OK, I didn’t give everything on this list to everyone, but these are some of our household’s absolute favorite things (mostly discovered in 2022 but could have been 2020 or earlier, who even knows, what is time anyway anymore?) and I love sharing!
Eat Tasty in 2023
Seasonal Salt Blends from Beautiful Briny Sea
https://beautiful-briny-sea.myshopify.com
Funny thing, we discovered Beautiful Briny Sea products thanks to our local farmer’s market who carry their “Chocolate Honey” sugar. When I went to order more at one point, I stumbled on BBS’s flavored salts and got the sampler box. At that point, we were hooked! Every single salt blend is magical. You don’t need much, but the flavors really do carry through in the salt. Use it especially as a finishing salt, but feel free to add some during cooking in place of regular salt for an added punch of flavor. It’s the missing ingredient you didn’t know you needed!
Shout-out to the sugar blends as well. We regularly make mochas with a mixture of chocolate honey or the Mexican chocolate sugar + some high-quality cocoa from King Arthur (see below) + good coffee. (Also below!)
Honorable Mention: Spice blends from The Spice & Tea Exchange – they have stores nationwide and also online. I literally cannot imagine cooking without California Blend, Signature Spice, Tuscany Blend, or Ultimate Umami. We stock our spice drawer with Sweet Heat and Cinnabar Smoke for making my famous shrimp and grits recipe. Taco Tuesday and some of their high-quality adobo or chile powders are always on hand. Shopping in one of the stores is really fun, but if you can only order online, try any of these blends!
Heilala Vanilla
Buy here direct
High-quality vanilla is expensive. Vanilla is also a product that suffers from a murky supply chain, robbing local people of economic resources. If you’re tired of the cheap bottles you can find in the grocery, and if you cook/bake such that the flavor of your vanilla really matters, I highly recommend Heilala. The company sources its vanilla from Tonga and profits go to local growers. Be prepared for some sticker shock; this is a special purchase for our household every 5 years or so. But it’s so good!
Drink Better in 2023
DeathWish Coffee: Odinforce Blend
Amazon or get off 15% your first order here
DeathWish markets itself as “the strongest coffee out there,” and the original “death wish” blend is pretty stiff. We got some as a gift last year and discovered that it was the other bag, the OdinForce blend, which captured our hearts.
OdinForce is a dark roast coffee with a good kick of caffeine, yes, but it also has a good roasted coffee flavor. It’s a simple but effective dark blend, a good strong “cuppa” when you want something with depth and heft.
PRO TIP: A friend of ours told us to try spreading out our freshly-ground coffee onto a paper towel, then pouring it into the top of our pour-over maker (we use a Bodum which you can get from Amazon for $20) before continuing with our coffee-making process. (I found this post with the same instructions.) It really works! Try this with dark coffee roasts like Odinforce – you’ll end up with a much smoother cup of coffee in the end.
Bittermilk Cocktail Mixers
Amazon or check your local liquor store
We first tasted one of the Buttermilk mixers several years ago when a friend gave us a bottle as a gift. The #2 concoction, for making a Tom Collins, lives in my refrigerator all the time now for when I want something good with gin. The bottle makes a good dozen drinks (you supply your own spirits and fizz) and costs about $15-20, depending on where you buy it. I’ve had 4 of their 6 blends at this point; they are all good. Pay attention to the descriptions of flavors and recommended liquors to pick the right one for you.
A Luxurious Wash
Mistral bar soap
(at Amazon, or order direct; the prices are the same, you might save a few bucks on shipping)
I love this soap so much, I could write an ode to it. We stumbled across a few square, chunky bars of soap beautifully wrapped in the most incredible paper – this was a few years ago, in Anthropologie (stop rolling your eyes). Immediately hooked!
I was so tired of buying 4 bars of Zest or whatever and watching us go through the whole stack in a month. In contrast, the Mistral big bar lasted… nearly a month on its own. (O.O) So yeah, this is $10/bar soap, but you aren’t going to be spending that much more than what you’re already putting out for the cheaper stuff (unless you leave the Mistral bars sitting in a puddle of water on your shower floor -don’t do that).
