So far, the tide of public opinion is still on Prince Harry’s side after he made headlines recently for nude photos taken during a Las Vegas vacation. The actual photos are of (unsurprisingly) poor quality, but no matter—you can pin Harry—along with eleven other eligible young royals—up on your wall for all of 2013 with our Hot Royals Calendar!

When an editor and her assistant are on the same wavelength–working together as one well-oiled, fine-tuned machine–it’s a beautiful thing. When they arrive at the office dressed almost identically, it’s just freaky! Or maybe it just means they shop at the same stores. Below, witness the coincidental (it WAS a coincidence, we swear!) matching outfits of editor Suzanne and her assistant Erin.

Proof that great minds pink…er, THINK alike!

P.S. Note coincidental placement of the pink feather boa in the background…

An exciting development in the gestation of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting movie: Last night the movie trailer premiered on Entertainment Tonight! In case you missed it, here’s an exclusive Workman Blog First Look:

Starring an honor roll of A-listers, including Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Matthew Morrison, Chace Crawford, Chris Rock, and a host of others, the film will be a Love Actually-esque compilation of intersecting stories about moms- and dads-to-be. With an all-star cast and perpetually compelling subject matter, we know this film will really…deliver. Look for it in theaters Mother’s Day 2012!

Ah, Boston, that perfectly preserved Colonial town, located not far from Plymouth, where the pilgrims first docked. So it’s only fitting that this recipe for that most quintessential of Thanksgiving desserts comes from Boston, MA’s most renowned baker, Judy Rosenberg. The owner of the beloved series of Rosie’s Bakery shops, and author of the new Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book, Judy knows a thing or two about overcoming holiday pie anxiety. And you can turn out a worry-free, pumpkin-perfect pie by following her simple steps below.

Deep-Dish Pumpkin Pie

Makes 10 to 12 servings

Single-crust Basic Pie Crust 1 (recipe follows)
1 can (15 ounces) unsweetened pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons (lightly packed) dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons molasses
1 1/4 cups evaporated milk
3 large eggs, at room temperature

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and a baking sheet on the bottom rack, and preheat to 375°.

2. Roll out the crust. Fit it into a deep-dish pie pan and lightly prebake (see Note below). Let cool before filling. Leave the oven on.

3. Whisk the pumpkin, brown sugar, spices, and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the molasses, milk, and eggs, whisking vigorously until smooth.

4. Pour the filling into the pie shell. Cover the edge of the crust with aluminum foil. Bake the pie until the top is shiny and set and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour.

5. Carefully remove the foil. Let the pie cool on a rack. Serve the pie warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Basic Pie Crust 1

Makes one 9-inch, standard or deep dish crust

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 9 pieces
3 tablespoons ice water

1. Place the flour and salt in a food processor and process to blend for 20 seconds. (Or whisk them together by hand in a large mixing bowl.)

2. Distribute the butter evenly over the flour and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, 15 to 20 seconds. (Or rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips or cut it in with a pastry blender.)

3. With the food processor running, pour the ice water in a steady stream through the feed tube and process just until the dough comes together. (Or sprinkle the water over the mixture while tossing with a fork.)

4. Knead the dough for several turns on a lightly floured surface to bring it together.

5. Shape the dough into a thick disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

6. Roll the chilled dough for the bottom crust out to a circle 2 inches bigger than the size of the pie pan.

7. Fit the rolled dough into a 9-inch pie pan and trim the edges. Keep the crust in the refrigerator until ready to fill. If prebaking the crust (see Note below), refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes before baking.

Note: Lightly prebaking the crust: If you’re going to fill this crust and bake it again, cut the step 3 baking time in the Pumpkin Pie recipe to 12 minutes. In step 4, stop when the crust is very lightly golden, after about 3 minutes.

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Find 248 more mouthwatering recipes for the holidays and beyond in Judy’s luscious new book, The Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book!

