personal preference, I can hunt for the unicorns. That is, I can only accept beautiful, comfortable shoes - no compromises. They must exist: shoes with hidden memory foam, hidden arch support, and leather that doesn't require a blood sacrifice to break in. Sure, they take longer to find, and they might cost a bit more, but they are worth their weight in gold. Brands must know that women are looking for these unicorn shoes, right? Why don’t they want to take my money?
Growing up means, at least in part, knowing your boundaries, and my feet have drawn a very firm line in the sand (what a bizarre image). But I refuse to believe that comfort and charm are mutually exclusive. And you, dear reader? Have you completely surrendered to the sensible shoe, or are you still fighting the good fight in the name of fashion? I’m out there with you, on the battlefield, very probably wincing in a pair of shoes that don’t quite meet the mark.
Jennifer