Fuck I loooove a personality test★☆

+ Shit You Should Cook About: The Worn Out Woman Baked Ricotta 🧀

My besties! It’s 5am and I’m en route to Bel’s house for a Very Important Meeting (how annoying are we with the breadcrumbing lol) so it’s no surprise that this newsy is going to lack… news. BUT, never fear because we have a fucking excellent Shit You Should Cook About today from Laura that I’m VERY excited to make - so I know you’ll forgive me!

Love you the most - see you tomorrow for a very special edish of the newsy that you ain’t even ready for!!!!!

me, oversharing on close friends

• Shit You Should Cook About: The Worn Out Woman Baked Ricotta

• Can you please do the Enneagram test for me?

• Is it Where’s Wally or Where’s Waldo?

• Grass touch reminder!

Shit You Should Cook About: The Worn-Out-Woman Baked Ricotta

Laura is our resident ray of sunshine and co-host of Culture Vulture (our weekly pop culture podcast!) She’s a new London dweller, chief of romanticising literally everything, and will definitely ask you all what your love language is at some stage. You can find more Shit She Should Cook About over here!

Hello darling friends!!! It’s 10pm, I am fresh off the mic from an absolute JOY of a podcast record with Luce, and this week is a bumper ep on the personality test I simply can’t stop talking about - the enneagram!! To know me is to be enneagrammed, so if you haven’t done it yet and you want to know more I highly recommend / beg you to take the test (and then listen to this week’s Culture Vulture ep and find out all about what every member of the SYSCA universe is) (and why 2w3 is the best number 💘)

I cannot tell you how much I loved seeing you bake focaccia this week!!!! PLEASE let me know if you gave it a go and DM me your pics! I wake up here every day literally smiling as I see your lovely messages and that you have dimpled some dough this week 💘 And by popular request - this week will include both ingredients list AND measurement conversions for our US besties (for the past few recipes you have gotten a glimpse into the unordered chaos of my brain and for that I am truly sorry!).

Now back to SYSCookA, some of my favourite author’s recipes are immortalized in my mind with their anecdotes - Norah Ephron and the magical powers of her mashed potato, Dolly Alderton her hangover mac’n’cheese - and my friend Tess’ scrambled eggs that are intrinsically linked in my mind with slow mornings and bruised hearts. In the same way that songs can capture periods of our life, there are some dishes woven with experience that simply sum up who we are and I hope this is a place where, by sharing the few that take up space in my heart, it connects us, makes you feel, and maybe even gets you cooking something! 

Today I was planning on sharing with you a recipe for vongole - which is both polarising and a real labour of love that I will get to (promise!) but honestly all I craved this week was a dish of golden, sizzling, slightly-sweet cheese scooped onto a carby vessel. This honey-baked ricotta for our WOW (worn-out-women) is a one-pot assembly situation…to even use the term ‘recipe’ is a stretch. The best friend for your focaccia and a true shoulder season dish, it doesn’t matter what side of the world you’re living in - London babes use it as a dip for your spring asparagus and for my Aotearoa dwellers she’d love to hang out next to an autumnal chard/kale pasta. Bonus points - it can be assembled in a bowl perched on your lap en route to a potluck dinner that you forgot to make a dish for (a situation I have found myself in more than once). 

Scoop it up onto last week’s focaccia or eat with a spoon if you are feeling fragile and be kind to yourself!! All my love, London Laura xxx

Ingredients 

• 2 cups / 8 ounces / 250g of ricotta

• 2 tablespoons of honey (runny is best so you can mix easily!)

• 1 teaspoon chili flakes

• 2 sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary

• Flaky salt & pepper to season

• Olive oil to finish

Empty the ricotta, honey, chilli flakes and some decent grinds of salt and pepper into a small dish (my preference is a cast-iron saucepan for rustic vibes but literally anything ovenproof will work). Mix well together, smooth out with the back of a spoon and press in the rosemary / thyme sprigs. Fan bake on 180°C / 350°F for 15-20 minutes until all bubbly and golden. Top with a sprinkle of flaky salt,  a drizzle of olive oil and serve next to your carb of choice to dip / spread / ladle onto (and don’t touch the dish it is 🔥hot🔥)

LUCE NOTE: I am yet to cook one of these recipes but as you heard on Culture Vulture I am COMMITTED to doing so (one day.) In the meantime tho I am obsessed with how many of you have sent through pictures of the focaccia you baked - keep it up!!!

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Can you please do the Enneagram test for me?

Yesterday Laura and I did a deep dive into the Enneagram numbers and what they all mean on Culture Vulture, and we are DYING to know what the SYSCA community is!!! SO if you could PLEASE do the test, listen to the podcast, and then report back with your DOMINANT number 𓆩♡𓆪

PS go and listen xxx

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🗺Around the world 🗺

Just links because I’m rushing out the door! ily! x

• Nashville school shooter hid guns in parents' house (BBC)

• All the beauty and the brain damage of Gwyneth Paltrow’s surreal ski trial (Vox)

• As Migrants’ Desperation Mounts at the Border, a Fire Kills Dozens (The New York Times)

• Disney begins process of cutting 7,000 jobs as CEO Bob Iger warns 'challenges ahead' (Yahoo Finance)

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Grass touch reminder!

Yesterday I got this email from bestie Emma, and I wanted to share it with you all as a reminder to touch grass (go outside and get some fresh air) if you can:

LUCE! I touched grass.

One of my favourite things about New Zealand is the proximity of nature. To anywhere. It's literally so easy to go some place where the sounds of traffic are completely blocked out.

I've been living in America for nearly a year now and, before today, I hadn't sought these places out. Maybe it's because I live downtown and didn't know where to find them, or maybe it's because America feels less safe for a solo gal. Maybe I was just enjoying taking in the city sights.

But for some reason today, on a whim, I hopped on a train to a park uptown where I found the trails I didn't know I was missing.

As quickly as I spotted the entrance, I was enveloped by trees that shielded me from the chaos of outside. For the first time in months I couldn't hear the cars going by, the honking of impatient drivers or the loud, loud American voices.

I felt my chest tighten every time the trail slanted uphill, and the familiar thrill of risking an ankle as it turned down. I hopped over creeks on unstable rocks and ducked under tree branches. I felt more free than I have in months.

Idk if I'm still high of endorphins or what, but I feel elated. Maybe it's also because I've learned not to run for *health*. But to run when you want and walk when you want, for no reason other than the pure joy it provides.

Never stop reminding people to touch grass!

So I took it as a reminder to ask you if you’d touched grass yesterday:

• 30% of you had

• 70% of you hadn’t (and a lot of you said it was snowing, so fair enough!)

Hope u get a second of fresh air today, love u the most xxx

PS I post my grass touching adventures on Close Friends xoxo

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