A Roast Chicken is a Love Language
Decision-making, backpack cookies, and the enduring legacy of Ina Garten
I believe that a roast chicken is a love language. It’s easy, but takes time; it’s a simple dish, but one that can be endlessly adapted; cooking one is, according to Nancy Myers, a “universal way to show love.” I love the sentiment in Myers’ quote, which is from a Bon Appetit article that connects the prolific food-centered scenes in Myers’ movies (think about the role that kitchens, midnight ice cream, and large family meals play in her films) to her love of Ina Garten. Similarly, my recent infatuation with mastering the humble roast chicken is not only a road sign that points straight to cozy cooking weather, but came about because I got tickets to see Ina Garten on her book tour for the long-awaited memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
I love Ina—who doesn’t—and hearing her chat with Laura Linney about Jeffery, cosmos, and her epic car-camping road trip through the South of France was, as expected, amazing. Early-2000s Barefoot Contessa episodes are what I turn to for background viewing material and every single time I end up staring with rapt attention as she demonstrates how to debone a chicken or cook scallops. After writing thirty-something cookbooks, a memoir was long overdue. I haven’t actually read it, though, because I mistakenly believed I would get one at the event, so I’m currently on my library waiting list 40 people deep.
Ina is kind of the ultimate role model. She went from writing nuclear energy policy in the White House to flipping luxurious D.C. homes to opening a specialty food shop in the Hamptons, a career trajectory that even she could not have predicted. Ina offers so much more wisdom than simply how to whip up a dinner party that’s just gorgeous; she talked about her relationship with Jeffery (which we all consider the height of romance) and how she refused to merely be a housewife who’d put dinner on the table by six o’clock, despite her love of cooking.
Her consistent advocation for women’s independence from residual tradition and standards is admirable and her advice on building a business is genuinely interesting. The Barefoot Contessa’s interior design and product selection, for example, was part trade knowledge and part trial and error, she explained. There was a great anecdote about putting different products in the drawers of the display case and nothing selling until she put bags of granola in their place—which promptly sold out.
Ina is humble, funny, wise, and like a TV mom to half the nation. Something I love about her most recent series, Be My Guest, is the specific celebrities Ina invites: Erin French and Ann Patchett, for example, which goes to show the caliber of character that Ina values and audiences want to see. I’ll always wish I was old enough in the early 2000s to take a road trip up to the Hamptons to visit a gourmet food store, but I’ll settle for the written version and a couple of hour-long episodes of Ina in the Barn.
The roast chicken was a fun project; I’ve been itching to get creative and make something with my hands recently, which I’ve tried to sate by making a million-step ice cream sandwich recipe, drafting a portfolio, and genuinely kicking myself for getting rid of the Lego sets I had as a kid. The cover letters I wade through every day are not doing anything to help, despite requiring me to be extremely creative in figuring out how to make my request for employment sound unique every time.
I’ve been firmly entrenched in the job hunt since returning home from England, meaning I park myself at my kitchen island every morning and bang out as many applications as are available. This month has taught me a lot about trusting the process and I have to remind myself that it’s only been one month, not six, since I started chipping away at jobs. It has actually been lovely to be home, from the evolution of northeast fall to the proximity to good bagels. I’m especially grateful for the quiet and for my parents as sounding boards when things get stressful or I need another set of eyes on an email I’m sending.
We are entering into a very stressful week, whose uncertainty is likely to extend for an indeterminate period. I’m sure everyone reading this has either already voted or has a plan to vote on Tuesday—that’s awesome! Despite the overwhelming anxiety and fury that I’ve been feeling over this election, I keep reminding myself that this is the first time I get to vote to put a woman in the office of the president. It’s surreal and incredible. I’m not exactly proud to be an American right now, but I am proud to be a woman and have the privilege to vote for one.
