The Raw and The Cooked - Simple Rhythms for SAHM, Honest Motherhood, and Books Worth Reading

After nearly a year of wearing my Fitbit Inspire 3, I'm taking stock of the data: my steps, sleep, resting heart rate, and what these numbers have taught me about my own health. Inspired in part by Casey Means's Good Energy, I'm exploring how wearables can help us better understand the everyday habits that support our well-being.

But is tracking our health always helpful? In this episode, I share what I love about my Fitbit, where it falls short, and the tension between using data to make informed decisions and becoming overly focused on optimizing every metric. Because while the numbers can tell us something useful, they can't tell us everything—and our health is about so much more than a score.

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Sometimes you don't want a great book. You want a book you can absolutely inhale. In this episode, I'm talking about mind-candy novels—books that are immersive, compulsively readable, and perhaps a little lacking in intellectual substance. The kind of books you pick up throughout the day, find excuses to keep reading, and finish in two or three days… even while knowing they probably aren't going to change your life. I recently devoured two library finds that fit the bill perfectly: So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder and Flesh by David Szalay. Neither blew me away, but both completely sucked me in—and sometimes, honestly, that's exactly what I want from a book.

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What if meal planning worked a little more like getting dressed? I’m building a fall capsule of meals: a handful of family favorites that I can rotate throughout the season, with enough flexibility to keep things interesting.

In this episode, I’m sharing how I’m thinking about our fall dinner rotation, the meals that made the cut, and why having a reliable framework makes feeding a family feel so much easier.

🍂 Fall 2026 Capsule

Sunday – 🍝 Pasta Night

Monday – 🥔 My Mom’s Meatloaf & Mash + a Green

Tuesday – 🍲 Soup Night + Homemade Sourdough

Wednesday – 🐟 Salmon + Greens & Potatoes

Thursday – 🌮 Slow-Cooked Korean Tacos, Chicken Pot Pie, or Shepherd’s Pie

Friday – 🍁 Maple-Dijon Chicken or Whole Roasted Chicken

Saturday – 🧹 Leftovers / Clean-Out-the-Fridge Night

The goal isn't to eat the same seven meals every week. It's to have a starting point—a collection of meals we already know we love, ingredients that overlap, and a rhythm that takes some of the daily decision-making out of dinner.

A capsule wardrobe gives you fewer things to wear, but more outfits. I'm hoping a capsule meal plan can do the same thing for dinner.

Crusty Bread Recipe

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This summer, I read my way through a whole collection of books, from family dramas and literary fiction to thrillers, classics, and books about living well. In this episode, I'm sharing the books I loved, the ones that were just OK, and the three I didn't finish. Let's talk about summer reading!

❤️ Books I LOVED

1. Whistler — Ann Patchett (Episode #228)
2. Commonwealth — Ann Patchett (Re-read)
3. The Rest of Our Lives — Ben Markovits
4. Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
5. Say You'll Remember Me — Abby Jimenez (Episode #230)
6. The Chosen — Chaim Potok
7. This Story Might Save Your Life — Tiffany Crum
8. The Unsinkable Greta James — Jennifer E. Smith
9. The Push — Ashley Audrain
10. Same As It Ever Was — Claire Lombardo
11. Heart the Lover — Lily King
12. Writers & Lovers — Lily King
13. Five Tuesdays in Winter — Lily King (Episode #233)
14. Mina's Matchbox — Yoko Ogawa
15. This Is Not About Us — Allegra Goodman
16. The Art of Spending Money — Morgan Housel (Episode #236)
17. Yesteryear — Caro Claire Burke (Episode #239)
18. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry — John Mark Comer (Episode #197)

🙂 Books That Were OK

1. In the Family Way — Laney Becker Katz
2. The Mad Wife — Meagan Church
3. Plastic — Scott Guild
4. I Just Wish I Had a Bigger Kitchen — Kate Strickler
5. After Annie — Anna Quindlen
6. The Burning Side — Sarah Damoff

📚 Books I Didn't Finish (DNF)

1. Banyan Moon — Thao Thai
2. A Better World — Sarah Langan
3. We Don't Talk About Carol — Kristen Berry

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I finally got my hands on the wildly popular Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke—and then promptly read all 400 pages in one day. I’m talking mommy influencers, motherhood, marriage, religion, internet culture, a completely bonkers plot twist, and why I loved reading this book even though I’m not entirely convinced I loved the book itself.

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What if you don't need more recipes—you just need to get really, really good at a handful of them? 

Inspired by Jiro Dreams of Sushi, today I'm talking about the beauty of repetition, mastery, and becoming just a little bit better than you were yesterday. In a world that constantly tells us to try something new, I'm making the case for the humble family rotation: five to ten dishes you know by heart, love to cook, and have perfected over time.

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As a society, we are obsessed with happiness. There are endless books, podcasts, studies, and strategies devoted to finding it, creating it, measuring it, and optimizing it—and yet I’m not convinced we’ve gotten any happier. The Torah’s answer to happiness is different. Rather than telling us to chase a feeling, it repeatedly commands us to rejoice, to enjoy what we’ve been given, and to serve God with joy and gladness. I think there’s a reason for that: happiness is a discipline. 

Gratitude, contentment, rejecting entitlement, choosing a positive outlook, and learning to recognize our blessings are all practices that shape the way we experience our lives.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, I’m thinking about what God actually asks of us—and how gratitude and happiness fit into that larger picture. We talk about asking for health and prosperity, but perhaps wisdom comes first: having a direction for our lives matters just as much as having a working engine and a full tank of gas. I also share one of the phrases that has had the greatest impact on my own outlook: Rabbi Nachman’s teaching that “with joy you will go out.” 

Maybe happiness isn’t something we eventually arrive at. Maybe it’s something we practice, every day, as we become the people we are capable of becoming.

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In this episode, I’m talking about Morgan Housel’s The Art of Spending Money, a book that really resonated with me for its ideas about contentment, enough, and what actually makes a rich life. We talk about the fisherman who is told he should work harder so that someday he can retire and spend his days fishing—and how he’s already living the life the businessman is chasing. I share what this looks like in our own family: choosing to live on one income, valuing time and flexibility over maximizing our income, and finding so much richness in ordinary things like cooking, baking, riding bikes with my kids, and an afternoon with an iced coffee and nowhere to be. Maybe we don’t need more money, more stuff, bigger houses, or bigger vacations. Maybe sometimes we need to stop and recognize that we already have enough.

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This week, I'm reviewing Kate Strickler's I Just Wish I Had a Bigger Kitchen—but the conversation quickly becomes about something much bigger.

Over the last decade, I've noticed a publishing trend that's hard to ignore: bloggers, influencers, and podcasters with built-in audiences are increasingly landing book deals. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. But as a reader, I'm starting to wonder what gets lost when platform becomes the primary qualification.

In this episode, I discuss:

• Why I picked up Kate Strickler's book in the first place
• What worked—and what left me disappointed
• The difference between vulnerability and simply oversharing
• Why so many influencer memoirs feel oddly underdeveloped
• The publishing industry's shift toward audience over authorship
• The kinds of memoirs and personal essays that continue to stay with me years later

This isn't a critique of one person nearly as much as it is a conversation about modern publishing, writing, and what makes a book truly memorable.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you read an influencer memoir that genuinely surprised you? Or one that left you wanting much more?

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This year I realized I didn't need to plan August through December all at once. By breaking fall into just seven weeks, from my kids back to school through fall break, everything felt lighter, more manageable, and—surprisingly—more content. Plus, how that mindset is helping me enjoy the season without buying more.

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