The Good Stuff Interview with Luisa Weiss
Plus, an ADHD sleep playlist, a first-aid must have, and Daily Dose of Green is back!
Oops! I accidentally sent the newsletter only to paid subscribers yesterday. Better late than never—enjoy this slightly tardy edition!
I first “met” Luisa through her blog The Wednesday Chef, and in a way, she is the person who most taught me how to cook. Her approach to cooking and writing not only steadied me over the years, but her can-do practicality is one I seek to emulate every day. She writes as she cooks: with warmth, confidence, and a hard-won ease, plus a particularly European je ne sais quoi that never feels forced or fussy.
Despite never having met in “real life,” we’ve been connected for close to twenty years now—long enough that stopping off at the post office to buy an international stamp so my Christmas card can reach her in Berlin has become one of my favorite annual rituals, a sort of cosmic in-joke at the digital ether.
I asked her to tell us about her Good Stuff because she understands that the objects we love, like the recipes we know by heart, are anchors. Her answers below highlight the comfort of ritual, the delights of personal history, and the daily pleasures that make a life.
1. What’s an object you use daily that you’d genuinely miss if it disappeared tomorrow?
My Moccamaster coffee machine. I only started drinking coffee during the pandemic when I was in my early 40s, and now, shocker, I can’t imagine life without it. It took me a year or two to figure out that I prefer filter coffee to Italian moka coffee. That’s when we bought this machine secondhand and became completely obsessed. It’s so fast and foolproof, it makes delicious coffee (I am the kind of person who now has a favorite coffee brand) and it’s easy on the eyes. I, someone who cannot even bring myself to remember a daily supplement regularly, am even diligent about descaling and cleaning it every time I finish a box of coffee filters. Genuinely something I would miss if I didn’t have.
Abbey: I also have this exact Moccamaster and adore it - it truly makes a better cup of coffee. I love that you clean it every time you finish a box of filters - I’m going to adopt the same.
2. What’s an object in your life that has an interesting previous owner, history, or origin story?
When I turned 30, my mother gave me a ring she had made with a cabochon stone she salvaged from the clasp of a necklace she’d inherited from a rather forbidding paternal great-aunt with whom she’d lived as a child. The ring itself was made by my mother’s wonderful, hilarious, and incredibly elegant maternal cousin, who was the creative director of a famous Italian jewelry company until his untimely death from a flu contracted on a business trip to buy semi-precious stones in Tucson. It’s an heirloom in more ways than one and incredibly special to me.
Abbey: This kind of layering of personal history resonates so deeply for me. I’m considering putting together an exhibition on grief and grieving at the small museum where I work - we have an incredible collection of mourning jewelry for one - but it’s just this sort of story and object that I want to include - how we remember and celebrate those who came before us.
3. What’s something in your apartment right now that makes you smile when you see it?
There are lots of corners of my apartment that make me happy; I’m obsessed with the ongoing task of making every room sing, as my queen Beata Heuman exhorts us to do. But right now our front hallway is really doing it for me: The painting is by Peter Schmiedel and was given to me by a family friend whose husband collected Schmiedel’s work. I bought the Art Déco brass lamp for a song on eBay ages ago. It had this hideously grimy pleated shade that we endured for years before I had the pale green silk shade (with deep purple trim!) made by a fantastic lampshade workshop near my apartment in Berlin. (What you can’t see is a chandelier from that same Roman great-aunt that was formerly getting lost in a different room and now makes so much more sense in the hallway, and a Thonet-style bright red bentwood coat rack that was my greatest thrifting coup of the past six months.)
Abbey: GASP! To have a Roman great-aunt. Swoon! Also, that lampshade workshop. Double swoon.
4. What’s an object you’ve held onto longer than makes practical sense, and why?
Anyone with ADHD will recognize the doom piles that those of us with this affliction live with. The doom pile that gives me the most anxiety is the one made up of over ten years of my children’s drawings, doodles, birthday cards, homework assignments with just the right amount of humor and whimsy, and other detritus, plus two oversized, color-coded folders (one for each son) that I intend to store all the papers in. My rational self knows I can probably throw away 80% of it, but the rest of me is incapable of doing more than just moving this pile from room to room. Have I mentioned that this has been going on FOR OVER A DECADE? Right now, The Pile has taken up residence on my younger’s son’s window sill. This may be the key to solving it: My German husband who is obsessed with “lüften” (the daily airing of the apartment) is being driven mad by the fact that he can no longer open this window and my fervent hope is that his madness will make him deal with the doom pile so I don’t have to.
