june favorites
great reads, hyper-fixation summer meals, camp ins, and more
Happy July! I’m fitting in all of the work, new house planning, and outings with the big boys that I can before I settle into the newborn cocoon later this month. Have any TV series or books I must consume when I’m blissfully nap trapped this summer?!
I’m SO excited about the plan for What To Cook while I’m on maternity leave in a few weeks. You’ll of course continue receiving delicious complete-meal recipes that require minimal effort and dirty as few dishes as possible every Saturday morning, but the recipes will be written by a handful of insanely talented people whose work I admire. I can’t wait for you to see who all we have in store for the series!!!! I’m freaking out over the line up.
On Monday, GoFundMe launched Giving Funds to make donating to the nonprofits we love — and getting the tax benefits from doing so — easier. Through Giving Funds, you can set an annual giving goal, donate to more than 1.4 million trusted nonprofits, and even invest funds to have more to give throughout the year. The best part, other than the giving itself, is that you receive one single tax receipt for EVERYTHING, so no more digging through emails at 2 a.m. the night before Tax Day trying to track down receipts (or forgoing the tax perk altogether because you can’t find your receipt/forgot about a donation you made). I'm planning to open one to support World Central Kitchen, the Navy Seal Foundation, and other incredible nonprofits. Click here to start your Giving Fund today to support the causes you care about! You can set it up in minutes, and it’ll make giving all year long (and tax time!) so much easier. Thank you to GoFundMe for sponsoring this week's edition of So Into That. I’m so excited to help spread awareness about this new way to give!
What To Cook launched in December 2020, which means there are more than 225 recipes in the archives. To help you cook through them, let’s revisit what we cooked this week over the last few years!
1. cookout chicken + mexican corn, 2024
Smoky, saucy chicken paired with a sweet and delicious Mexican street corn-inspired salad — this meal was made for a backyard BBQ. No worries if you don’t feel like grilling, you can roast the chicken and corn instead!
2. chicken chili verde burgers, 2023
We’re using one of my favorite shortcut ingredients — jarred salsa verde — to make magic happen in these juicy burgers and their accompanying sauce. The burger patties freeze beautifully, so double the batch and stash some for later.
3. the sides are the best part, 2022
This epic Fourth of July-themed post is an ode to cookout sides. It includes five different recipes for a pitcher of strawberry-lemon margaritas, hot corn and scallion pimento cheese, baba ghanouj-ish, sesame-scallion slaw, and stupid-simple make-ahead mac and cheese. Just add burgers or hot dogs and you’ll have a perfect spread.
4. marinated grilled veggies with burrata, 2021
This is peak summer eating and a great way to use up whatever vegetables you’ve got or can find at the farmer’s market! In this recipe I introduce you to the idea of a reverse marinating, which is the key to insanely flavorful grilled veg. We also bring in creamy burrata, putting this meal over the top!
From Caro:
I’m working “working mom summer hours” right now — I still work 50 to 60 hour workweeks (self-employment life!!), but I fit that work into the margins of my day so that I can hang with my kids as much as possible and do fun summer things with them. I hang with them in the morning until 9 or so, then power-work until 2:45 or 3. Pool/river/beach hangs until bedtime. Work until way too late. It’s not a sustainable workflow, but it’s worth it to get to hang with them!
I still can’t get over the baby shower my friends threw me in early June. It was a COMPLETE surprise. The surprise element made it really special, they had photos of me as a baby decorating the room, I opened gifts like a first-time-mom baby shower queen, and the three hostesses cooked a beautiful spread (a really herby chicken salad on croissants, a few salads, and a really delicious chocolate cake). Plus: they had my mom fly out and she emerged after everyone else had surprised me!
Jilted by Vi Keeland was a great, quick, sexy, fun audiobook. Great narrator.
Staying at the pool way too late and feeding the kids French fries and burgers way too often has brought me joy.
Per the above: my kids have gotten really good at sleeping in until 8:30/9ish due to staying up late every single night. Since I am a night owl (I usually go to bed at midnight or so!), this is heaven.
These pointelle pants are so comfortable and chic! I’m wearing them with big sweaters and oversized button-downs while pregnant, and will wear with T-shirts once baby is out. They’re on sale for $30 right now. Pointelle is very in and very pricy from brands like Le Set, which I also love, but I really love this J. Crew sale price point! They run true to size/a little big.
