Category: Blogs

There’s a certain kind of weeknight fatigue that hits after a full day—the contents in your fridge feel uninspiring, and the temptation to hit the takeout app is strong. But lately, I’ve been trying to make decisions that my future self will thank me for, and often that means making a healthy homemade dinner with ingredients that fuel my body in the best way.

Enter: this Mediterranean Tuna & White Bean Salad. When it’s too hot to turn on the oven and I need dinner to come together fast, it’s the easy no-cook meal that never lets me down. And just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it skimps on flavor. It’s so delicious and has enough Niçoise-inspired ingredients to make me feel like I’m channeling South of France vibes, even if I’m just prepping dinner after a long workday.

This is a perfect one to help romanticize your evening routine. Light a candle. Put on a good playlist. And make yourself something truly nourishing (that yields plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day).

A Pantry Salad, but Make It Elevated

Here’s one thing I love about this recipe: it’s made from ingredients I almost always have in my pantry. But when tossed together with the right ingredients and a zingy homemade vinaigrette, it becomes so much more than the sum of its parts.

The base of this salad is oil-packed tuna (this part is not negotiable—skip the water-packed kind, trust me), creamy cannellini beans, and a handful of pasta. I used gluten-free chickpea pasta for a little extra protein and texture, but truly, any short-cut pasta will work.

A Salad That Fuels You

Beyond the flavor, this salad checks all the boxes when it comes to balanced nutrition. It’s packed with:

• Lean protein from tuna and white beans to keep you full and support muscle recovery (especially important if you’ve had a busy day or fit in a workout).
• Fiber from beans, arugula, and chickpea pasta to support digestion and stabilize blood sugar.
• Healthy fats from olive oil and olives, which help your body absorb nutrients and keep skin glowing.
• Greens and herbs like arugula and parsley that bring antioxidants, vitamins, and that fresh, peppery kick that makes the whole dish feel alive.

Keep This Lemon-y Vinaigrette on Hand

This is the dressing I make on repeat and it never gets old. It’s lemony, garlicky, and filled with flavor from chopped shallots, parsley, and Dijon mustard. Just shake it up in a jar with good olive oil, and you’ve got a vinaigrette that honestly tastes good on anything—grilled veggies, chicken, even just a dip for raw veggies. Highly recommend making a double batch on Sunday so you’ve got a mason jar of this vinaigrette at the ready all week long.

A Non-Boring Meal Prep Salad

Besides being wildly easy, this salad holds up. I love it for dinner, then pack the leftovers into a container for lunch the next day. And I’m always excited about eating it the second time around. The arugula wilts just enough to soften into the vinaigrette, and the flavors only get better with time.

It’s perfect for those weeks when you want to make a few good choices without spending your Sunday meal prepping. Just double the recipe and keep it in the fridge for grab-and-go lunches or a light dinner that doesn’t feel like a repeat.

Swaps and Ideas to Make It Yours

As always, feel free to riff off this base recipe. Swap in kale for arugula. Add cherry tomatoes if they’re bursting from your garden. Use farro instead of pasta. Canned salmon is even a great sub for the tuna if that’s more your vibe! This recipe is flexible, forgiving, and full of great flavor.

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Let me know if you make it—and leave a rating and review below if you do! Scroll on for the recipe for this Mediterranean Tuna & White Bean Salad.

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Strange is the work and world of Tokyo-based artist Yuka Hirac. Like a dream, her images pull you into another dimension: surreal, overstimulating, and symptomatic of an artificial, digital age. Showing flashes of reality, they strike a balance between the familiar and enigmatic, recognisable yet unsettling. “I try to find something strange and interesting in the real world, and find that delicate balance that makes people imagine something. A hidden story,” the artist describes.

Hirac’s style, which often features distorted faces and bodies, can be traced to her background as a makeup artist. After studying in London and finding commercial success in Tokyo, her present work is less restricted by genre and instead follows the instinctive path of her own fetishes. “Now, I’m making books to record things I like. I’m not only interested in visual aspects but words and stories,” she says. “I want to explore my subconscious and instincts more.”

jajaja… mediation walk is Hirac’s fourth and most recent photobook, released on April 18. “It’s said that when a person dies, they look back on their life like a revolving lantern,” she describes. “I imagined the life I would look back on and realised I laughed a lot. But when I’m laughing with someone, sometimes it’s genuine and sometimes it’s fake…” This mystification bleeds into Hirac’s images, a maximalist kaleidoscope of extreme close-ups, VHS stills, plastic textures and stream of consciousness text.

Using high-contrast colours and flash photography, Hirac’s questions aren’t phrased in words but via visual confusion. With her internet surrealism, she taps into the inexplicable, unnerving parts of the world and self that we don’t, and will likely never, know.

After 13 years on the road, Zac Henderson (previously) traded in the van he and his wife lived in full-time to return to the South and be nearer to family. “Despite the many recognizable faces and places, my relationship to them had changed,” he says. “As is everyone who leaves home and then returns, I was a different person. The town changed, too, having grown in size with a continuously re-made skyline and a ballooning population we felt increasingly alienated from.”

