three small bites: 🥨🍅🎞️
food ornaments, a new fave fall tart + a charming rom-com-horror movie
Hi friends! Are you also getting a thousand marketing emails and gift guides for the holiday season? In all honesty, I don’t mind them too much. I try to plan my shopping for this time of year so I can stock up on things like socks and mascara and skincare, all while saving 20-25%. It’s a good time to think about what you want to stock up on or need to replace/replenish.
An update: I’ll be off for Thanksgiving week, so there won’t be a three small bites next Friday. However you’re spending the holiday, I hope you have a nice time.
Okay, I’m excited about these three small bites, so let’s get to them!
1. 🥨 food ornaments
My collection of food ornaments is steadily growing. So I don’t go bananas and buy them all up at once, I try to add only a few to my stash every year. I have many of these ones, and am contemplating the cookie and mozzarella for this year’s additions. It’s too hard to choose! Eventually, I’ll have a Christmas tree covered in food, which is my dream tree, TBH.
Chicken Noodle Soup
Black & White Cookie
Soup Dumplings
BBQ Sauce
Baguette
Greek Diner Cup
Box of Doughnuts
Soy Sauce
Mozzarella
Sourdough Loaf
Pretzel
Hot Dog Stand
Pastrami Sandwich
2. 🍅 roasted tomato tart with ricotta and pesto
This Roasted Tomato Tart with Ricotta and Pesto (NYTimes 🎁) is going into my monthly, if not weekly, rotation. It’s so, so good, and if you get pre-made pesto and puff pastry, all you have to chop are tomatoes and a red onion. It comes together easily while still feeling like an elevated meal. It’s packed with a ton of flavor, and the flaky layers of puff pastry add a light crunch to it all. This is my new fave fall tart.
P.S. This is my fave springtime tart.
3. 🎞️ Your Monster
This! Movie! I had so much fun watching Your Monster, a rom-com-horror film about an actress who, after a devastating breakup, learns how to find her voice again when she meets a monster that lives in her closet. Monster (what he’s called throughout the movie) is terrifying for half a second, honestly, and completely charming the rest of the time. There are such cute moments in this, and I particularly loved when Laura and Monster act out plays together and cry at movies. It has an ending that will make you gasp and make you rethink everything you just watched. Also, you’ll have the song My Stranger on repeat afterwards.
📚 extra bites: book updates
📗 There are goodies for you if you preorder Yin Yang Love Song! You have a couple of options, so be sure to check it out.
💚 Publishers Weekly had nice things to say about Yin Yang Love Song! I am now fully obsessed with the fake dating trope. If you are, too, on 1/28, you can read YYLS to see how a cursed-in-love herbalist/chef and a bad boy cellist with a heartbreaker reputation pretend to date, but fall in love—and heal—along the way. 😉
🫖 If you wanted to read something before 1/28, Red String Theory, my second book, is out now and you can catch the YYLS easter egg I dropped into one of the chapters.
❤️ I’d love it if you’d share this post or click the heart button. I appreciate you and your support—thanks for being here!
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Have a great weekend!
From me to you, in the present,
Lauren
nine more bites:
About me: I’m Lauren Kung Jessen, author of Lunar Love, Red String Theory, and Yin Yang Love Song. Connect with me on Instagram and Threads for more on books and food.