Abbey: Truly, the artwork struggle is real. I have similar (but much larger) piles in plastic bins in my basement. A mentor of mine handled this problem by making videos of her children holding the artwork and explaining it - and then she threw away the artwork but made a montage of the videos. I bought two of these frames one 8.5 by 11 and the other 11 by 17 and have been mostly happy to at least have the artwork “out of the way.”
Bonus Q:
A recipe I make weekly with my eyes closed is pasta sauce made with canned fish and tomato. Start by, in a medium saucepan, cooking a slivered onion in a good amount of olive oil with a pinch of salt and red pepper flakes until softened and fragrant, but not brown, about 8 minutes. Scrape in canned tuna or sardines or mackerel (1-2 cans for 4-6 eaters) and combine well, breaking the fish apart and letting it meld with the onions. After a few minutes, add canned tomatoes (I like Mutti Polpa if you can find it) and stir well. Bring to a simmer, then lower the heat and cover. Let simmer while you bring salted pasta water to a boil. Add some drained capers and slivered olives to the sauce (high quality, please, nothing canned or dyed - I like Kalamata here, or oil-cured shriveled black olives) and continue to simmer. When the pasta (I mostly use spaghetti for this sauce) has finished cooking, drain it, saving some pasta water, and toss with the sauce. Loosen with starchy pasta water, if necessary. To really gild the lily, if your children permit it, top with chopped parsley.
YUM! Thank you, Luisa!
A. I’ve finally brought back a Daily Dose of Green as a stand-alone Substack.
B. A few bonus doses here, here, and here (all three coming up for sale soon!)
C. Gah! I never saw a wooden egg I didn’t covet. On the wishlist.
D. I stumbled across this book at a Barnes and Noble in FL and immediately ordered it for my mom, who has been loving it.
E. My mother-in-law sent me a honking box of dahlia tubers from Eden Brothers for Christmas, which just arrived this week. THRILLING! I was clicking around their website this evening, and these poppies made me gasp.
F. Ben fell in love with this puzzle in a store, and I snuck it into his Easter basket this year.
G. It’s hard to truly delight teenagers at Easter, but I’m giving it my best shot. Also, sorry in advance to my husband, who can’t stand slime. Needs must and all that.
H. Who doesn’t love a minifig? Everyone got a few in their Easter basket this year.
I. I can’t tell you how often I’m grateful for our eye rinse (which we use with contact solution). Reached for it twice this week.
J. Finally, this ADHD sleep music has been a godsend in this house.
I occasionally include affiliate links - typically to products from Etsy, Ebay, 1st Dibs, Bookshop, Wayfair, and yes, sometimes, Amazon. Affiliate links are bolded so you know when I’ve used one. Our most consistent political power comes from exercising our values via our wallets. I’m always thinking about cost, accessibility, and the planet. It’s a work in progress.
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I include a few bonus finds here each week for paid subscribers as a small token of appreciation for making this newsletter possible.
A report on the Tevas I shared last week - they arrived, I loved them, wore them to work on the first hot day. I felt like a veritable goddess, but by the end of the day, the strings were cutting into my feet - not uncomfortable exactly, but a little disappointing. I’ll wear it with dresses this summer for a casual dinner or when I want that goddess vibe, but not as an all-day wear.
I snagged this screen patching kit after sitting on our porch this week - porch season is almost on us!
After reading this article last week, I ordered the grip strength measure - the whole family got into it.
This edition is excellent as always, and that excellence is unstated but still here, a delight in life, so wonderful to see.
I love that you are making another newsletter of Daily Dose Of Green! I am bidding on one of the paintings. Thank you for all the auction tips. I read the article and wanted a Grip Strength Measure which I will buy from Amazon. I have always had a poor grip so this will just confirm it.