If You're Having Foot Problems

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The Only Link I Care About This Week

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The Only Recipe I Care About This Week

In college, I lived with a group of women who cared a lot about food. I really can’t imagine it being any other way. But we spent a lot of time 1. together and 2. eating. We didn’t always cook for each other, but certain meals were regularly shared either on a Friday night with a cheap bottle of Menage e Trois and a few extra pals invited over to our old yellow house or on a Monday night, sitting on the ground around a massive white Ikea coffee table, Felicity or The Bachelor playing in the background.

It’s not an original thought to suggest that certain foods evoke certain feelings, but there hasn’t been a time that brings up such specifically indelible memories of home cooked meals than when I was in college. Maybe it was because it was the first time any of us were in charge of our own kitchens, as young adults living out of the houses we grew up in. Or maybe it was because when you’re an art student on a budget and you find something that tastes good and costs very little, you make it again and again and again. A really good meat sauce. Lamb pasta. Roasted chicken. Butternut squash mac and cheese. Homemade ice cream. And this very special recipe. It is, all at once, a soup, a pasta, a stew, a mess, a slop. I’m not even sure what to call it, but to this day, if I listed the main ingredients for this meal to any one of my college lads, they would know exactly where I was headed with it.

(Okay, yes, I just tested this theory in the group chat and they all immediately knew. Phew.)

Julia’s College Special
By: I think originally the source of this concoction was WeightWatchers, if I’m honest. Yikes. But at this point, I’m taking the credit.

This is the part where I tell you that you can swap out or skip literally any and every ingredient in this recipe. Nothing is necessary and it’s all yummy and it will be great.

INGREDIENTS
2 lbs of spinach
1 lb of ground beef (or sausage, or ground turkey)
3-5 garlic cloves, minced
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 cup of beef broth (which I never ever have. I usually replace with water or chicken broth/stock)
1 teaspoon of Better than Bouillon (or chicken or beef)
1 teaspoon of red chili flakes (sometimes I add a teaspoon of fennel as well)
5 slices of bacon, chopped (the bacon is delicious, of course, but I rarely have bacon on hand and so you don’t totally need it)
3/4 cup sour cream (last week, I literally used a leftover Tupperware of Alison Roman’s The Dip and it was… wait for it… delicious. Once, I used spinach artichoke dip and fully left my body in ecstasy)
Pasta or rice
Parmesan cheese
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

INSTRUCTIONS
Get a pot of well salted water boiling.

Sauté the onion, garlic and bacon. Season with salt, pepper and red chili flakes. The bacon will give you enough fat to get the onions going, but don’t be afraid to add a little drizzy of olive oil if you need to. in 5-7 minutes or so, the bacon should be fully cooked, but not crispy and the onions will be nice and translucent.

Is the water boiling? Start cooking your pasta.

Add the ground beef to the onions and bacon and cook over medium until brown.

Lower the heat and add the spinach. Panic for a second about how that looks like too much spinach. Deep breath. Put your phone down. Pause the podcast. Silently watch the spinach slowly wilt. It is one of life’s simple pleasures and after about 3 minutes, voila! the spinach has fully wilted and you can give it all a good stir.

Add the broth, better than bouillon and sour cream. Stir stir stir. Adjust with more salt and pepper, if needed.

Serve a big spoonful over pasta. Or rice. Or in a bowl all on it’s own. Like I said before, this dish is the weird intersection between soup and sauce, so choose your own adventure. Parmesan. A squeeze of lemon. Maybe a little extra flakey salt on top… you know what to do.

Plus a little more…

This is an incredibly niche post and something that I hope as few people as possible may need, but as promised here is my list of Actually Arch Supportive and Not Just ‘Really Comfortable’ Shoes (trust me, there’s a massive difference).

Setting the scene, last summer, I went through some weird health stuff (something I continually mention on here but have yet to fully explain… I apologize — I’m sure that’s very annoying). One of the many random symptoms I experienced was extreme joint pain. To be honest, it was kind of all over my body, but it mostly manifested itself in my hands and my feet. You can imagine how inconvenient this was, as hands and feet, as it turns out, are something I am very accustomed to using all day every day without ever thinking twice. When I was in the thick of the really sudden and unwelcome combo of depression, physical pain and anxiety, the idea of walking to the kitchen from my couch sounded like a gargantuan feat. But! As a woman who loves a plan, I was eager to find solutions. Show me the reality of a situation and I will learn to accept it. Give me the rules of the game and I will follow them. Replace all of my shoes to maybe feel a little bit better? Game on.