What’s a Rosh Hashanah dinner without brisket? (What’s any dinner without brisket?, you may ask. To which I reply, “A mediocre one.”) Herewith, a recipe for brisket that’s, well, killer. And you know that’s the truth, because it comes straight from Judy Bart Kancigor’s mom via Judy’s scrumptious cookbook Cooking Jewish.

My Mom’s Killer Brisket
with tsimmes*

serves 8 to 10

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 to 5 pounds first-cut beef brisket
2 large onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup sweet red wine or water
1 cup pineapple or orange juice
1 package dehydrated onion soup mix
2 to 3 teaspoons kosher (coarse) salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (packed) light brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Ground nutmeg to taste
3 cups (1 1/2 pounds) pitted prunes, dried apricots, or a combination
1/2 cup raisins
3 pounds sweet potatoes, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
1 1/2 pounds carrots, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
Paprika, for sprinkling

1. The day before serving, heat the oil in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the meat (fat side down first), and brown it well on all sides, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the meat to a plate.

2. Add the onions to the pot and cook, stirring often, until they are soft and brown, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Then stir in 3 cups water and the wine, juice, onion soup mix, 1 teaspoon of the salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, return the meat to the pot, cover, and simmer until a fork can pierce the meat but it is not quite done, 1 3/4 to 2  1/4 hours, depending on the thickness of the meat.

3. Remove the pot from the heat and allow it to cool somewhat. Then remove the meat and slice off all visible fat. Transfer the meat, with the gravy, to a large bowl or container and refrigerate it, covered, overnight.

4. The next day, preheat the oven to 350°F.

5. Remove the bowl from the refrigerator and skim off the congealed fat. Remove the meat and cut it into 1/4- to 3/8-inch-thick slices. Set it aside.

6. Transfer the gravy to a Dutch oven or other large, heavy, ovenproof pot and bring it to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir in the honey, brown sugar, lemon juice, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 teaspoon of the salt, or more to taste, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Return the sliced meat to the pot. Add the prunes and raisins. Arrange the sweet potatoes and carrots on top. Baste the meat and vegetables with the sauce and bring back to a boil.

7. Transfer the pot to the oven and bake, covered, for 30 minutes, basting after 15 minutes.

8. Sprinkle the potatoes and carrots lightly with paprika, and continue baking, uncovered this time, basting every 15 minutes, until the carrots and potatoes are very tender, about 30 minutes. If you like (and if your oven has a broiling mode), turn the oven setting to broil, place the pot on the lowest rack, and broil the potatoes and carrots briefly until crisp.

9. Serve hot.

*For all you Gentiles out there, tsimmes is “a traditional stew for Passover, made from a combination of sweet potatoes and dried fruit.”

I am a lot like Kerri Strug.

Remember the 1996 Olympic Games, when gymnast Kerri had to perform a second vault on an injured ankle in order to clinch the U.S. gold? Remember the drama–how she limped to the end of the runway? How she nailed the vault, landing neatly on both feet for one nanosecond before collapsing in pain? Remember how her coach Béla Károlyi carried her onto the podium to receive her gold medal? It was thrilling! Riveting! Patriotic!

…Kind of like my ascent to personal finance supremacy. (You may have noticed that throughout this series, I have made many bombastic comparisons. i.e., I’m the Rosie the Riveter of personal finance; I’m the Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger of personal finance; I’m the Unsinkable Molly Brown of personal finance. What can I say? I just love a good historical/pop culture reference.)

Six weeks after I began following the plan outlined in Ramit Sethi’s peerless book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, I feel…well, I feel a lot like I’ve fallen in love. I feel happier, giddier, lighter of step. I also feel somewhat smug. This is because I can now go about my business with a daily worry load that is 82% lighter, because I now have full control over my finances. I know what accounts my money goes to and what bills are being automatically paid. I know that my money’s growing in my high-interest online savings account, my Roth IRA, and my investments. I know I’m not paying unnecessary fees–and, best of all, I know that any leftover cash is mine to spend as I please.

