Links + Local Love (Vol. 4)

pickleball in the danger zone?

Hello to my new subscribers, and welcome! You can get the backstory on this newsletter in this post, have your burning questions answered here, or share this with a friend via the button below. Thank you!

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How is April treating you, friends? Are we in the cruelest month? For parents with kids in school, it feels like April might be the new May. Makes one want to curl into a perfect circle and take a seven-hour nap:

Onto the links…

a smattering of things I’ve been using, loving, reading, listening to, or thinking about

• I very occasionally like to tackle a really challenging recipe. This one had me grating nutmeg fresh from the … nut (?), minding three different pots on the stove at once, and shredding pecorino romano by the cupfull. It’s not a quick weeknight lasagna, folks, but it’s really fantastically good: NYTimes Cooking White Lasagna Recipe (gift link, so you don’t need a subscription)

• My friend and children’s book author

  Emma Bland Smith
  is a substitute librarian in San Francisco and has a delightful new Substack, Renewed. I just got caught up on all her posts, which are reflections on the goings-on at various public library branches around SF, as well as in Emma’s own life as writer and mother, and was reminded how similar we are.

• Back to melted cheese and noodles for a sec: my 12-year-old and a sleepover buddy tried this recipe for copycat California Pizza Kitchen macaroni and cheese and it was a perfect dupe. Not me scarfing mouthfuls straight from the pot after they’d served themselves.

• You know how sometimes someone shares a video with you and you think, ‘I’m going to watch that later when I have time? And then you forget for half a year?

  Meagan Francis
  sent me a link to the Dick Van Dyke / Chris Martin collaboration months ago and I knew it would make me weepy so I kept putting off the viewing, but it crossed my radar again just recently and I finally watched. And then I watched Chris and Kimmel talking about it. If you want to smile from the inside of your body all the way to the outside, I recommend.

Local Love

a few items of note pertaining to my hometown - tell me what’s happening in yours in the comments!

• I’m loving

  Beachtown Bohemia
  , a Substack by local writer and artist
  @oliviajoffrey
  . Olivia and I have met (our daughters went to school together) but don’t know each other well (yet!); I’m especially into her series on The Old Montecito

• There’s a new chef at La Paloma, and I can vouch for the yumminess of the updated menu (though I also enjoyed the old one!)

• Erik at Siteline SB does a recurring series called Burning Questions, where his readers send in a query about our town and he digs up the answer. This one - about why the City of Santa Barbara’s official seal features an image that looks nothing like SB - was a fascinating treasure hunt of local history knowledge

• I got to have coffee IRL with a listener of The Mom Hour who has been so supportive over the years. She was in town from Seattle with her husband and toddler, and graciously let me boss her around recommend my favorite sights, shops, and eats around SB

  

• We went to see what The Ellwood fuss was all about, and enjoyed it. Pricey for sure, but a gorgeous setting and a pleasant surprise to have really well-trained fine dining service staff (no offense, SB, but it’s not our strong suit, restaurant-wise)

• Everything about this headline and story made me giggle, but I stop short of making fun because he’s a good dude, by all accounts, who has done a ton for this community

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I’ll leave you with Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, seen here outside the pharmacy looking for a place to raise ducklings (too many “bikes and scooters and other things with wheels” in this parking lot!). I had just published my post about the joys of in-person errands about an hour before I spotted the pair, and it felt like the universe +1-ing my position.

That’s it for now! -S