no. 121: brown butter honeynut squash with peanut chili crisp and pickled grapes!

Plus, my hot new workout sneakers!

This week was FULL of victories. For starters, I WON my tennis match last weekend after missing the first 5 matches of the season because I was out of town (sad). Feels good to be back on the court, baby!!!

Speaking of glorious wins, I’ve also been knee deep in Fishwife’s caviar (launching next week) because I’m working on some fun recipe reels. The caviar so insanely tasty and I, of course, have been eating like a queen all week. Returning to work after taking nearly a month off is fun when there’s caviar waiting for me.

Good Friend, Remi Wolf, and Foodshop!

Another small win is this new neighborhood coffee shop, Good Friend, that recently opened up. They have a PB&J latte and it’s so ME and so GOOD. I will be returning to see how their IVL (iced vanilla latte) holds up. I also experienced my first pop up dinner at Foodshop last week, and it was EXCELLENT.

As if my week couldn’t get any sweeter, I also saw Remi Wolf at the Greek Theatre (my favorite place in Los Angeles) with my sweet friend Harper and it was SO MUCH FUN. She is wickedly talented (and I’m also receiving some insider intel that she, herself, is also a Fishwife). Remi, come on over sister. I have so much tinned fish and caviar for you.

Here are some other sweets I’ve been loving lately!

Lioness Countryside Top

This top was one of the items in my Nuuly bag last month and it is so good. I feel like I never have any cute tops. How do you all shop for tops and then pick which ones to wear? To me, tops are so hard. Anyway, I wore this top (with these jeans, also from Nuuly) on three different occasions (the Kacey Musgraves concert, the Foodshop pop up dinner, and on a date…more on that below). Highly recommend!

Haw Yee, indeed!

Nike Metcon 9 Easy On

I have not purchased a new pair of workout shoes since before I ran the NYC marathon (brag) last November. That’s, like, really bad! Since I’m not doing a whole lot of running these days, I wanted a shoe that was more geared towards general workout training, and these are perfect. Black workout sneakers are HOT, and that’s just the truth.

Brown Butter Honeynut Squash with Peanut Chili Crisp and Pickled Grapes

Serves: 4-6

Active time: 35 minutes

Total time: 1 hour

This recipe was inspired by a dish that I enjoyed at Lolo wine bar this week while I was on a first date (please applaud). The date itself left something to be desired but this squash dish certainly did not. I was so into this dish that I decided to recreate it the next day.

It incorporates a peanut chili crisp, a brown butter vinaigrette, and pickled grapes. The best way I can describe the flavor of this dish is a spicy, autumnal PB&J. If that sounds like something you’d be into, then you’re going to like this.

Here’s the Lolo version that’s on their site!

While I’m sure they’re making their own house made chili crisp, it’s easy enough to mix in some toasted peanuts into your favorite store bought chili crisp. For the pickled grapes, you’re simply giving some quartered grapes a quick red wine vinegar bath that’s seasoned with salt and sugar.

Finally, for the brown butter vinaigrette, you’re going to zhuzh up some brown butter with fresh thyme, lemon, Dijon, and honey. All of the ingredients are individually quite simple, but they come together to create a very powerful, very tasty dish. Feels like a very restaurant-y dish that’s easily pulled together in the comfort of your home kitchen. Of course, if you can’t find honey nut squash, any winter squash will do.