Spooky season, served with a spoon.

Happy Monday, soup lovers! This week we're ladling out 5 pots worth your weekend (plus the 1-ingredient upgrade for your chili), the cashmere that works out to $1 a wear, and the 2026 candy ranking to check before the doorbell rings. Plus, everyone's favorite Halloween ad and the most haunted road in America, 1 line each.

Welcome to The Skinny, which will take you 3 minutes to breeze through.

(And for anyone new, this is The Skinny, a free newsletter with an entertaining take on this week's lifestyle news and designed to save you time, which is everyone's most valuable resource. The goal: stop mindless scrolling, live a better and more informed life.)

What we're covering today:

💡 Did you know: The Skinny editions are online and searchable, so you can easily find topics, links, recipes, and items to shop. Bookmark this link.

🔗 If someone already in the know sent this, you can subscribe here.

If you're faced with crappy weather or a dull, gray afternoon, embrace it by warming up the vibe with something bubbling on the stove. Soup reaps big rewards but asks for little: a pot, a cutting board, and a little patience. It's one of the best dishes that tastes better the next day, so make a big batch, eat it 3 days running, and tackle all those home projects while it cooks.

The Skinny: Make a pot, feed a crowd, and let the leftovers do the work. 5 pots worth your weekend:

1. Ina Garten's Italian Wedding Soup. If celebrities like it, does that mean it's good? Let us know if you've made this (per this piece of reporting, Jennifer Garner commented "YUM" on Ina's post, and Julianne Moore replied with a red heart). Hot tip: make extra meatballs, freeze them.

2. Ree Drummond's fall soups, Instant Pot style. The Pioneer Woman has 10 Instant Pot soups for fall, for the nights you want the smell without the stirring.

3. Jill's chili hack. Jill narrowed years of chili research down to 1 recipe so she could perfect it: Sugar Spun Run's Best Chili, which has won more than 2 dozen chili cook-offs on its own.

Her hack: add a beer. Any beer. Cook-off No. 25 is yours for the taking.

4. Tomato soup and grilled cheese, rolled into one. Skip the stacking and dip the sandwich instead with this roll-up method.

5. Last but the absolute opposite of LEAST is our favorite Fat Flush Soup from SkinnyMs, which both Nicole and Jill have made and can swear by. If you feel like you haven't been eating healthy food the last couple days/week/month, this one's for you, and it's jam-packed with superfoods.

Final sip: The chili upgrade is already in your fridge. That's the whole trick. Reply and tell us which beer went in; we're keeping score.

CBD is having a moment and CBD brands are everywhere right now. But with so many options, it can be tough to know what to look for – and which brands actually follow through on their claims.

That’s where CBDistillery sets itself apart. For the past decade, all of CBDistillery's products have been made with non-GMO, US-grown industrial hemp and with 100% clean ingredients – no corn syrup or artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or sweeteners.

They frequently introduce new and innovative products formulated to meet a variety of wellness needs and customer preferences. And every single batch of CBDistillery’s gummies, oil tinctures, topicals and softgels are tested by an independent, accredited lab to make sure what’s in the package matches what’s on the label.

Right now, CBDistillery is offering our readers a special deal: save 50% on orders of $75 or more with code NEWS50!

Try Trusted CBD

The Skinny: Cashmere has a reputation: precious, pricey, and a moth breeding ground (even a microscopic drop of food or bev is an invitation for moths to move in). Here's the case for the other side. Art of Manliness calls it "the gold standard of sweaters" and estimates a good one takes 200-plus wears over about a decade. Divide the price by 200 and a $199 turtleneck runs about $1 a wear, which is less than the soup. The full guide is here.

Is cashmere worth the money?

Our take: Yes, if you'll reach for it on repeat, and the trick is buying 1 you'll actually wear instead of 3 you'll save for "nice." Pick a dark, simple color. Then read the fiber line before the price tag, because the same guide warns that a "cashmere" sweater can be mostly wool or synthetic. Wash promptly if you think you may have spilled anything on it.

