Wear, Watch, Want #209: The Strong Marble Crash Edition

Wear: French Kitchen Marble Tray and Trivet

My kitchen is a tribute to Crate and Barrel’s French kitchen line. I have the paper towel holder, the spoon rest, the salt cellar, the butter bell, the utensil holder, and I already mentioned I’m going to get the cake stand/cheese dome ASAP. Now that I’ve seen all the stuff I’ve bought along with their prices, I feel like I need to add a slight disclaimer: I bought this stuff over like, 4 years, and I DO shop for other, cheaper options, but truly C&B French Kitchen is the best. And why buy three cheap butter bells looking for a decent one when you can just spend that money in one go and get something perfect? MOVING ON.

I was reorganizing my kitchen recently, and I had two problems I wanted to address: Where to keep bananas (more on that in a minute) and how to make my stoveside cooking tools look more pulled together. The stove solution was simple: I needed a tray or a lazy susan or something. I shopped around a LOT. I looked at every store I could think of, but the counter space is small and the dimensions aren’t typical, and once again, French Kitchen came through, and this tray was the PERFECT size for what I needed. Plus, because (almost) everything I was going to put on it was from the French Kitchen line, I could put it all on the tray in the store to make sure it would fit. Here’s the finished result:

You can barely see it, but I have this black marble salt cellar tucked in there. For pepper? NO. For Maldon flaky salt, of course.

The next issue was bananas. I pretty much always have bananas. But I noticed that in the spot where I usually kept them on the counter, there was a yellow smudge that I couldn’t remove. I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know if I did something wrong, but bananas are now banned from sitting on the counter. No produce comes into MY house and mars MY counters. I considered this hook, but I have lights under my cabinets and I didn’t want weird banana shadows. After considering a few options, I realized what I wanted was a countertop, but for bananas. I got this trivet, but I call it The Banana Pedestal. Bonus: If I ever don’t have bananas, or I don’t want to use this anymore, it’s easy to store, and I can also use it as an actual trivet.

That S hook on the fruit basket is leftover from another failed banana storage attempt.

Watch: Yellowjackets

All too often some creator is like, “You know who’s capable of some real cruelty? TEENAGE GIRLS!” and the whole world goes, “Yeah, duh.” Yellowjackets is another story of (gasp!) what teenage girls are capable of when they’re pushed to the limit. In 1996 a girls’ soccer team is on a plane to the championship when they crash in the Canadian wilderness. We see the girls in 1996, and also in the present day. The events in the woods are shrouded in secrecy, but we know that they were missing for 19 months and they resorted to cannibalism, with an extra side of ritualistic ceremony. I’m all in.

Here’s the thing I don’t like about Yellowjackets: It’s on Showtime. WHO has Showtime? I did, once, but I don’t now. I was able to watch the first episode of Yellowjackets for free, but WHAT NOW?? My tentative plan is to wait till the show is over, buy a month of Showtime, and binge it. I’m hoping at least one of them gets kuru from 19 months of cannibalism but TIME WILL TELL.

Want: Nike Metcon Training Shoes

I do strength training at home, in my living room. It’s okay, and even recommended, to lift weights in socks or barefoot, and that’s what I was doing. (It’s also much easier in bike bootcamps to just remove your spin shoes rather than switch to gym shoes.) I was in physical therapy, and I asked my PT for advice about lunges. She gave me a few tips, and I realized it was MUCH easier to come up out of a lunge, and the big difference was that I was wearing shoes. I love the idea of strengthening my foot muscles by working out barefoot, but I have arthritis, and I think maybe for me, a bit of support is necessary. I knew that I needed some flat soled shoes for weight training (running shoes are built completely different and can do more harm than good when strength training), but other than that I had no idea what I was looking for. After a lot of Googling, I found that Nike Metcons seemed to be the top pick. I’m waiting to see if I can get a Black Friday deal, but I’m very excited to see if my lunges, and all strength training, is easier with some supportive footwear.

Edit to add: I got these in a pretty good Black Friday sale. We’ll see how it goes!