May 17, 2026

Spring Sundays Vol. 9

Something about mid May feels great. No horrid heat yet, no jacket weather, everyone seems to be in a good mood - I’ll take it. I also love that it’s planting season. Not sure when I became this person, but here we are.

ADDICTED TO

The $2 coffee from Second Cup. Do not sleep on Second Cup.

BAKING

I made Ina Garten’s coconut cake for Mother’s Day and good god, that’s a good cake. I would absolutely make it again. Almond extract is so underused and I love it. But honestly the frosting especially stands on its own. I might make just the frosting next time and put it on banana bread.

Frosting Recipe

1 pound cream cheese, at room temperature

½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon pure almond extract

1 pound confectioners’ sugar, sifted (doesn’t matter if sifted or not)

6 ounces sweetened shredded coconut (optional)

Frosting Instructions

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and almond extract on low speed. Add the confectioner’s sugar and mix until just smooth (don’t whip!).

The next coconut cake I make (which will likely be in a year or so because I think I can only stand coconut once a year) will definitely be the Smith & Wollensky coconut layer cake. It’s on their dessert menu and it’s luxurious and perfect, but seems like a finicky recipe. Have to attempt it, though.

COOKING

Still making the blue sky bran muffins on a loop.

CRAVING

The sun. It’s finally warm today and I might just spend an hour on the lawn and read a book in warmth.

EATING

An incredible beetroot salad at Lobby in Hamilton.

EXPERIENCING

I know I won’t shut up about this tree, but look at it. She’s gorgeous.

HATING

Torrisi in the number three spot of the New York Times list of New York’s top 100 restaurants?! Get real. Overrated as hell.

LEARNING

I did that trick where you wrap fresh/warm cake layers in plastic wrap to lock in moisture before frosting a cake and I think it really worked! Love a new baking tip.

LOVING

This article on Martin Short in the New York Times. Great idea from it:

“EVERY MONDAY, Short reflects on the week and gives himself grades in nine categories of life, including Career, Family, Friendship and Lifestyle. The fact that Discipline is one of the nine is telling. He’s done this for decades. Originally, it allowed him to feel good about himself during slow professional stretches. When his career wasn’t going well, he raised his score by working harder on something like Family. There’s clearly a best-selling self-help book here.”

And if you’re curious what all of the nine categories are, I looked it up.

Self: Your own personal physical health, mental well-being, and daily maintenance.
Immediate Family: The core of your daily life, including your spouse, partner, children, and pets.
Original Family: Your relationships with the people you grew up with, including parents and siblings.
Friends: The health, frequency, and attentiveness of your friendships.
Money: Financial security and stability, which provides peace of mind.
Career: How fulfilling and successful your daily work is.
Creativity: Your creative endeavors, outlets, and innate creativity outside of your primary work.
Discipline: The self-control and drive to sustain work toward your goals.
Lifestyle: Are you having fun, making a difference, and actively enjoying your day-to-day life?

God, I love this man. You should really read his memoir.

READING

I found an index of all of Ina Garten’s published recipes and I bookmarked all of the ones I want to try this year. I really can’t remember a time when I tried one of her recipes that fell flat, so that’s what started this journey. Some ones that especially stood out: Roast Chicken with Bread and Arugula Salad, Roasted Italian Meatballs, Maple Roasted Carrot Salad. Wait, maybe I just like roasted things. Also this potato basil puree looks nuts.

SHOPPING

This notepad was on sale at Indigo so I didn’t have a choice but to get it and it’s thick as hell, which is great. It’ll take me forever to go through it.

I also bought another bowl from Zara Home. No idea what I’ll use it for, but she’s gorgeous.

WATCHING

We saw Hokum in theatres and wow. It’s almost refreshing to see such a laughably bad movie. Terrible writing, awful story, Zero respect for Adam Scott doing it.

You can read last week’s Spring Sundays Volume 8 here.

September 1, 2024

The Best of August

by Liz Heather in Beauty, Best of NYC, Drinks, Food, Ideas, Links, Movies, Personal, Recipes

SUMMER IS OVER! Extremely pumped to say goodbye to August. So many things are changing right now and I kind of can’t wait for what’s ahead. But before that, here were the highlights of the month.

Finished my Summer Saturdays series.
The best tweets of the month can be found over here.
Why don’t all cheese boards have corresponding cheeses labels?? SOMEBODY PUT ME IN CHARGE OF SOMETHING.

In love with these blue sky bran muffins. Who have I become? I like her?
The Freshly Brewed Coffee candle at Bath & Body Works smells like heaven on earth.

I found Walla Walla onions at my farmer’s market and they remain the greatest onion on the scene today.
My friend Richard made the best tomato pie I’ve ever tasted.

I got the new Alex Trebek Jeopardy stamps and they’re a bit disappointing. I was hoping for more than just one design.
Marla came for a visit and we did so many fun things. We saw Suffs on Broadway, ate at Thyme & Tonic (incredible), tried on a million gorgeous things at both locations of Beacon’s Closet, we rode the Staten Island Ferry, ate at the always-great Rubirosa, went to Little Island for the first time, went to some of the Chelsea Thursday galleries and we perused Chelsea Market so we obviously had to get some Seed + Mill.

