Aly's Newsletter: Final Wednesday Of The Year Edition!

Does that make today the hump day of hump days?

Dec 29, 2021

Hi friends!

Today is the final Wednesday of 2021!

In addition to being the final Wednesday of 2021, it’s likely my final Substack newsletter of 2021 (unless some wild onslaught of new assignments come in the next two days…)

So before I get in to everything I’m working on today and this week (and it’s a surprising load), I want to take a second to express how incredibly grateful I am for everyone who has jumped onboard this little experiment that somehow became a community.

It was only a few months ago that my BFF Bryce decided to start a Substack newsletter of her own and encouraged me to give it a try. It took a few days for me to go for it — I honestly had doubts anyone would even care to read a newsletter from me. But a few months later, there’s a few thousand subscribers reading these daily emails and I’m so so grateful to you all. This has turned out to be not only incredibly fun, but also a really useful tool in staying productive and keeping everyone in the loop as far as what we’re all working on.

As I mentioned in my newsletter the other day, starting in the new year, I will be offering a paid option of this newsletter. ALL free subscribers will still get all my daily story leads. I have no intention of ever charging for that. But there’ll be supplemental newsletters every week or so with additional features and I’ll also use those to share some of the same type of information I do on my consulting calls. Whether it is about events, trips, mailings, pitching, stuff like that. So, if you are interested in receiving that, you can upgrade your subscription at any time! But no worries to my free subscribers — the value of the content you receive will never go away! But I do maintain I want this to always be a community everyone gets value from, so if there’s anything you wish there was more of in the newsletter, please do comment below and let me know!

Great deal alert

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Here’s what I'm working on:

1. For Forbes.com, I'm rounding up dishes at restaurants and bars that feature black-eyed peas. If your restaurant does have a black-eyed pea dish on the menu, either this week, or permanently, please email me. I do NOT need a recipe. I just want a description of the dish, a high res image, and a quote from a chef at the restaurant about why it's great to enjoy this NYD/NYE. This must be a dish on a menu somewhere and not just something from a blog or cookbook, sorry! Please email me at alywalansky@gmail.com by EOD today.

2. AllRecipes: I'm doing a story on the value (and pros/cons) of slow cooker liners. Anyone who follows my Instagram story cooking videos knows I use these all the time, and I'd love to hear from others who use them, and experts to discuss the values/drawbacks/what to watch out for, how they are best used.

3. For SPY.com, working on all of the following still (if a story was on this list a few days ago, and now is not, that means it's been wrapped up):

Best products for single people

Best valentine’s gifts to get on sale now

Best Valentine’s Day gifts

Best Valentine’s Day gifts for new relationships (update)

As a reminder, it’s always helpful to start a new email thread and email alywalansky@gmail.com (please do not just reply to this newsletter) when responding to a story lead.