The scents are really lovely, but a few of them can be a lot – if you find it to be too much, unwrap the bar and perch on a window for a day; it’ll immediately calm down. There are also less-scented options in their lineup. I’ve honestly not met one I don’t like, and we live in a more or less “scent-free” house. I tuck the soap wrapper in between a few of the folded towels on our bathroom shelf to freshen up the stack.
If you want every shower to feel ike a fancy French woman’s bath, even when you just worked out and feel gross, put some Mistral soap on your rack.
Other Favorites, not for gifting
Just a few bonus products that I truly value, but I’m not going to give as gifts, because that would be weird
Health & Beauty
- Origins Super Spot Remover (acne blemish gel) ($20 on Amazon): This tiny bottle is full of magic. Acne-fighting wizardry. Dot a tiny bit on any blemish; it’ll dry up in hours.
- Vichy Vitamin C serum (around $30 on Amazon): My skin texture and coloring have gotten weird as I’ve hit middle age (ugh), so I tried this serum when it went on sale. I use about 4 drops and smooth it lightly across my face once a day, then follow with a moisturizer. I feel like it’s been helping even out my skin tone.
- belif The True Cream Aqua Bomb (Amazon carries different sizes, so price ranges $20-45): a truly lightweight moisturizer for oily / combo skin. I use a tiny bit on forehead and each cheek once a day when I think of it, and it’s the first facial moisturizer I’ve found that doesn’t feel like I’m glomming goop on my face. I hate a goopy-face feeling.
Household Love
- Charles Soap laundry powder (Amazon): A laundry workhorse. We stopped buying Tide (etc) when we went basically scent-free in our household (so glad) and I was swapping out laundry products for brands that don’t give me a headache upon opening the package. (I’m looking at you, Downy!) A friend told us about Charles Soap and we jumped on board. One scoop per load is more than effective, and clothes come out of the wash sparkling clean and simply smelling “fresh,” not like whatever Tide or Gain think you want to smell. Amazon sells 2 bags in a set for about $18. We need a bag every 2-3 months (it’s just two of us, so we do maybe 3 loads of laundry a week).
- Replace your hand soap pumps with Castille Soap in glass dispensers: This might sound weird, but a few years ago we stopped buying soaps from Bath & Body Works (etc) and switched to foaming-pump-bottles from Amazon (here’s the set I have) and a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio of filtered water to Castille soap (this is a nice sampler set from Amazon if you want to try). It takes maybe 5 minutes each month for me to refill our soap containers and that’s it… Meanwhile, I’m not spending money every few months on another plastic bottle. You’ll get the foamiest soap if you use distilled water, but who has time for that? I run water through the Brita filter; works fine. Play around with the ratio of soap to water (you don’t need a lot of soap) until it’s right for you. It’ll just look like colored water in the dispenser, but once you push the foaming head down, you’ll get true “foam” hand soap in return. *Make sure you buy a bottle set for foaming soap, which has a wide, flat head.
- Roomba i7 robot vacuum and docking base (Amazon for $500 and elsewhere): I never planned to get on the robot vacuum train, but our friends enjoy theirs and I found this set on significant sale one weekend ahead of Mother’s day. Now I can’t imagine living without one. We’ve named our robot “Isaac” (for Asimov), and Isaac keeps our carpet and tile floors better swept than the human inhabitants have ever achieved. Robot vacuums aren’t perfect. For one thing, they’re loud; for another, their robot brains can get them stuck in hilarious places. But for the ease and convenience of having a very clean house without having to do the vacuuming myself, I am thrilled. Caveat: Amazon has purchased Roomba (boo!), and I’m not happy with what that probably means for the privacy of my data. If I were buying now, I’d buy one of the other brands.
And Don’t Forget Good Games and TV and Books!
I recommend these to pretty much anyone. Links are to Amazon; if you click, I might get a penny or two (thanks!)
- READ: Hail Mary, Andy Weir
- READ: The Galaxy and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers
- WATCH: if you have Paramount+, the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series is outstanding 10/10
- Our household adores Letterkenny and Shoresy.
- PLAY: Tenpenny Parks
- PLAY: Parade
just:words 
Got a comment?