recipes

5 Ways To Spend Quality Time With Friends

| Ismay & Indigo

Life is busy. There’s work to be done, responsibilities to be taken care of, chores to check off the list. Our time is precious and seems to move on faster and faster as we get older. Carving out time to spend with our loved ones can seem tricky at times. Here are five ways to help make the most of your time together.

1. Take It Outside

Spring is moments away. The weather is getting warmer. We actually heard birds chirping early this morning. Schedule an outdoor meetup with your friend. Maybe take a nice walk and plan a picnic. Be careful though, don’t put too much thought into the preparation. The goal here is not to make more work for yourself. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just you, your friend, and some sandwiches. Spending time in the fresh air isn’t just for the birds!

2. Host A Game Night

Having friends come over to play your favorite board games is a fun way to spend time together while also costing the price of a bag of chips and a bottle of soda (or maybe a veggie platter and hummus?). A crowd favorite has been Cards Against Humanity. Along the same line, Joking Hazard, What Do You Meme?, and a newly discovered game called Awkward Family Photos are now in circulation at our game nights. Inspired by this hilarious website featuring random people’s family photos, this game is hours of side-splitting laughter. Want to step it up a notch? Add in your own awkward family photos from back in the day and let people choose a caption for you with your bad 80’s hair.

3. Start A Book Club

Book clubs are popping up all over the place. In today’s world where we are inundated with technology, sometimes we need to unplug and remove ourselves from the virtual world at least for a little. Reading is an active experience that improves communication. Communicate with your friends! When you engage with others in thoughtful discussions and reflections about what you read, it becomes an interactive experience. Not to dive too deeply into the science in this particular post, but it has been scientifically researched and proven that reading helps your brain grow, with shown increased connectivity and activity in multiple parts of the brain! Read this article if you’re interested in exploring this topic further. An active social life and an active brain?! You can feed two birds with one seed! (Hmm, are you seeing this whole bird theme, too?)

4. Host A Potluck Dinner

Since the beginning of time people have been bonding over food. Take a few minutes to plan a menu or pick a theme. Place each friend in charge of a part of the meal! Everyone can bring something and you can come together and share the meal, family style! If you’re looking for some new crowd-pleasing recipes to try, Chrissy Teigen is killing it right now! Take a look at her website, Cravings by Chrissy Teigen, for some inspiration!

5. Window Shopping

What do you do if it’s cold outside and you just feel like hanging out and people watching? Hit up the mall of course! Sure, this idea is a throwback to your high school days, but now instead of obnoxiously hanging in the food court you can grab a cup of coffee or tea (oooh, or better yet, Thai milk bubble tea), and leisurely walk and window shop with your friend as you catch up on life. Yes, online shopping and browsing is the new thing (and Amazon, Apple, and Google run the world), but there really is nothing like seeing things in person. Online browsing is a thing, but window shopping is an experience! Especially when you can go with a friend!

P.S. – If you’re curious, Indigo’s striped turtleneck tissue tee is on sale here on the J.Crew website! And if you like Ismay’s sweater, you can view a similar one here by Rebecca Taylor!

Ismay & Indigo

All Good Relationships Start With Food

| Ismay & Indigo

What better way to start the week, and this blog, than talking about food? Nothing says comfort better than pasta, and who couldn’t use that after a long Monday at work, am I right? I love to cook and view dinner as an exciting daily challenge! How can I make the most amazing, tasty, and unique dinner possible with what I have on hand? It’s like my own personal episode of Dinner Impossible. Most home cooks have their repertoire of go-to recipes. You know, those dishes that you can confidently whip up in minutes without even glancing at a recipe. But sometimes even those tried-and-true recipes aren’t enough to satiate your need for new flavors. What then? Sure, you could take the gamble and hunt down a random recipe on Pinterest. Or I could share with you my favorite place to get recipes that never fail me!

When Indigo and I moved into our first apartment together, our mom got us a subscription to a cooking magazine. Indigo loves to bake because she has always loved the science of baking, precisely measuring ingredients for a somewhat predictable result. I, on the other hand, prefer the creativity and spontaneity of cooking. Recipes are more of a guide as far as I’m concerned, not exactly rules. I would spend hours at night flipping through the magazine, folding down corners and marking the recipes I would try next. Fast-forward a few years later, and I still refer back to those issues, but when I am in search of something new I visit the website. Cuisine At Home has such an amazing free recipe section! The magazine is a quarterly gem if you love to cook or love learning about cooking techniques. It’s chock-full of mouth-watering photos with clear and simple step-by-step directions, and it’s still my favorite cooking magazine to this day. Check it out here!

In addition to this amazing magazine, I’ve also been referring to the New York Times Cooking app. It’s a paid subscription, but you can currently access a free trial for a month, and the recipes are delicious! So far our favorite recipe has been Alison Roman’s Internet-Famous Chickpea Stew. You can catch a video of Alison cooking this dish here. Try it! A delicious and budget-friendly option! If you try it, let us know what you think!

Ismay