Get ready to hit “add to cart” with these five clever items.
We should be so clever.
Sometimes we just have to step back and slow clap for all of the brilliant designers, thinkers and creators out there. And since we know two seemingly opposed ideas can exist at once, we admit that as we marvel, we can’t help but also feel a tiny bit envious (points here for IDing the proper emotion) that we haven’t had a similar stroke of genius. But we totally stan smarts so we count ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy the fruits of these five inspired ideas.
Raising the bar.
Maybe you, too, thought grabbing the last packet of yeast from your store’s shelf and taming your impatience would set you up for success in baking bread. In an asynchronous pandemic power move, we finally just attempted sourdough (pinky swear we won’t go there with the so-2020 talk of sourdough starters), only to find chilly counters and a drafty kitchen had conspired against our final product. Enter the Raisenne Dough Riser, something we’ve gifted to others in the past but finally just gifted ourselves. Not only does it ensure perfect proofing temps, but it delivers in less time.
‘Easy, quick, works, boom.”
So reads The Atlantic review for Cookish: Throw it Together: Big Flavors. Simple Techniques. 200 Ways to Reinvent Dinner, whose title might be longer than any one of its recipes (and that’s a good thing). This was the holiday gift that arrived right on time for us, what with our kitchen-based languishing (in Adam Grant parlance) after two years of pandemic cooking—our go-tos had become all we were going to. We’ve long loved Milk Street for their emphasis on flavor and quality ingredients, but to be honest, some of their previous, multi-page recipes were non-starters. This book has injected some much needed variety into our meal prep and it is true to its word: few ingredients, easy to execute and flavors that seem like you spent way more time.
Like a glove.
As any good grown-up does, we’ve sought to lighten our baggage over time, with the goal of heading out for walks with as little as possible on our person. This minimalist approach seemed worry-free at first, but we soon found ourselves with a new concern: inadvertently dropping something important as we dug in and out of our pockets. Enter these walking gloves from Anya Hindmarch (a perennial source of brilliant things, like this excellent WFH tote with similar design aims), complete with a spot for your ID, credit cards and airpods. A bit spendy? Sure, but so is replacing your license and headphones.
Feeling unwell.
It seems you cannot swing your celery juice these days without running into more wellness advice than anyone can ever put to good use. Perhaps, like us, you’ve had your suspicion about the validity of so much of it. Since our diet consists of scientific facts, we’ve found ourselves down more than one navel-gazing search for the science behind various theories (time we won’t get back thankyouverymuch). That is, until we found the podcast “Maintenance Phase,” where Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes hilariously skewer the “wellness industrial complex.” The pair are not only witty, they’re deep divers when it comes to researching their topics. We especially like their hot takes on diet books.
It’s a snap.
True fact: Once you’re a grown-up, you possess a lot of physical pictures. Most likely, they’re fading and curled at the edges, or maybe in the hands of a solitary family member who refuses to give up custody. Either way, they’re never at the ready when you want to share or enjoy them. And sure, we’ve thought about taking up the monster project of getting everything digitized (you guessed it—we’ve done nothing about it). Enter the Photomyne App, which both scans your photos and enhances them in one quick step. The app also lets you lay out multiple photos, which it automatically recognizes. It has several features enabling you to create slideshows, animate and even scan your children’s art. It’s worth the price to preserve what’s priceless.