(And, boy, do I have plans for that fun money! Namely, this, this, or this.)

But–lest you think this is the end of the road–I do not wish to mislead. Though the best part about Ramit’s approach to personal finance is that it requires very little tinkering after the initial six-week period, it’s not completely hands-off. I’ll still monitor my checking account to prevent overdrafting, take a look at my credit card statement to ensure all charges are accurate, adjust my contributions to my 401(k), etc. But the effort this will require is minimal–and infinitely more bearable now that the foundations for fiscal peace of mind are all in place.

So, the stage is set. The audience waits with bated breath for the rise of the curtain. The instruments of my future wealth are finely tuned. As I look bemusedly back at my monetarily ignorant past, and ahead to a secure yet unknowable future, I recall the words of the great Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore: “And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

Ramit Sethi would kill me if he knew how my own dithering and futzing are preventing me from taking the first-place trophy in the Personal Finance Derby.

That’s me in the back, not taking the lead.

Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, which I have for the past 5 weeks taken as my money-management manifesto, rightly points out that nothing should stand in the way of young people’s accumulation of wealth right this minute. As Sethi puts it so convincingly, “…there’s not going to be a magic day when you win a million dollars or ‘have enough time’ to figure out your finances. You said that three years ago! Managing your money has to be a priority if you ever want to be in a better situation than you are today.”

But, Ramit, I must pause here and plead my case. I’m going to an OUT-OF-TOWN WEDDING this weekend and I had planned to make the necessary preparations last weekend but then there was a HURRICANE and the ENTIRE NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEM WAS SHUT DOWN, so I couldn’t leave my borough, which resulted in my scrambling this week to buy shoes, handbag, etc., all while balancing a jam-packed work/social/class schedule. (I’m currently taking a class in improv comedy.)

My cousin and his fiancée. They look so happy, how could you NOT drop everything else in your life in anticipation of their nuptials?!

So, Ramit, can I please get a mulligan this week? I know I just took one in Week 4, but it’s SUMMER and the past month has been an endless string of celebrations and hurrying to wring the season of every last drop of frivolity. Plus–and I know this will come as a shock–I’m human, and I sometimes put things off. But if you’ll give me a free pass this week, I promise I’ll even read Chapter 6 (The Myth of Financial Expertise) on the bus ride to Boston.

OK? Great. Here comes the bride! (And her soon-to-be cousin-in-law, aka me, aka the future Unsinkable Molly Brown* of her era.)

*Remember Molly Brown, the character played by Kathy Bates in Titanic? The loud, brash-but-endearing one who was the object of sneers from the other first-class passengers because she possessed “new” money, as opposed to a giant inheritance? That’s going to be me. And you better believe that I’ll lend Jack Dawson a tux when the times comes.

…with barely a speck of athletic ability (true), but now my prowess in matters financial makes up for all that.

I think Coach Devine says it best…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w8BfH1Q_zM[/youtube]

No one, and I mean NO ONE, comes into our house and pushes us around! Not the brick-and-mortar banks who try to nickel-and-dime us with fees! Not the credit card companies who charge ludicrous interest rates on our balances (which we shouldn’t be carrying, anyway)! And, most especially, not our own bad habits, like when we convince ourselves that we don’t earn enough money to invest (with a discount brokerage you can open a Roth IRA with just $50!) .

I’m in the fourth quarter (aka Week 5) of the 6-week plan to financial literacy outlined by Ramit Sethi in I Will Teach You to Be Rich. The clock is running low, but Team Erin is ahead by 28. And I’m about to sack the quarterback, in a manner of speaking.