Shop it: Who What Wear's fashion editors name Nordstrom among 3 retailers with the best sweaters, and its fall guide has cashmere at every price point. The lineup:

Prices as listed in Who What Wear's August 30, 2026 guide.

For the guys: Fit first, fabric second. Art of Manliness puts it plainly: "A $500 cashmere sweater will look comical if it's too small." Find a brand whose fit model is built like you, and stay loyal. Everything above about labels and dark colors applies to you too.

Care, the easy way: Hand wash in a basin with a little fragrance-free, tear-free shampoo, like The Honest Company Shampoo & Body Wash, Fragrance-Free. Don't wring it. Roll it in a towel, press out the water, and dry it flat. If you want a wool-specific wash, Eucalan (unscented) is the one we'd start with. But if you're Nicole and refuse to hand wash, she swears by the actual washing machine, on delicates of course, with a fancy, fragrant wool-specific detergent. Pills are a separate problem, and they have a $14 answer below.

Pro tip: Pilling is just friction: short fibers rub, tangle, and ball up, per Gobi Cashmere. Fold instead of hang, air it out instead of washing, and for the rest, the $14 Conair fabric shaver (CNN Underscored approved) runs on 2 AA batteries and 0 regrets.

Cozy deal: Archer Cashmere is a mother-daughter label from Daria and Madison Archer. Daria spent 30-plus years at Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani and 360Cashmere/Naked Cashmere before launching this one with her daughter, so the knitwear comes with a pedigree. Read their story. Skinny readers get 25% off with the code SKINNYVIP25.

Final styling tip: Buy the 1 you'll wear 200 times.

The Skinny: Back in E34 we polled you on the worst thing to find in a trick-or-treat bag. Raisins won in a landslide with 40% of the vote, pennies took 2nd, and the homemade popcorn ball, the dentist's apple and Grandma's hard candies split the rest. For the real treats: we called the coup in E36, when Peanut M&M's knocked Reese's off the top of America's Halloween candy list. 2 years later, M&M's is No. 1 for the 2nd ranking in a row on CandyStore.com's 2026 list, reported by NBC New York, and Reese's still hasn't gotten it back. Sour Patch Kids climbed to No. 2 and tied M&M's for the most state wins, which is the candy equivalent of a recount. Rounding out the top 5: Skittles (correct), Reese's Cups (sulking at No. 4), and NERDS Gummy Clusters, which debuted at No. 5 and has clearly been studying.

The texture wars: Mars's 2026 Tricks, Treats and Trends survey found 71% of US adults want sensory or textural experiences from their treats, so this is the year the candy aisle went crunchy, freeze-dried and shaped like a skull. (The survey comes from Mars, which makes several of the candies below. Consider the source, then consider the Skittles.)

The Skinny ballot, unchanged since 2024: yes to Skittles, Life Saver Gummies and 100 Grand. No to Three Musketeers (still insipid), candy corn (still candy corn), and Welch's Fruit Snacks for anyone over the age of 4. The Cut's ranking remains the only 1 we fully endorse, Raisinets verdict included.

Americans will spend a record $13.5 billion on Halloween this year, with $4.1 billion of it on candy, per the NRF. That's $4.1 billion in fun size, which has never once been fun or a size.

What's new on shelves:

Full lineups: Mars (120-plus items) and Hershey's, both on shelves now.

Our take: Buy the bowl you'd want to steal from. The freeze-dried Skittles are the 1 new thing worth the detour, the Kit Kat Witch is a shape, and the pumpkin bowl is 110 reasons to answer the door. Hand out Welch's and you're on your own.

Final sip: Whatever you hand out, buy 1 bag more than you think you need. That bag is for you.

PS: if you purchase something linked in The Skinny, we may get an affiliate commission, at no additional cost to you.