Those who know me well are aware of my magazine obsession, particularly with British titles like Red and Marie Claire UK. [Note: For the best place in Oakland to get magazines from around the world, along with amazing customer service, you must go to Issues. They hold copies of my favorites and will call to let me know when they've arrived, and always give Mugsy the Pug a treat.]

Not only do I love British magazines' point of view, European style is just fascinating. One brand that I've noticed being featured more regularly, particularly for accessories, has been the H&M-backed & Other Stories. So when I heard that their first US store was opening this fall in New York, I couldn't wait to check it out. Conveniently, I was just on the East Coast last week as my rowing team competed at the legendary Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. Afterwards, I made my way to NYC to catch up with friends...and do a little shopping, of course!


Located at 575 Broadway in Soho, & Other Stories carries a wide range of clothing, shoes, bags, and accessories by several designers, along with their own line of beauty products. It's a nice open plan store that didn't mind my friend, S., and I lounging on their furniture and discussing love, life, and love lives for quite some time after we tired of browsing all the products.

Despite being 80 degrees in the Bay Area lately, seasonal fall flavors are everywhere. I had my first pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks last week and after seeing Erin at House of Earnest post a recipe to make your own pumpkin spice latte syrup, I had to give it a try myself.

First, I hit up my favorite Oaktown Spice Shop for vanilla beans and cinnamon sticks/chips. I learned that saigon cinnamon has a much stronger flavor than "regular" korintje cinnamon, which is usually the type you find in powdered form. Smell them to compare -- you really can tell a difference. (Another favorite spice shop is All Spice in Des Moines. They have such nice packaging and you can order online!)

Ingredients (l to r): vanilla beans, star anise, pureed pumpkin, cinnamon chips

I had all the other ingredients I needed, including the individual spices to make my own pumpkin pie spice blend. Using a recipe I found on The Kitchn, I mixed the spice blend, doubling the recipe to have extra.

• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mace
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Spices (clockwise, from bottom): ginger, allspice, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon

Then, I created the syrup. Erin had posted two different recipes -- one sweetened with dates and one with sugar. I did make both, so I could do a taste comparison, but I didn't like the date version at all. My sister Amanda, of Hammer & Heels blog fame, did like it but she tends to be healthier than me. Considering that I put an obscene amount of sugar into my cappuccino every morning, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. So, I've just included the recipe for the sugar version below.

• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 cups of water
• 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin (canned is fine)
• 1 star anise pod
• 2 cinnamon sticks (or equivalent cinnamon chips)
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 2 vanilla beans (or one large bean, cut in half and then split, so the flavor can easily escape)

Combine the sugar and water in a small pan and cook on medium/low heat until the mixture is slightly bubbly and sugar is totally dissolved. Add in the rest of the ingredients and stir constantly while heating up the pumpkin and incorporating it all together. Strain the entire mixture to get rid of any large bits (I used a strainer, but cheesecloth would also work), let cool, then bottle.

Syrup cooking

Blue Apron has seriously changed my life. For those of you not familiar with the service, it's a weekly subscription box of three recipes, including all the ingredients, delivered straight to your door. I've been getting Blue Apron for a year now, and continuously find myself raving about it to friends, family, and people I've just met -- so much so that you'd think I was a paid promoter. But I am not; I am just a happy customer.

I first heard about the company from signs on BART, the train service here in the Bay Area, and was immediately intrigued. Trying to come up with new ideas for recipes each week, that both my husband, C., and I would like, and that are reasonably healthy is time consuming and difficult. Then you have to grocery shopping on top of that, which despite living down the street from a Whole Foods, is more of a chore than an excursion for me. From reading magazines from the UK (with which I am completely obsessed) I know that grocery delivery is much more common elsewhere in the world. But when I brought the idea up to C., his response was, "What kind of bourgeois people get their groceries delivered?" My reply: "Fabulous people, that's who."



