Carrie Saum

What do you do when you're provided with a bunch of winter squash? You make soup. You make veggie bowls. You make coconut curry butternut squash mash!

By 13, I clearly understood: Thinness was next to Godliness, and I could never achieve either without extraordinary means. Jesus loves skinny people.

The amount of mental/emotional/invisible labor that we carry out every day, in addition to kids and regular work, takes a toll. It's okay to be exhausted.

My grandmother planted these gorgeous Meyer lemon trees

If you grew up in a typical Christmas tradition, you probably had the same dinner at Thanksgiving and at Christmas.

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I know it feels like you're falling apart. It's the kind that happens when I have overcommitted and then something goes wrong and everything else spirals.

The holiday season presents numerous opportunities to celebrate and be with people we love and enjoy. It's also a constant source of potential triggers, just waiting to burst to the surface. Infinite stimulation creates a perfect storm to drown all of us in the overwhelm. As fun as the holidays can be, they can be a deep well of anxiety and exhaustion. Over the last decade, I've discovered what works best for me in regards to managing the holiday deluge. So, here's what's worked for me.

No-bake cookies were always one of my favorite potluck eats. These seemed like straight-up magic to me, and I was fascinated by cookies that tasted awesome without baking them. It was potluck sorcery at Hogwarts level.

It was a life-altering mouthgasm of flavor explosions, and I totally wanted to pack my bags for India and Bali to have my own Eat Pray Love experience.