I know the only way out is through: decisions are made by those who show up. Showing up matters: for the world you wish to live in, for people you love and respect, for the people who can’t show up, and for the people who you have nothing in common with but matter just the same. I keep thinking about what I’ll tell my kids, or my friends’ kids, sometime in the future—that I got to vote for a strong, immensely smart, exceedingly capable woman. And against the part of my brain that’s trying so hard to reel in my expectations, I really hope I get to tell them she won.
I’d heard the buzz about Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods for almost three months before I picked it up—whether on the NYT Book Review podcast or various articles, it was an instant bestseller that everyone seemed to love. My mom had it out from the library and raved about it, and I trust her judgment so I read it for myself. Moore’s writing is my absolute favorite kind: sharp and eloquent and completely captivating, the kind of writing that ruins me a little bit because I always close the book knowing it’ll be a while until I find a similar style and voice. The God of the Woods is long and you will wish it never ended. From the shifting perspectives, the perplexing mystery, and the descriptions of the Catskills’ wealthiest, this isn’t a fast-paced airport kiosk thriller but will capture every shred of your attention regardless. This is an adult, elevated summer camp mystery whose characters are flawed in all the best ways—I absolutely loved this book and it was an easy five stars.
For some seasonal reads, The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson and Hampton Heights: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Dan Kois were perfect for Halloween. Neither are shockingly scary, but instead are far more endearing as coming-of-age stories that take place in the eerier months. For fans of Stranger Things, Stand by Me, and the general October season, these are two super short reads that still pack a punch.
I also read several Stephen King short stories from his Skeleton Crew short story/novella collection, with The Mist and The Monkey standing out the most. The Monkey is getting a film adaptation next year, which I will be excited to see after reading this creepy, deeply unsettling short story. I almost reread The Shining this month; I think I’ll reread it over the winter, but I’m going to try and put some actual effort into finishing The Stand and It (they are so long and I’ve started but never finished them) so I can finally read 11/22/63, which has been on my list for years.
Bring back gatekeeping! This Vulture podcast episode with author Brandon Taylor makes a case for gatekeeping books—because with the proliferation and general chaos of review apps like Goodreads (which I use…) book criticism has taken a weird turn. It’s very interesting if you’re engaged with the merging of reading and social media, book criticism, and the publishing industry at large.
Flatiron sent me an advance reader copy (!) for Julia Armfield’s new novel Private Rites over the summer and I finally got around to it. So much about this book was up my alley—the climate dystopia, the fact that it’s based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, the character work. Three sisters navigate relationships of all kinds in a world where it’s perpetually raining, and the efficacy of this kind of dystopia is tangible as the pressure and drama rise along with the water levels. All said, I really enjoyed this, and though sometimes the novel felt like it needed something big to really rock the characters into action—only for that never to occur—the character work was brilliant. It’s being published this December by Flatiron, an imprint of Macmillan, and is already out in the UK!
There’s been a constant rotation of ice cream in the freezer as I work my way through the Autumn section of Jeni Britton’s cookbook: maple ice cream with salty buttered pecans, sweet potato ice cream with torched marshmallows, and a riesling and pear sorbet. We went to my aunt’s for Halloween since their adorable neighborhood gets tons of kids, and I was in charge of dessert. Last year, I’d seen a Van Leeuwen post about a Halloween special where they recreated the classic childhood treat “dirt and worms” with ice cream instead of pudding, and decided to make it myself. I made Jeni’s “darkest chocolate ice cream” which is as delicious and rich as it sounds, and added the same crushed cookies, gummy worms, and homemade whipped cream. This desert is immensely nostalgic to me and it was super fun to repurpose it in this way.