So we gave it a try, and were impressed from the very beginning. First, you can choose your delivery day (we chose Fridays because that was the day I worked from home), size (two or four people) and can pause your deliveries at any time (a friend of mine only gets deliveries when her husband is traveling for work). You get an email the day beforehand, letting you know your box is on its way and what recipes to expect; they also give you a preview of the recipes for the following week. The box includes all the meat, vegetables/fruits, condiments, spices, etc. that you will need, in exact proportions. So, if you need one green onion and one tablespoon of mirin for a recipe, that's what you will receive, all packaged perfectly and individually (though everything is whole; not pre-chopped). I love that approach, since I felt like I was wasting a lot of groceries previously when I'd buy something for a specific recipe and not use it all before it spoiled.

Everything arrives in a cardboard box and with biodegradable ice packs that you let melt and then put down the drain. The three recipes are tucked inside and have step-by-step instructions and pictures to follow, along with a letter with interesting tidbits of information about the recipes or ingredients used that week. (They also offer a tablet view for those of you who like to cook using your iPad.) Currently, they have a meat box and a vegetarian box to choose from and say more customization options are in the works. We get the meat box, which usually contains one poultry dish, one beef/pork/lamb recipe, and one meal with seafood (various types of fish, shrimp or scallops).

It is incredibly easy and well-designed, and Blue Apron does an amazing job with their emails, soical media, blog and videos to keep you engaged. But what really won me (and C.) over has been the food itself. The ingredients, including the meat, last longer and taste better than what we purchase at Whole Foods. The meals are incredible...even ingredients that I don't think we'll like, we do. There has not been one bad meal, honestly, and we haven't had a recipe repeated yet in over a year.

Seared Cod Piperade with Roasted Blue Potatoes and Parsley-Almond Sauce

We definitely have had our favorites: Chicken and Snow Pea-Radish Saute with Candied Pistachios, Moroccan Beef Tagine with Ras el Hanout, Dates & Honey, and  Seared Salmon & Tomato Chutney with Cranberry Bean & Spinach Stew, to name a few.

You can see that the recipes are a little fancy, but they're not complicated. You do have to be able to cook -- which is part of the attraction for me. I love to cook and experiment with new ingredients, so this is perfect. It's not cheap; each box is $60, which works out to be $10 per meal, though many meals are large enough for three servings. However, it's still a much better value (and way healthier) than all the takeout we were getting when we were too tired to come up with meal ideas, go to the grocery store, and then cook after work.

Here's the best part! Blue Apron gives current subscribers free boxes to give away to friends, so you can try it for yourself. If you're interested, let me know by leaving your email in the comment section below. And if you've already tried it, let me know your thoughts. Now I just wish they'd add desserts!

I am totally a new year's resolution person. I love goals and dreaming big. Even when I was a kid I would write down what I wanted to accomplish and seal it up in an envelope to open the next year. On "big" years (1995, 2000, etc.) I would write five year goals and tuck them away in my bookcase to open much later. Some of those early ones are pretty entertaining when I have gone back and read them – own a parrot (a parakeet was the closest I got), save enough money to buy an American Girl doll (Kirsten!), become a model/actress/singer (so not me) – but many have actually come true.

What I've learned about myself along the way, however, is that winter is not the time for me to start new things. I'm pretty self-motivated, but it's really hard to maintain that resolve when it's dark, cold, and depressing outside. Fall, on the other hand, is perfect for new beginnings. That crispness in the air, that restlessness in your soul, the glorious days that are October in the Bay Area...they make you feel like anything is possible.

They say writing things down is the first step in achieving your goals. Well, I've discovered that sometimes you have to do that more than once for it to actually stick. Blogging is something that I've meant to do for a long time, that I tried to start doing back in 2007 (but never got past the first post), has been a new year's resolution for several years running, and that I haven't made the time for...until now.

I've been longing for a place to capture my thoughts on all the things that I get excited about -- from fashion to food to beauty to books to travel. I'm constantly discovering cool new things that I want to share with people...those things I can't wait to tell you. Here's to a glorious start to that new journey!