In the Southeastern U.S., an unmissable feature along highways and wooded areas is kudzu. The invasive species was imported to North America in 1876, when it was included in the Japan pavilion of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Originally promoted as an ornamental, climbing garden plant, kudzu was later used as an agent to stop erosion on farms and along graded roadways. But it also found the hot, humid conditions ideal, and its aggressive invasiveness is apparent in the way it can completely engulf telephone poles, trees, and other plants.

“Capable of growing up to a foot per day, kudzu is known for its stranglehold on untouched structures,” Henderson says. The plant inspires a recent body of work titled Palimpsest, drawn from the idea of writing material that has been altered or layered with new writing but still contains fragments of original content. He adds:

Buildings and vehicles, if left for too long, may be overtaken and reduced to little more than undulations underneath a suffocating quilt of leaves. Even as a child, I found the structures made by its overgrowth interesting. They appeared like non-threatening monsters, slowly moving across the landscape searching for the next structure to patiently devour alongside the highway.

For Henderson, kudzu represents a nostalgic and instantly distinguishable feature of the region while also hinting at the uncontrollability of nature and time and its influence on the world around us. Photographed in near-infrared, the bright orange-ish leaves are a semblance of something familiar while being boldly surreal and strange.

Find more on the artist’s website, Instagram, and Behance.

For the uninitiated, the term “bitters” is a little confusing. That’s because it can mean two different things. One variety is  bitter Italian liqueurs like Cynar, Averna, Campari, and the bartender’s favorite Fernet-Branca. The other bitter is often differentiated by calling it a “cocktail bitter.”

Often referred to as the “salt and pepper” of the mixology world, cocktail bitters are concentrated flavor extracts used in a variety of drinks. That might seem simple, but they’re so much more important and complex than that. Your favorite mixed drink wouldn’t be what it is without cocktail bitters. All you need is a few dashes to totally elevate your drink.

Bartenders and home mixologists know all about the importance of bitters. This is especially true for fans of bourbon-based cocktails. Classic drinks like the Old Fashioned, Sazerac, Manhattan, and more use cocktail bitters as a main ingredient.

There are many renowned brands and countless random flavor combinations, from orange to black walnut to cherry—and everything in between. Picking the best bitters for your bourbon-based cocktails is extremely important. Here are some of the most versatile choices to add to your home bar.

What are you up to this weekend? Freddie and I are having pizza and playing games tonight, and I’m SO excited to see the boys when they get home on Sunday. I’ve missed them so much and can’t wait to squeeze them. Hope you have a good one, and here are some links from around the web…

How to be funny at a dinner party.

My favorite shape of jeans.

Nerd alert: My dad and I thought this Connections puzzle was especially fun.

I Am a Midwestern Girl from a Movie and/or TV Show So Excited to Be Here in the Big City. Made me laugh.

“I went swimming in the Seine.” The photos are so cool!

A Chipwich ice cream cake.

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are the ‘it’ couple we didn’t know we needed.

Hard things are supposed to be hard. Loved this.

With summer fruit, the big question is: galette or crisp?

Would love to wear my hair like this all fall and winter.

Celine Song — of Past Lives fame — is writing a sequel to My Best Friend’s Wedding. Will you watch?

I laughed so much listening to Amy Poehler’s podcast episode with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer.

Would you try ‘Japanese walking’? (NYTimes gift link)

Plus, three reader comments:

Says Jorie on what cute things do your kids love doing: “My kids are five, three and one. Earlier this summer, we were visiting family in the Midwest, and everyone kept commenting, ‘I can’t believe you’re starting kindergarten!’ to my five-year-old and ‘I can’t believe you’re walking!’ to my one-year-old. After the third interaction with relatives, my middle child three-year-old daughter quickly started chiming in at the end with, ‘And I can’t BELIEVE I’m THREE!’ Sometimes, you gotta gas yourself up!”

Says Emily on what cute things do your kids love doing: “I knew I was changed forever when a really good fire truck drove by, and I was alone in the car shouting, ‘Wow, look at that one go!’ Twentysomething me could not fathom noticing such a thing, let alone developing a strong affinity with certain trucks. In the words of Elphaba and Glinda, ‘I have been changed for good.’”

Says J. on how do you mother yourself: “I mother myself through the parenting advice I learned right here on Cup of Jo a decade ago: ‘just add water!’

– take a long shower
– run your wrists under cold water for the length of a full song (this is also a great trick if you feel a panic attack coming on and can be done privately!)
– slowly drink a glass of water
– sweat with a hard workout
– go on a walk as close as possible to a body of water
– run an ice cube over the back of your neck, collarbone, forearms, etc.
– let yourself cry

‘Just add water’ is up there with ‘babies be babies’ – the hymns and recitations and inside jokes of this gorgeous, sparkly, warm, welcoming, loving community that mothers one another so joyfully every day.”

(Photos by Freddie.)

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