A rat scared us out of Central Park approx. five seconds after this photo was taken

Manhattan skyline from the (free) Staten Island Ferry

Seed + Mill now has a chocolate drizzle option

I read Jennette McCurdy’s book and it was too real and too good.
My favourite pesto recipe is the How Sweet Eats one, but with walnuts instead of pine nuts.
Summer is the time to make peach daiquiris and this peach rose slushy.

Fell in love with the restaurant Hillstone. On a mission now to visit all the locations eventually. The best parts about this place are the chilled salad plates, the chilled martini glasses that are replaced midway through your drink, an insane French dip sandwich (David Chang says that this sandwich “haunts him” and he’s right), a wildly good chicken caesar salad, servers only have three tables at a time so they can really focus on each customer, they don’t have food runners or bussers, the tables are drilled into the ground so there aren’t any wobbly ones, there’s freshly squeezed orange juice AND each table is designed to feel like it’s in its very own little VIP section. So impressed by the level of thoughtfulness at this place, I love it so much.

And speaking of hospitality, I read something recently that explains why I think I love restaurants so much. I’m the one who cooks at home (which I enjoy), but it’s nice to escape that sometimes and have someone take care of me in that way. It’s such a simple thought, but it blew my mind for a minute.
I finally deep cleaned my beauty blender by putting Dawn in some boiled water and then I let the sponge sit in that mixture for five minutes before rinsing in water. Reddit has all the answers.
I found a Sabon body scrub on sale at Marshall’s, which reminded me how much I love any Sabon products.
I’ve been living in the Essie colour Seas The Day.

Annoyance of the day: I absolutely hate that all brow pencils now come in that little mechanical tube (that always breaks). Remember when the Anastasia brow pencil was actually a real pencil that you could sharpen?? We’ve strayed too far from the light of god. It’s impossible to find a real, high quality pencil anymore.
Nathan and I spent our anniversary in Cooperstown, New York to go to the incredible Baseball Hall of Fame, so I’ll do a post about that later this week.
Denny’s has a Beetlejuice-themed menu right now that is a full party, even if it does sound somewhat gross.
Loved reading Pete Wells’ final NY Times piece.
Some things I watched:
- Patriot Games - wow. Love 90s movies like this.
- Six Days, Seven Nights - even Harrison Ford can’t save this movie.
- Trap - I liked the first two thirds of it, but everything went downhill as soon as they left the stadium. This review sums up my feelings almost precisely.
- Falling Down - great movie.
- Wall Street - weird that I’d never seen it before, Martin Sheen was a smokeshow.
- Consenting Adults - great idea for a movie.
- Longlegs - love an original horror script.

I would normally list the things I’m looking forward to this month, but things are changing so fast right now that I have no idea what the end of the month will look like. I’m hopeful and excited, but I’m also terrified and I sort of just want to let this month happen.

If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in July over here and you can see more posts like this on my latest newsletter.

August 31, 2024

Summer Saturdays Vol. 9

by Liz Heather in Summer Saturdays

Welcome to the final Summer Saturdays! Yes, I missed the last two weeks of this series but all we can do is move forward. I know that summer technically ends in a few weeks, but this year it’s over for me as of August 31st (today). Autumn will start as usual on September 22nd, but I would like the first three weeks on the month to remain seasonless. I can decide that, right? I have no desire to prolong summer and I refuse to start buying pumpkins. I intend to use this period of time to focus on myself and myself alone. The most self-involved three weeks I can imagine. But for now, here’s how my final week of summer went.

BAKING

These bran muffins are so incredible with added blueberries.

COOKING

Corn-on-the-cob is perfect right now, so it’s the only reason I turn on my stove these days.

CRAVING

One final lap swim of the season.

DRINKING

Nathan got this peanut butter coffee that’s actually delicious.

EATING

I had this perfect baked haddock when we were upstate that I’m still thinking about.

EXPERIENCING

Jeez, so many things have happened in the past few weeks. My dear friend Marla came to visit me and we had such a great time. Nathan and I also went to Cooperstown, NY this week, which was last minute but so nice. (There are highlights from that trip over here.)

LISTENING

Since there was a roadtrip, I made this playlist for the drive.

LOVING

The gluten-free restaurant Thyme & Tonic on the upper west side. The noodles and the popcorn chicken were unholy.

SHOPPING

The autumn candle trio from Bath & Body Works.

WATCHING

Saw Longlegs in theatres and Nic Cage was great (duh). Love an original horror movie. My only notes? Legs could’ve been longer.

WEARING

I will continue to dream about this Dior skirt.

The previous Summer Saturdays Vol. 8 can be found over here, I have a summer highlights section over here and you can see more posts like this on my latest newsletter.

Thank you for caring about any of these summer posts! I’ll likely be back for Fall Fridays on September 27th.