I love a breakfast cookie; pack oats, dried fruits, various nuts and seeds, and ideally a tiny bit of chocolate into something that resembles a baked good and I am there. In her Cup of Jo article, Jenny Rosenstrach calls these “cookies for the backpack” which sounds minimally more socially acceptable than “breakfast cookies.” Breakfast is a perpetual issue for me because I love a laborious breakfast or nothing at all; I usually just drink coffee. Yes, my cortisol levels probably hate me and I’m working on rectifying that. These cookies, however, are delicious and easy and inspire me to eat something before noon each day. If you’re looking for something more luxe, these breakfast cookies from ITG are an option. Much sweeter than Jenny’s, these are made with tahini and brown sugar and are a match made in heaven for a latte. Rifling around in the bottom of my bag for a smushed breakfast cookie beats the alternatives!
If you will recall that deep dive on San Fransisco’s State Bird Provisions I did a few months ago, the resulting secondhand cookbook purchase from that obsession led me to what can only be described as an ice cream sandwich saga. Technically a frozen sabayon sandwich, with the sabayon cream encased by layers of macaron acting as the cookie or “bread”, this sandwich sounds like a technical nightmare; macaron is notoriously impossible and not everyone has the equipment to whip up some ice cream. But State Bird says fear not—they’ve simplified the hardest parts of each component by eliminating the need for an ice cream machine and negating the piping for the macaron.
This recipe takes some patience and if you don’t have the right size pans or the right size Silpat mats (which I didn’t) it’ll cost you the clean lines and neatness that SB’s cookbook displays so enticingly. Out of the eleven ice cream sandwich recipes the cookbook features, I chose the pepita-oolong one (pepita macaron, oolong tea sabayon), which took approximately 48 hours, almost all of my patience, and left an entire sink full of dishes. However, the resulting ice cream sandwich was a nuanced, almost savory event that I have never experienced in an ice cream. And I make it my mission to try as much weird ice cream as possible—just the other day I had Salt & Straw’s “merlot aged sour with chocolate fig bits” ice cream and it rocked.
Because this cookbook is complex and fancy, the sandwiches were paired with an apple-umeboshi compote. Umeboshi paste is a delicious Japanese plum ingredient and the apples were a great pairing with these sandwiches, but the compote itself had too much mirin in it for my taste. This also contributed to the sandwiches feeling very savory! Overall, I’d make these ice cream sandwiches again (minus the compote) when I am in the mood for a project or have an event or dinner where these would be fun to hand out to guests.
Seven songs for November.
Doomsday (feat. Pebbles The Invisible Girl) by MF DOOM
Come Back to Me by Janet Jackson
Kiss of Life by Sade
Scottie Beam by Freddie Gibbs, The Alchemist & Rick Ross
Peachfuzz by KMD
Caskets by NehruvianDOOM
Far Away (feat. A$AP Rocky) by Yebba
October and November are my favorite times of the year to listen to a distinctly curated combination of Sade and MF DOOM, with a few others thrown into the mix for some depth. I can’t explain this except to say I associate music with everything, and this playlist happens to represent wet leaves, bao buns, and how a city gives one limitless independence without ever leaving them alone.
Since I spend a considerable amount of time at my kitchen island writing cover letters, I’ve been in the market for good working music, and have found it in my recent rediscovery of Lotus. A friend had posted something about seeing them live, which prompted me to rifle through a playlist to confirm I had heard of them before. They have a newer (2024) album out, How to Dream in Color, which is really groovy, and their early albums (2005-ish) like Nomad are what this jam band is known for. They have a sound that is both relaxed and easy to groove to, making Lotus great easy listening.
My dad, Kathleen, and I saw Nothing But Thieves at Pier 17 in the city this month. This rooftop venue is incredible—the Brooklyn Bridge stretches behind the stage and the surrounding skyscrapers slowly light up as the sun sets. NBT played a high-energy, hard-rocking show, and the three of us had the best time. After the show, we walked up to Apotheke in Chinatown, a speakeasy-ish bar with an almost holistic approach to cocktails; lots of herbs and botanicals. I believe I got something with Californian gin and fresh lavender that was incredible.