I think I’ve already mentioned my popsicle obsession here, but these popsicles in particular are my current obsession. I’ve been really nauseous at night in my third trimester, so three to four of these babies are very often my dinner.
I spent a lot of time in my fave maternity bikini last month. I just recommended it to a friend and saw that it’s 50% off! I like that you can cinch it up to show off ze belly or not cinch it at all and have it be full coverage (top, bottom).
I can’t stop making tiny tomato pasta. Sometimes I add saffron, sometimes I add shrimp or chicken, sometimes I add spinach, but I always come back to TTP.
Katie of Beach Reads & Bubbly has been texting me that I need to start Silver Elite by Dani Francis for a few weeks and I finally started it on a solo date on Sunday night and it’s so good so far! It’s the hot romantasy being chirped about on the internet right now and I can already see why.
There are a lot of pajama brands I love, but it always irks me how there are so few high-waisted pajamas out there! A Domani sent me a pair of their super high-waisted PJ shorts with this top and I am completely obsessed. So comfortable. PS, they’re pricy! But I genuinely sleep better in soft, comfy waistbanded pajamas, so pricy jams are somewhere I’m down to splurge.
From Molly:
I made so many flautas last month! The beef and sweet potato from the book, chicken flautas, black bean flautas. I’ve been making them on Sunday or Monday to eat for dinner plus for a few lunches during the week.
Caprese salad with peach was my other hyper-fixation dish in June.
Weekly camp in nights became a thing. We pitch a tent in the living room for our 4 and 6 year olds to sleep in and all watch a movie together with popcorn and s’mores (minus the baby, who’s sound asleep upstairs in his crib)… then I too mosey into my bed for a nice comfy air-conditioned sleep. I do like nature and camping but I do not like the idea of camping with a baby — plus, this lets us do a fun summer activity more often!
Broiled s’mores. Broil open faced for 1 minute. The chocolate gets warm and melty, which, IMO, makes it better than a regular s’more.
I added this Lewis muslin crib sheet to Cole’s crib this month and it’s SO soft. I just realized they make bedsheets too and am tempted to buy some matching twin alligator sets for my big boys’ room! Caro: OK you got me into Lewis and they really are the cutest. Cash only wants to wear his moooooo cow pajamas.
June was a good Nuuly month! I especially love these high-waisted yellow denim shorts that are very roomy in the thigh, and this summery dress.
Now that we have an almost one year old again, we time our day trips to Folly (the beach that’s 10 minutes from my house) around low tide, AKA when there will be tide pools. Cole can splash and play in just a few inches of water — they’re nature’s gift to parents of babies!
I know I’m late to the party, but I listened to Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan last month and am still thinking about Leo, Nora, and the book’s sweet and satisfying ending. I also enjoyed Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez, which explores serious mental health issues within a fun and flirty framework — and the dialogue made me chuckle.
She’s not wrong! In case you missed it, we shared the WTC grilling recipe hall of fame in Monday’s grill guide, and we rounded up a ton of A+ cookout dishes here, should you need an idea for the weekend.
Jillian from What to Cook compiled a ton of your ideas for screen-free ways to entertain kids this summer (to balance out the inevitable TV watching). Click here to see!
Tell us your favorites from June — books, meals, moments, fashion finds, etc. — and you’ll be entered to win a summery product haul! Included are Sunny Side Up by Katie Sturino (which I’m currently listening to on audio and loving!!), Kroma 24K Beef Bone Broth, Megababe deodorant, a hotdog hair clip, some skincare goodies, a cute tomato toiletry bag, and more! Comment here before 11:59 p.m. on July 8 to enter to win1 — we’ll announce the winner in next week’s So Into That.
My favorite thing was that after 13 months of living with and fighting cancer complete with 6 rounds of chemo, 3 immunotherapies, a double mastectomy, 25 rounds of radiation and 7 “light” chemotherapies (7 more to go), they found no evidence of disease on July 1. I can finally exhale. 😃
My fave June moment has been eating peach cobbler straight out of the cast iron skillet topped with vanilla ice scream scooped straight from the pint.