I won’t bore you with the details, but the recipes from my books will NOT be allowed on my website. This goes against a contract I signed way back when, and I’ve been asked to remove them. So, alas, disregard that last update (except, please feel free to wish the newsletter a happy sixth birthday).
If you paid for a subscription after reading my last email with the idea that you were getting those recipes and would like a refund: Please email lucy@alisoneroman.com, and we will get you sorted as soon as humanly possible.
The good news is that there are still quite literally hundreds of recipes on the site for your cooking pleasure. Plus, most of you have the books already, right?
Have a lovely weekend and see you next week.
Hello mes amis,
It’s hard to acknowledge the passing of time, especially since it implies aging and change, two things we as a society seem to resist. But, as I was reminded recently that Dining In will be TEN YEARS OLD next fall, I’m here to remind you that, in June, A Newsletter quietly celebrated its SIXTH birthday. Six years of writing this newsletter! We’ve had highs, we’ve had lows, we’ve had consistency and also a sort of made-up maternity leave that seemed to go on for a while. We’ve had recipes—boy, have we had recipes.
It’s hard to imagine we were ever so young as to live in a world without newsletters—now everyone has one, and if they don’t, they will soon. I try to remember how novel the concept felt six years ago, how fulfilling it felt when it was new—a true “dance like nobody’s watching” situation since, well, I was definitely writing like nobody was reading. We tend to romanticize the early days of any social media platform (which, yes, newsletters are decidedly that now), and this is no different. It was glorious and I miss it!
In those six years, a lot has changed for me personally. I got married! I had a baby! A lot happened in my professional life, too. I wrote two cookbooks, went on two cookbook tours, opened a store, started a podcast, began building a tomato sauce brand and signed a lease for another store. And while all of my various ventures are important to me, my newsletter feels the most precious. It’s the most personal, the most immediately satisfying. It’s tough sometimes, especially when I’m cooking less, to, you know, write about cooking, let alone find time to do the actual writing (it’s 7:36 p.m. and Charlie just went to sleep). But it is a part of my life that I feel a strong need and desire to maintain.
All this is to say, I appreciate you. As a thank you to paid subscribers, I’ve finally done the thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time: I’ve put all the recipes from Dining In, Nothing Fancy and Sweet Enough on my site for your ease of reference. Over the years, I have received more texts than I can count from friends and family asking me to send them screenshots of recipes, or asking me if “I’m near a copy of Dining In by chance?” (I’m probably not), or some variation of, “I’m at the grocery store and I’m cooking your Harissa-Rubbed Pork Shoulder with White Beans tonight but I don’t have my copy of Nothing Fancy—can you help?” Well, yes, now I can help!
And now, the fine print:
Starting Monday (10/5), I will be increasing the rate for new subscribers to $7/month, $70/year.
BUT! If you are a current paid subscriber, or subscribe before then, you will be locked in at the old rate of $5/month, $50/year FOREVER and nothing will change for you. Thank you for being here and helping me build this thing into what it is today. I love it as much as I did six years ago, and I hope you do, too. And if you’ve been waiting for a sign to upgrade your subscription to paid: The time is now!
As a reminder, a paid subscription gets you:
As a reminder, the login for your newsletter account is the same login for the website. One login to rule them all.
Again, thank you for being here—the fact that you love what I do means I get to do what I love. And that’s amore.
Here’s to six more years of advice, oversharing and recipes,
Alison