Here is when I discovered the gap in the market. This, my friends, is the million dollar idea that I truly need to pursue. Because after hours and hours and HOURS of google searches, I found that stylish, affordable, arch supportive shoes for people young enough to have a favorite Backstreet Boy simply do not exist. I also learned that “comfortable shoes” and “arch supportive” shoes were two very different beasts. There are the shoes that the average Jane would recommend as great options for travel, a walking commute or long days of running errands without blisters — usually with a thick insole and lots of cushioning. And then there are the kind of shoes who’s websites have photos of podiatrists in lab coats on their homepage, signing off on designs to be worn for very specific people with very specific needs. 99% of the time, those specific people are… old. And the shoes they offer… are for old people. (I could euphemize here, but let’s just call it what it is).

Dead-set on not settling on ugly shoes effing up my lewks for the rest of my life, I spent many more hours of googling to find the diamonds in the rough. I’ve compiled a list of the best options in a very shallow pool. Are they Manolos? No. But I still have and wear many of them even now, even as (thankfully!) the joint pain in my feet is mostly behind me.

THE LIST:

Crocs. I very un-ironically love Crocs. I bought my first pair, which I still have to this day, when I was but a wee high school student working my very first job at Sprinkles Cupcakes. I have since branched out from their classic style to a few different pairs of their platform sandals and they are the best shoes I own. To me, they are perfect.

Danskos. A classic. You may recognize these from the feet of your favorite medical professional, but I prefer them with thick socks, leggings and a large sweater. Their classic style is great, but they offer so many sleeper hits - their boots are great and I just added these to my cart.

I grew up in a home where Tevas were required in every vacation suitcase no matter the season or the destination. To this day, I remain scarred from beach days where I trudged through the sand, sweating, caked in SPF and wearing Tevas, surrounded by friends in tiny Roxy bikinis, golden-tan and wearing the much cooler, but far less practical, Rainbows. But that’s a therapy session for another day. As a grown woman, I now see their ugly duckling appeal. Meanwhile, these boots are actually just very good.

If you’re in the market for just a good old practical boot, these from Aetrex are not bad. They’re not great! But they’re not bad.

Archies! These were one of my very proudest discoveries. Flip flops are oddly hard to find in the orthotic shoe world because, inherently, they’re just not that supportive. But this Australian brand only makes one single shoe in all sorts of colors, designed around a super supportive sole. A little bit expensive, considering the fact that they’re just flip flops, but they pass for a totally normal flip flop, so I say worth it. I bought the army green pair and am considering a pair in black (trend report: according to TikTok, a classic, simple, black flip flop is about to have a real moment).

Hoka. IYKYK. The Goat. The girls who get it, get it. I bought my first pair last year and wear them literally every day since. I would endorse these for anyone — foot pain sufferers or not. All of their shoes are just incredibly comfortable, but for the record, I did reach out to their customer service to get some guidance on which of their styles would offer OPTIMUM support and they pointed me to the Bondi and the Elevon.

I heard really good things about Cariumas, though I never tried them for myself. They’d be a good swap for your Vans or Supergas.

Vionic sells a lot of deeply ugly shoes, but I did find a few that I didn’t absolutely hate.

Oofoos. Guys, hear me out…

You never think of yourself as someone who may have to consider the effort it takes to bend down, move your foot in a way that it slides into a shoe, balance your foot on the ground or a coffee table, move your wrists, hands and fingers in a way to tie your laces, all to simply put a pair of shoes on, until all of a sudden you do have to consider it. And it’s a really scary and overwhelming feeling. Style wise, I’m not obsessed with their designs, but the concept of a hands free shoe from a brand like Kizik makes me weirdly emotional. And really happy to be alive in a time where people’s physical differences and needs are starting to be paid more attention to. More of this, please.

Sécra was a big win for me. I got their Willow in nude for my birthday last year and they were worth the splurge for sure. They are far and away the closest thing I could find to a simple leather sandal with lots of arch support. Again, still wearing them now.

We love a Born sandal! I had their Iwa until devastatingly, I lost 1 single shoe. What is worse than losing a pair of shoes mysteriously? Losing just 1. Staring at the survivor for months… wondering if it’s time to literally just throw it away (because we’re not donating one single shoe) but knowing that the day you finally do, the prodigal son will show back up. A living hell.

And now… I must share, the princess of the ball, Sarah Flint. These shoes… they don’t come cheap. I did not buy a pair based on price tag alone, but the arch support community absolutely raves about their construction and they are the ONE brand truly doing the Lord’s work by designing the kind of shoe I would actually want to wear — foot issues or not. If I ever do find myself needing to permanently re-haul my shoe collection to meet specific needs, my plan would be to find a way to buy 1 pair every year or two and slowly build a collection of quality investment shoes like these.

I hope you never have to use this list! I hope that your arches find themselves as supported as Gabby and Rachel are to each other and that your ankles are as stable as Tom and Rita’s marriage. Like women who can wear t-shirts with no bra, I can only applaud the fortune that you find yourself showered in! But if you ever do find your feetsies needing a little extra wind beneath their wings, this list is here as a reminder that fashion and functionality can in fact live together in harmony.