Hi Friends,

This week my oldest daughter turned 16, and we celebrated with cake and a trip to the DMV, which was shockingly painless. While she won't be making any solo trips to the grocery store or shuttling her siblings around for another six months, the prospect of having another driver in the house is thrilling.

This week, too, the giant sandwich roll experiments continued, and I've finally posted the recipe. As noted in previous newsletters, this recipe is inspired by Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread, but the shaping and baking methods differ: rather than shape the dough into a round, you stretch it into a long oval; rather than bake it in a preheated Dutch oven, you use an unpreheated sheet pan.

The resulting loaf is like a cross between a baguette and ciabatta but without any of the fuss. The crust is thin and crisp, the crumb light and airy. And while these qualities make it a great choice for sandwiches of all kinds, it's also a great dinner bread, perfect with soup or anything saucy.

I hope you all find time to make it soon. Below, I've included some favorite wintry vegetable side dishes, which I hope might provide some late-winter cooking inspiration, should you be feeling as I do, which is completely tired of everything I have been making on repeat for the past three months.

Have a great weekend, Friends ❄️❄️❄️

Giant Overnight Sandwich Roll Recipe

PS: The cake I make for every birthday:

Review of the Week

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Overnight Chia Oats

"I’ve been obsessed with making this recipe since you published it. I find that adding the vanilla and the maple syrup really kicks it up a notch. I thought that I hated chia seeds, but this really changed my mind. This is so darn healthy, and it keeps me very full until past lunch time usually."

— Natasha

8 Vegetable Side Dishes to Make Right Now

Salt-Roasted Beet Salad: Fresh and bright and wintry all at once.

Salt-Roasting Beets: I learned how to salt-roast beets from the chef at a cafe where I worked many years ago in California. I was shocked the first time I tried the salt-bed method because, unlike steam-roasting or boiling, barely an ounce of liquid leeches from the beets as they cook. I've always thought the beets tasted better this way, too, and I have to assume it better preserves their nutrients as well. The process is simple: sprinkle a layer of kosher salt in a shallow dish, nestle your beets in, cover tightly with foil, then roast at 425ºF until done (roughly an hour, depending on the size of your beets).