While adorable dogs, the magical smell of beeswax candles, and oodles of gorgeous glassware are pretty darn nice, the thing that REALLY makes The Foundry feel like home is our family. Well-made objects of beauty and use make the daily rhythms of life more pleasant + effortless but, like in any home, it's the people inside that really make it glow.
Nothing is as evocative of "home" as the smell of Lemon Pledge. Like the scent of popcorn or bubblegum, the unique chemical tang of Pledge (or Old English if that was your family's go-to) immediately transports us to old-fashioned childhood Saturdays helping our parents clean and polish the various corners of the house we'd spent the previous week covering in grubby handprints. One Foundry Father loved Pledge so much he once Pledged the stairs to get them looking their super-shiny freshest. They were indeed beautiful. But so slippery that a Foundry Mama (complete with load of laundry) ended up over teakettle at the bottom, covered in socks.
Whipped up in the blender (gasp!) and then baked, this this supremely delicious "Clafoutis" scratches the itch of "surprisingly easy weekend breakfast that feels very fancy and extra". Low on the scale of labor intensive and high on the scale of good looking and great tasting, this dish can also be filed under "a meal that is *kind of* secretly cake". We are always here for that.
While there is something (sometimes many somethings) to be said for the winter-soothing rituals of hot teas, bracing jots of fire cider, or a well placed occasional vin chaud, sometimes in the wilds of these grey, not-quite-mud-season days what you really need is ESCAPE.
Rubbing sweetly scented oils all over your precious body is always a surefire way to center yourself in the present, but even more so when the oils themselves are specially formulated according to a 7,000 year old practice dedicated to balance, prevention, and self-healing.