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The Raw and The Cooked

Simple Meals + Honest Book Reviews + Practical Living

Why Abby Jimenez Has Become My Official Summer Author ☀️📚

Every summer, without even realizing it, I start craving the exact same kind of book: a light, breezy rom-com. Bonus points if it’s actually set during the summer.

I want something I can toss into my bag for the playground, read on the deck while the kids play outside, or sneak in ten pages before dinner. Summer and romantic comedies just belong together. They’re light without being shallow, hopeful without being cheesy, and easy to pick up whenever you have a few spare minutes.

For years, Emily Henry and Katherine Center filled that role for me. But now? I think Abby Jimenez has officially taken the crown. I recently finished Say You’ll Remember Me, closed the book, and thought, “Well… that was another really good one.” Then it hit me. I’ve genuinely loved every Abby Jimenez novel I’ve read. These days, that’s surprisingly rare.

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Homemade Mini Pita Bread

Once you realize how easy homemade bread is, I swear, there is no going back. I’m adding another bread product to my ever growing, “we don’t buy this at the grocery store anymore” list, and if you couldn’t guess by the title of this post, it’s homemade pita bread.

Like almost every other homemade bread recipe, this one uses fewer than a dozen simple ingredients. In fact, it only calls for four: flour, salt, yeast, and a touch of sugar. This pita recipe comes together with two quick rises, a little shaping, and a few minutes on a hot, lightly oiled griddle. I hope you’ll give this easy, almost foolproof recipe a try!

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Summer Salad Idea: Balsamic Marinated Chicken with Strawberry Feta Salad

This is one of those meals whose flavors screams summer! I enjoy it because I love the taste of chicken from the grill, the marinade couldn’t be easier, and the salad and vinaigrette comes together in the time it takes the grill to heat up. Pretty low effort, high reward. And that is the type of summer dinner I’m on board for. It’s also a great meal to make when hosting a summer get-together, mainly because of the flavors. It tastes like you know what you’re doing in the kitchen, and isn’t that what we all want?

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Numbers 30:2 – 36:13 | Matot + Masei | “Tribes” + “Journeys”

We bought a deli container of 500 lady bugs from our local garden store, and over the weekend, released them in our front yard. We decided front yard vs. backyard, because we didn’t want our chickens (‘the girls’) to feast on them. The rest of our week was filled with playgrounds, a trip to the botanic garden, and the nature playscape, three swimming lessons, a pediatrician appointment, the installation of our new cooktop, and piano lessons. The sabbath was a much needed and appreciated reprieve from the laundry, and the cooking, and the packing and unpacking of the minivan.

If you can believe it, this is our final week with the book of Numbers, or in Hebrew called Bemidbar, meaning “in the wilderness.” It was a wild journey, that’s for sure. Today is yet another double parsha, where we talk about vows and promises, laws concerning murder, women’s rights to inherit. It also goes through the narrative of all the stops the Israelites took from Egypt to the Promised Land.

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Recent Library Hauls: The Good, the Bad, and the Returned Early

One of my favorite additions to our summer rhythm has been our weekly library trips.

I want our summer to feel slower, so naturally our local library has become one of the anchors to that plan. The kids fill up their tote bags with picture books and chapter books, we usually stay for a little while to browse, and I always wander over to the adult fiction shelves to see what catches my eye.

Spoiler: I choose my books like I choose my wines at Straubs — what’s featured by the librarians, and by a pretty book jacket.

I genuinely believe public libraries are one of our greatest community resources. Beyond the endless shelves of books, ours offers story times, craft days, STEM activities, and all kinds of free programming for children. It’s become one of the highlights of our week.

One unexpected benefit of borrowing instead of buying is that I’ve become a much more adventurous reader. If I purchase a book, I often feel obligated to finish it—even if I’m not enjoying it. But when it’s borrowed? I have no problem returning it halfway through, if it’s not working. That freedom has made reading really light this summer.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve worked my way through quite a stack. Some were fantastic. Some were simply okay. And a few…well…they went right back into the return bin. I wanted to share those lists with you today + quick 1-2 sentence reviews.

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Numbers 25:10 – 30:1 | Pinchas | “Phinehas”

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! We didn’t do much, since it fell over Shabbos (and don’t forget the oppressive heatwave / and raging thunderstorms, to boot), though I really loved that the big 250 coincided with Shabbos, because it gave us time to reflect, pause, and express gratitude to Hashem for this glorious country, who has been so good to us. Think for just a moment about how good an American Jew has it, the opportunity, the freedom. I thought a lot about both my grandfathers upbringings; one born in Czechoslovakia, and the other a first generation American. How radically different their first 24 years of life were. Either way, they each raised their children here, on American soil, and after tons of hard-work, determination, perseverance, gratitude, and a bit of Hashems charm, they rest easy, knowing how much better they had it than their grandfathers. We are so lucky to be Americans, thank you Hashem, for this miracle of a country.

This weeks Parsha is Pinchas. Which doesn’t have a very clear arc, it seems to be a bit all over the place, but it does hold several interesting themes nonetheless. It opens with violence (which ends up being rewarded), a new census taken, leadership being appointed, land about to be divided, the festival calendar repeated, daughters asking for inheritance. Let’s dive in!

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