Nothing But Thieves has a unique sound that I love because some of their music is hard rock and some of it is alternative rock with great synth and really addicting riffs. Their 2024 album Dead Club City features one of my favorite NBT songs, “Do You Love Me Yet,” and other heavy hitters like “Oh No :: He Said What?” and “City Haunts,” with a more produced sound that works really well for them. Their 2021 album, Moral Panic (The Complete Edition), however, is harder-hitting, with some of my favorites being “Miracle, Baby,” “There Was Sun,” “Unperson,” and “Futureproof,” which is actually my favorite of theirs.
I also saw Bleachers at MSG with some family friends who had an extra ticket, which ended up being a ton of fun because it was the band’s first MSG show and that’s always a huge deal for artists. I found their setlist to sound significantly better in person. I don’t listen to much pop and hadn’t listened to every one of their setlist songs, but this concert was simply a good time, with exceptional energy. Jack Antonoff is hilarious and a truly dedicated performer. But why someone with his level of clout and amount of connections in the music industry didn’t bring out Bruce Springsteen for “Chinatown,” we may never know.
A chambray shirt. I love a chambray shirt—it’s functional and gives a workshirt type of vibe, but it’s also deeply charming, slightly southern, and always makes me feel put together. My favorite long-sleeve button-downs are from J. Crew and Sezane. They feel handsome and New England-y, a little boyish, which bodes well for me. You can’t ever go wrong with a chambray and white jeans for any fete or brewery visit on the East Coast, they look great peeking out from under a sweater, and I am a forever fan of denim on denim. I think it’s chic, some people think it’s a Canadian tuxedo. I don’t know!
Over the Garden Wall. This odd and charming cartoon miniseries is the fall antidote. It’s spooky and fall-like, a typical adventure story interjected with humor and a trademark Cartoon Network weirdness. Elijah Wood voices Wirt! This miniseries won an Emmy in 2015 and it shows because the 2D animation is brilliant—so many mid and early-2000s CN shows were so great because of their simpler animation style, while cartoons and kids’ animation today can be a lot more overstimulating. I love the themes and how it feels adult yet so charming and silly, and the episodes are only ten minutes long so you might as well sit down and watch this series in one sitting.
J. Crew’s 2007 August cover shoot. Last month, J. Crew brought back their print catalog and J. Crew diehards and print aficionados everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief. After reading The Kingdom of Prep, I feel like I now have too much information and must over-analyze the brand’s every move, but they’ve been making a conscious effort to bring back their iconic 90s roots. This cover shoot from 2007 is one of my all-time favorites, from the books to the brownstone to the baseball caps. It also brings up one of my favorite one-paragraph Emily Ferber articles on ITG, where she describes J. Crew as a “normcore dream” and the slides showcase some of the catalog’s greatest hits.
Happy November, all. If you’re a subscriber reading this in your email application, you may notice I’ve changed my newsletter name and my header—I’ve been batting around ideas and I’m trying this out for the moment. As with all my newsletters, I’m always open to input and love to hear everyone’s opinion. Maybe we hate it—I’m super indecisive about these sorts of things!
I’m wishing everyone a semblance of sanity and peace of mind this month. The election year and Thanksgiving combo can be absolutely lethal (that mine will not be lethal is at the very top of my gratitude list), so just try to think about how delicious the second-day turkey cranberry sauce sandwich will be instead…
I sometimes post on Instagram @gracerobrts!
My Goodreads is here and I am always looking for reading recommendations.
My Apple Music is @gracecroberts, where my playlists are regularly updated and cared for.
If you should need to contact me for any other reason, or just want to say hi, my email is gracecroberts@gmail.com.
See you next month!
Sincerely yours,
Grace
Personally, I am loving the rebrand; you know how I love a double entendre! The night in the city for NBT was definitely one to remember!
I think the pencil is cute! Also, as a self appointed ice cream taste tester you might need to come up with a healthy ice cream! 😂🤣