A Round Up of Really Good Things, August Edition
Wine, Apple Crisp, Lululemon Leggings Dupe, and the Oldest/Horniest Tortoise in the World.
Hi everyone! Thanks for opening this up! I’m Helen, and I write this product round-up for you every month! I decided to take a look back and pick out my faves that were too good to only mention once here. These are the Really Good Things that I either adore, or make me cackle like a hyena. Over to you! As always, thank you to my paid sponsors who make this newsletter free for all of you! ❤️
Did you miss my last week’s post about my unlikely road to fitness? Read it here ⬇️
💁🏻♀️ Revlon Colorstay Foundation. For me this is the best longwear soft-matte foundation out there, handily beating the #1 Best Selling Foundation in the US, which is Estée Lauder’s Double Wear. I put both to the test in this comparison video that I posted on YouTube less than one hour ago, check it out!
🚬 Kate Moss promoting her new Cosmoss wellness brand in last year’s September issue of Vogue. Quote from the article: “‘I’ve been meditating, doing yoga, just being much healthier,’ says Kate Moss with a smile.” Then she lights up a cigarette midway through the interview.
I’m dead 😂 So much for “being much healthier,” I guess. This is exactly the deluded energy and twisted confidence I expect (and if I’m honest, I want) from my 90s Supermodels.
🍷 Les Dauphins Côtes du Rhône Réserve red wine. Take a screenshot of this Côtes du Rhône wine above and pick it up next time you’re at the wine store. This is the table wine of choice in my home. We first tasted it in a Paris bistro and have enjoyed it ever since… which is the bougiest sentence I’ve yet to write in this newsletter series. Of course, real oenophiles will turn up their nose, but we’ve been buying it for years. It’s an affordable, easy reach for richer meals like steak or roasts, and its pretty red-and-aqua belle epoque label and slightly niche French credentials ensure it’s a nice hostess gift, too. I mean, we can admit we’re buying wine for the label just as much as the juice, right?
🎧 Bose headphones. One of the best investments I made in my mental health at the tail end of pandemic lockdowns was investing in a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort Noise Canceling Headphones. They are expensive but worth it, if you fly, if you belong to a gym where they blast loud music you want to tune out, or you just live in a loud house where your other family members PROJECT THEIR VOICES every time they speak to each other. Once upon a time a South African woman told me that the Sony version were half the price and just as good. I bought them, but I didn’t find that to be the case. The Bose are indeed the superior product.
🍎 Apple crisp. It’s almost apple season! This is a recipe I adapted from my friend Alex, also suitable for all you gluten-free and celiac peeps. Her version pares back on the sugar, flour and butter by about a quarter, but I’m a more-is-more kind of gal, which is what you’ll see here.
Just use regular flour if you’re not a GF person. This recipe is a bit loose and presumes you know a little about baking crisps and crumbles, if you don’t watch a video on it or read a more detailed recipe, and come back and use these measurements:
Apple crisp
1 cup brown sugar
1 gluten-free flour or regular flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup butter (or Earth Balance), melted
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt
4-5 apples (You can use more or fewer apples), peeled and cubed, sprinkled with a teaspoon or two of white sugar
Put the cubed apples (sprinkled with a teaspoon or two of white sugar) at the bottom of a baking dish or pie dish.
Mix dry ingredients together. Pour over with melted butter and mix until it resembles wet sand.
Spread oat-flour-butter mixture on the top.
Bake at 350 F for 45 mins to an hour, check on it at 40 mins. When the sides are bubbly and the top is light brown, it’s pretty much done
🍳 Le Creuset Cast Iron Enamel Pan. These are expensive but so worth it. I’ve had a pair for over a decade and they are hard-wearing and have taken the place of probably the eight nonstick pans I would have gone through in the same amount of time. You don’t have to season them like traditional cast iron. They shine when it comes to stir fry (I use it instead of a wok because I have an electric burner on my stove, and hey, I’m not the only Chinese person who thinks a frying pan is better than a wok in most situations), for getting a nice sear on meat and probably 90 percent of the cooking I do. They do not, however, handle eggs well, so even the chefs seem to prefer actual nonstick Teflon for that, so that’s what I use too. Here’s a link to the Le Creuset pans.
🐢 Jonathan the 190-Year Old Tortoise. Here’s some factoids about this tortoise dude who is OLDER than the world’s first photograph. He is real and his age is well-recorded through history, my skeptical friends.
Jonathan was born around 1832
He’s blind, has no sense of smell and yet is still randy AF and tries to mate with fellow tortoises Emma and sometimes Fred. Yes, get some, Jonathan! On the other hand, this makes him the world’s ultimate dirty old man, am I right?
