My friend Sara wrote a cookbook. It's beautiful, thoughtful, and full of the kind of recipes you've come to rely on from her blog, Sprouted Kitchen. I read it cover to cover the day it arrived, and have since gone back to revisit all the pages I added post-it notes to. You might want to bookmark this recipe for the first cold snap, because it will be here sooner than we realize.

Andrew and I went to the Hollywood Bowl last weekend (it never really feels like summer until I've done that). We enjoyed a picnic in the grass (grilled pepper, onion and goat cheese sandwiches + white bean and zucchini salad + macaroons from Bouchon + a crisp Sauvignon blanc), then found our seats and cozied up to the smoky voice of Diana Krall.

I made Sara's smoky red lentil soup the next day, and Andrew went on a hilarious diatribe about how he doesn't really like soup. But wait. It gets better. (And just for the record, he approved everything I'm about to say, and even suggested that I tell Sara about how this conversation went down.)