Amanda Hesser summarizes her journey to the top of the Ronda

I just returned from a tour of Texas, California, and Ohio: sourcing, investing, and parenting weekends. I returned with a lot of dirty clothes and a hectic office on 52 days of vacation. Scroll down to learn more about this fun gift!

The Holiday Swap is also going on and I’m going to order some vanilla beans because I love making these Vanilla Rooibos Tea Cookies for my swap. If you’re new to Swap, here’s how it works:

1. You register.
2. You are assigned a community member, your exchange, to send you a vacation package.
3. You prepare a package of Christmas gifts for your exchange. This may include baked goods, snacks, homemade sauces and condiments, local foods, or crafts.
4. You send your package.
5. You receive a package full of surprises from your exchanger.
6. Christmas delight is coming!

We have been doing the Swap for more than a decade and now more than a thousand people participate in this ancient gift exchange. It’s a great excuse to unplug and bring joy to a stranger, while getting something for yourself!

In 1968, Emma Lee Turney started an antiques fair called Round Top on some farmland outside of Austin. Today, the fair is held three times a year and Jojo, CEO of Food52, recently described it as “a global gathering of vintage buyers and sellers, interior designers and style editors across an 11-mile expanse of land filled of tents, extravagant items, and incredible characters.”

Last week, a group of us headed there to find vintage vendors for our store. This is what we found:

Fish and oyster dishes galore.

• Our Cookbook Club Friendsgiving potluck is live. Join us and author Hetty Lui McKinnon in Brooklyn on November 14! Use code ramen to access the remaining entries and stay tuned for our next meeting on December 5th.
• Our 52 days of vacation has begun! Every day for the next 47 days, we’ll be sharing a daily seasonal joy, from recipes to special finds, all exclusive to us. Today is a cake competition – comment on our Instagram to tell us what cake you would make and we might send you a plate of Emile Henry cake.
• If you are looking for wreaths and garlands, we have just restocked them for you.
• If you need new napkins for Thanksgiving, we like these Japanese and Indian-influenced prints in fall colors. I prefer the Ingrid and Eva prints. Shout out to Gabe Appel for letting us know about this brand!

My friend Christine Muhlke, who I consider a post-influencer (too stylish and low-key to play that game), restarted her design, fashion, travel, and food advice newsletter. You can register here.

These forests are beautiful, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep.

And clothes to fold before bed,

and clothes to fold before bed.

Amanda Hesser

PS: After posting the turbot skillet on Instagram, my writer friend Elissa Altman, who worked at Dean & Deluca in the late 1980s, sent me a message that in 1989, when the store moved, the employees had We have to load all the products to the new location. : “I was forced to carry a 25-pound copper poacher from Villedieu east on Prince St in my apron to the new store. Every few months, they would put me up a tall ladder moving the damn thing from one subway shelf to another.When When the shop finally closed, two things remained: the six-pointed deer head hanging on the wall above the smoked fish department and the damned turbot poacher.