Joy Wilson's Blog, page 16

Let It Be Sunday, 452!

Friends, hi hello and happy Sunday! Reporting love from Texas Hill Country where Will and I have taken to the out of doors.  There’s trout in these waters, though, that’s none of our business. We rode motorcycles up and along some twisted roads this weekend and I can confidently report, I made it back to eat the tuna salad I brought for lunch.  It’s the little things, ya know?

This week has felt entirely impatient.

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Let It Be Sunday, 451!

Hello friends! We’ve survived a month of 2024! I feel like this year is already flying by and it’s wild. I’m happy to say that the year is off to a gentle yet productive start for me. I’ve been writing, exercising, cooking for myself…living right, if you will. I’m thrilled to be back here with all of you, sharing the good things I found on the Internet recently. Let’s do this!

 

•  How long has it been since you’ve done something just to do it, without making it a job or a performance?

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The Perfect Chocolate Bundt Cake

This chocolate Bundt cake is an elegant dessert that’s also approachable enough for the everyday.  Let’s bake this moist, rich, and downright squidgy cake that’s as easy to whisk together as it is to devour.

Let us grant ourselves a little January luxury – and I’m talking about the luxury of a Counter Cake.

A Counter Cake is usually baked on a Thursday of Friday, likely following the hellscape of a Tuesday combined with a Wednesday. 

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Let It Be Sunday, 450!

Friends! Hi hello how are you? Happy Sunday in what is almost February but is most decidedly still Gentle January.  I’ve reached the Mortgage Lender level of adulthood for the second time in my life and as a single, self-employed woman, I can confirm the process is just as vulnerable as giving a stranger a tour of my underwear drawer. Actually maybe worse.

Mortgage lenders occupy the same space in my brain as dental hygienists (and I mean this with all due respect to both). 

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You Have to Make This Focaccia Pizza!

This thick, fluffy focaccia pizza is my favorite at home pizza recipe.  An easy overnight dough bakes into the most bouncy, bubbly deep-dish pizza.  This pizza recipe will easily be a monthly (jk – weekly) staple.

I stand in two camps when it comes to pizza.  I firmly believe that there is no. bad. pizza. which is why I’ll preheat my oven and throw in a store-bought cauliflower crust frozen pizza and eat the entire thing on my couch watching old episodes of Scandal, obviously. 

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Let It Be Sunday, 449!

Hello, friends!

One habit that’s improved my new year is pumping early Mariah Carey to evoke the vibe I felt when I first discovered her music. Mariah Carey early on was of an ambiguous race, donning a denim bottom and a black top, the female effect landing somewhere between inner city first grade teacher and Disney princess. No prismatic cultural opuses like Madonna or Janet dance sequences necessary, just a set of pipes and some hand gestures orbiting around a velveted neckline. 

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Let It Be Sunday, 448!

Friends, hello!  Happy Sunday and Happy December 38th to you.  I will enter January when I’m good and ready. Until then you’ll find me mentally packing up 2023 and quieting my mind.  Let’s just go our own speed. Is that allowed?

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season.  I spent some sweet time in Los Angeles with my family, celebrating the life of my grandmother and baking cakes with my mom. 

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How to Put More Gentle in Your January

Have you ever had the urge to set your alarm for 12:30AM so you could run a marathon at midnight? No. But then, why would you? Have you ever walked out onto unmoving ground and placed a delicate seed in frozen earth? No. But then, why would you? Have you ever removed a pot of boiling beans off the flame halfway through the timer? No. But then… you get it.

Why are we forcing our minds and bodies and sometimes souls into a brutal January?

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Let It Be Sunday, 447!

Friends, hi hello and welcome to the very last Sunday of the year! We’re collectively glad, right?  We were all pretty sick of 2023 right around March and definitely again around August, no?

If 2023 were a day of the week, it was definitely a Wednesday.

If 2023 were an age, it would absolutely be 14… or 26, or 31.

And I’m grateful for every day this year. 

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My Parent’s House Smells Like this Perfect Cinnamon Bundt Cake

This cinnamon-swirled Sock It To Me cake is a staple in the Wilson house. It’s the easiest possible boxed-mix bundt cake baked into an entirely irresistible everyday, family sort of cake.  It’s the simplicity, cinnamon, and brown sugar that keep us coming back to this cake every year.  Just add cake mix to the grocery list and this cake just about bakes itself.

Well, I say this cake practically bakes itself but that just because that’s how easy Mom makes it look when she spends the morning baking a cool DOZEN of these bundt cakes.

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