Happy Sunday! Welcome to The Skinny Mini, which will take you exactly 2 minutes to read (or less). This is designed to help enhance your Sunday by inspiring you to enjoy the day with activities that feel good. As one of our subscribers told us: “You’re like my favorite magazine, just without all the annoying pop-up ads.” 

(And for anyone new here, this is The Skinny, a free newsletter designed to entertain and save you time, which is everyone’s most valuable resource.)

What we’re covering: 

• A jigsaw puzzling explainer (and why they’re the best holiday activity)

• A mini ‘Pre-Holiday’ Gift Guide, with recommended items for the home, hosts & your health

• Sunday cooking with The Skinny: an easy, savory cottage cheese scramble

• Plus, host/hostess gifts when the invite says “don’t bring anything”

💡Did you know: all The Skinny editions are online and searchable—so you can easily find topics/links/recipes/items to shop that we have written about in the past. Bookmark this link for easy reference.

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Puzzling

The best jigsaw puzzles, and the benefits of doing them

The Skinny: We are huge jigsaw puzzle fans, especially during the holidays. This is the perfect activity for day drinking while food is cooking, spending time with others in the most relaxing way possible, and for our families, it also means fighting over who is “better” at puzzles, who “sucks,” and debating again whether we should actually enter a puzzle competition for real. 

Benefits of jigsaw puzzling include, per the Ravensburger website, maintaining a state of “flow” in which the puzzle-doer achieves a balance of relaxation and focus. That, and it has potential to be a protective factor for cognitive aging.  

Speaking of which, here is an awesome Ravensburger DOG puzzle by artist Dean MacAdam and for people who “hate puzzles,” we recommend this trout-shaped trout version. 

However, in the spirit of being a resource to save you money and time, we are here to tell you that all jigsaw puzzles are not created equal. Take the puzzle pictured above, gifted by Nicole’s mom (who always nails the gift-giving!). In honor of Thanksgiving, she is tackling this but found out that the majority of the piece shapes are exactly the same, and hence interchangeable. This is wildly frustrating, especially for a puzzle like this where everything kind of looks the same. So for your next puzzle purchase, a definitive guide to the best jigsaw puzzle brands—including Ravensburger, which hand-draws each puzzle template to ensure no two pieces are alike.

Giveaway — last chance!

Own pizza night with an Ooni oven

The Skinny: LAST CHANCE! We love writing The Skinny, and we’re so glad you love reading it. So since your word of mouth is our best asset, we are making it worth your while—and would be forever grateful—if you could take a second and send this link to at least one like-minded friend or family member who would also love this newsletter. Then simply reply “DONE” to this email to be entered into a drawing for this awesome Ooni Pizza Oven. No joke! We’ll announce the winner in a The Skinny edition next week, and good luck to all of you who have entered.

Counting down

A tale of two advent calendars

The Skinny: While the craze for product-driven advent calendars in recent years has reached almost laughable levels, it’s always fun to have something to look forward to every morning in December. Advent calendars for almost every type of product are now available— socks, instant noodles, beards, you name it—and of course, who can forget the Chanel advent calendar debacle of 2021, which included items such as cheap SWAG, stickers and dustbags. 

Yet, for those who want to keep it classic, traditional and non-commercial, there are also the classic German paper versions, which we love to get every year. 

All this being said, we have two simple Advent Calendars that we are recommending for coffee and tea. 

The Numi Organic Tea Advent Calendar ($17), which includes a tea for every occasion including inspirational quotes. We’ve been fans of Numi for a while, both for the quality of their teas—which are organic and Fair Trade Certified—but also for their use of ingredients like Damiana. Wrapping this up in a bow, it’s also nice to know that sales support their impact programs (such as supplying clean drinking water for communities around the world that do not have access). 

Our new favorite coffee, the flash-frozen, meltable capsules that are Cometeer, has its own Advent Calendar ($99) and we’re counting down the days to open it. These are incredibly fresh, high-quality coffees from roasters around the world, that will make your holiday mornings just a little merrier. The calendar comes in “storybook” style packaging, and features a different mystery coffee each day including Holiday Roasts, extremely limited coffees from the Stellar Series, and single-origin coffees from the Select Series. As they say, “just roll out of bed and add water.” In short: get yourself the gift of incredible tasting coffee + time back each morning (since this coffee is ready in a flash). 

And, what good is coffee and tea without cake? For yourself or others, get a holiday cake now to have on hand for parties, as a last-minute “can you bring dessert” request/hostess gift or for a festive evening at home. One to try: cakes by Food Network personality Duff Goldman, available at Goldbelly (which has, like, everything fun to eat that you need for the holidays). Above, his adorably delicious “Chocolate Peppermint Snowman Cake.”

Yes, chef

Sunday cooking with The Skinny

Let’s make a Big ol’ Breakfast-for-Dinner Sunday Scramble (aka the highest amount of protein Jill could think to fit in a pan); easy, healthy, uses flex ingredients and helps clean out those leftover veggies! Jill recommends cooking ground turkey first and tossing that in as well, and seasoning with some Peter Lugar Steak Sauce. Feel free to freestyle.

PS: You know it’s gonna be good since Jill has legit cooking creds as a Certified Culinary Professional from the Cambridge School of the Culinary Arts.

Pantry raid

This week’s newsfeed

In keeping with this edition’s theme, another “pre-holiday” item we recommend is a stash of hostess gifts to have on hand. Quick-hit ideas include: 

• Olive Oil samplers! Absolutely no one doesn’t want this, and here’s a lovely “Classic Collection” assortment from Seasons. As aspiring olive oil connaisseurs (read: snobs) due to our first-hand knowledge of olive harvesting at a friend’s Tuscan uliveto, we would only recommend what we (as total non-experts…but still) consider to be the best. And after tasting their latest, freshest press from October and knowing that one of their founders grew up at an olive estate in Southern Spain, we can recommend with confidence.

• NA beer or wine: Possibly something that your host might not have thought of, but always appreciated. Ideas that we’d love to get include a 4-pack of St. Agrestis Phony Negronis, this Tequila Gift Set from The New Bar, or a variety pack of Gruvi NA wine.

• Specialty salts: The perfect gift since everyone uses it, but since the specialty versions may seem like a splurge, they will always be appreciated as a gift. Here are the Robb Report’s picks for best salts from around the world (including one of our faves, Spicewell).

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