Jonathan (and Emma and Fred) are giant tortoises that live in St. Helena (no relation), a remote volcanic island located between Africa and South America deep in the south Atlantic ocean.
He likes to sunbathe. Tortoises: They’re just like us!
You can read more about Jonathan in this Popular Science article about him.
☕️ Aevo milk frother. Starbucks near my house closed, thus depriving me of one of my favorite ways to pursue pre-diabetes. I love double-blended mocha frapps with an extra pump of chocolate syrup, what can I say? Also, did you know you can make someone less angry at you by handing them a surprise Venti Iced Passion Tango Lemonade? Try it!
The Aevo has two parts, the top jug can go in the dishwasher as can the lid.
Enter the Aevo milk frother. Here’s a link to the official website, and you can buy it on Amazon. I think Jeff Bozos (typo and it stays) has too much money, so I’m not linking to his site. Any number of gadgets, and plenty cheaper than this one can foam your milk but it’s been working well daily for years now, so I will give it a well-caffeinated thumbs up. You can make chai lattes, peppermint tea lattes and um, latte lattes. It also makes those Dalgona iced coffees everyone went wild for during lockdown.
👖Old Navy Powersoft 3/4 Leggings and Open Long Line Cardigans I really avoid name-checking fast-fashion as much as I can, but I will vouch for these two staples because I bought some about four years ago and they are weekly rotations for me AND they come in very inclusive sizing.
First: Old Navy Powersoft 3/4 Leggings (here’s a link) because they look like Lululemon or Aritizia’s workout leggings but because I have slim calves and ankles they hug nicely whereas Lululemon leggings, all of them, are baggy on my lower legs. And I’m not that tall (5’3), so I find the 3/4 length is actually to my ankle and they are not cropped on me. They last forever, wash perfectly (four years of constant wash cycles) and obviously are very affordable. The side pocket can also hold my big iPhone, which is a plus at the gym.
Second: Old Navy’s Long Open Cardigans (here’s a link) when you can find them in natural fibres (cotton, primarily, but wool is good. I’ll give rayon a pass too), are really hardwearing, versatile sweaters. They cover your bum, there’s usually pockets for your Kleenex so you don’t have to stuff them up your sleeve like Mrs. Tovell, my elementary school librarian/choir teacher, and you can leave them at work for when those building-maintenance monsters crank the A/C to the FREEZE WOMEN TO DEATH setting. They are forgiving for your slobby bloated days too.
🍌Recipe: Bacon Wrapped Plantain. I’m here to tell you that you haven’t lived until you’ve had plantain wrapped in bacon. In fact, if you make this for guests, be warned that there will not be enough, it’s truly a winner. I had this in St. Lucia on a girl’s trip in my late 20s, visiting the parents of one of our group, and we were swooning over this dish, made by my friend’s mom. It’s easy to make too, all you need is toothpicks, a ripe plantain and strip bacon. I couldn’t find a St. Lucian specific recipe, but this linked recipe is pretty much the same thing.
📺 TV Show: Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne. If you loved Natasha Lyonne’s gruff, raspy sass on Russian Doll (Netflix), she’s back in Poker Face which is a ten-episode crime drama where Lyonne plays Charlie Case, a casino cocktail waitress on the lam. Her secret talent is she can always tell when someone’s lying, which comes in handy as she solves murder mysteries across the country.
☀️ Ombrelle sunscreens. The French, followed closely by Koreans, make the best sunscreens, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on, my friends. If you’re bewildered by sunscreen choice in a market that maybe be even more saturated than toothpaste types, and you hate the smell of American sunscreens (they all smell pretty bad) then by all means, cough up some extra bucks and splurge on the Ombrelle. Also a gentle reminder to get your weird moles checked out, melanoma is the spawn of satan, and you don’t want to tangle with her.
🦉 A nature walk, and it doesn’t have to be super rugged or remote. The combination of hearing birdsong, gurgling water, and seeing blue sky and greenery is a proven mood booster.
A 2018 study in BioScience journal found that being outdoors, seeing trees, hearing birdsong, seeing the sky, and feeling in contact with nature improved mental well-being and that the mood-boost lasted for seven hours after the walk. In Japan, the practice known as shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing” has been promoted by its government for its ability to reduce stress for over 40 years.
So to sum up, for an effective mood-boosting nature walk you need
🦆 to hear birds
🌳 to see the sky and trees/vegetation
🌊 to hear water
Alright, that’s all she wrote this week, my lovely friends! I hope you enjoyed this! If you have the energy for a YouTube video, here’s my latest on all my skincare and makeup holy grails.