Carrie Saum

What’s more refreshing than a piping hot mug of coffee? Well, lots of things. How about a recipe for cold-brew pumpkin spice coffee instead?

Last year, Ashton Kutcher tweeted about the Teal Pumpkin Project for Halloween. The food allergy community lost its damn mind in the best way.

Party City’s food allergies ad wasn’t an innocent lapse in judgment or poor agency vetting. It was a revelation of their core values.

Oh, you say you’re making this for your neighbor who just had a baby and a traumatic birth experience and you want to be an Exceptional Neighbor and bring her post-partum love and healing in a warm, bubbling cake dish? Fantastic. Just make sure to eat half of the cobbler straight out of the pan first, and then transfer it to another pan and pretend it’s meant to look like a pan of berry mush.

I also kind of feel like whatever I do eventually put in my body needs to be quality and filling and full of nutritious goodness. This is hard on mornings when it literally feels like all I can do to make toast. Sometimes I look at it, contemplate it fresh out of the toaster and briefly wonder if I really need to spread the almond butter on it. Because effort.

One of the very best gems my friend brought to me were these goat cheese medallions. I couldn’t wait to try them and now share them with you.

Gather anything orange, brown, olive green, harvest yellow, and dead. Dead leaves, dead flowers, dead hopes and dreams, and arrange them artistically on your front doorstep.

So, what do you do when you make something that looks a mess but tastes like the Virgin Mary give birth in your mouth? You add more sugar and salt to hide its minor imperfections and nobody gives a damn how it looks after the first bite.

In February, you gave me that soul-punching gaze again and told me it's okay to eat bread while we obtain Our Best Bodies. You lost 26(!) pounds and you eat bread every damn day! I feel how miraculous this is for you because you've probably made bread evil, along with All The Carbs and fat on your body.

I didn’t realize I was a polarizing person until my late 20s. I was raised in a tradition where being liked was extremely important — pivotal, even.