This week, per Ramit’s pep talk, I created an Automatic Money Flow that will manage my money for me. All my accounts are linked, so that my 401(k) contribution is taken out of my paycheck before I ever see it. Then my paycheck is direct-deposited into my brick-and-mortar checking account. From there, I’ve set up automatic transfers: my checking account funds my Roth IRA and my high-interest online savings account and pays my credit card bill. I use my credit card to pay my utilities bill. What’s left is free for me to spend as I please. As Ramit puts it, “Once it’s set up, this system is so hands-off that if you got eaten alive by a Komodo dragon, your money system would continue transferring money from account to account by default, a ghostlike reminder of your financial prescience. Haunting, but cool.”

Not as thrilling as being carried off the field after recording the first and only stat of my college football career—but so EASY PEASY that it makes me wonder why someone hasn’t written an inspirational personal finance film based on my life.

(For those who are interested, Notre Dame’s first game of the season, vs. South Florida, is next Saturday at 3:30 p.m. GO IRISH!)

According to Catholic tradition, sometime between A.D. 98 and A.D. 117, St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was ordered by Roman Emperor Trajan to suffer a gruesome death among the wild beasts in the Roman Coliseum. It is said that the letters Ignatius wrote before his demise are “redolent with the spirit of Christian charity, apostolic zeal, and pastoral solicitude.”

Totally gratuitous photo of my friends and me at the actual Coliseum.

A more recent blogging tradition tells the tale of Erin, Assistant Editor of Workman, who in the year A.D. 2011 embarked on a similarly harrowing personal journey of self-mortification–but this was mortification of the wallet, not the flesh. Comparatively gruesome (but with a happier ending), Erin of Workman’s journey reached its apex in the creation of a conscious spending plan as advocated by personal finance guru Ramit Sethi, who is much nicer than Emperor Trajan, and also better looking. It is said that Sethi’s book I Will Teach You to Be Rich is “smart, bold, and practical. I Will Teach You to Be Rich is packed with tips that actually work” (J.D. Roth, editor, GetRichSlowly.org). Now those are virtues I can relate to.

Like Moses bringing forth water from a rock, I wrought my conscious spending plan (CSP) from years of neglect and worry over the state of my financial affairs. But when I hit Week 4 of Sethi’s 6-week plan, I couldn’t evade it any longer. I was about to step into the lion’s den–the jungle I had so weepingly anticipated in Week 1′s post.

Despite Ramit’s repeated assurances that a CSP is not a budget, I knew that devising one meant I would have to face the reality of the “spending” money I fritter away on little things like a sandwich here and there, and big things like a Banana Republic factory store shopping spree here and there. And I did face the reality, and though I was not happy to do so, I discovered some important things: 1) I CAN save money for my retirement, long-term, and short-term accounts, even under the yoke of New York City rent, and 2) my dad, as I shared in Week 2′s post, is freakishly on point about many matters of money management, having utilized Ramit’s envelope system long before Ramit made it explode in popularity. (That was hyperbole. But, seriously, try the envelope thing. It’s an extremely literal and simple way to delegate your spending money. It’s on page 115.)

In line with my new tradition of paying myself first, my next big vacation may be less Coliseum and more this…

But I think I can deal with that. There, the only animals are on the casino floor.

It’s hard to believe I’ve already reached Week 4 of the six-week plan to financial independence laid out in Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to Be Rich. This week, I was supposed to create a conscious spending plan. Ha. That’s what Alanis Morissette would call “ironic,” because the past week’s circumstances have resulted in my being nothing short of frivolous with my accumulating wealth. Basically, the beginning of August has been an Olympic triathlon of birthdays.

Let’s review the many happy reasons for my falling off the wagon, financially-speaking:

Saturday: Happy birthday to my (little) sister Kasey! (24 already!?)

Monday: My birthday! (Ahem. A lady never reveals her age.)

Tuesday: Feliz cumpleaños to my lovely friend Jen! (Also 24!)

Wednesday:  Happy birthday to funny man Grant! (The big three-oh!)

Add to the festivities a friend’s going-away party and my dad’s birthday this Friday, and you have a two-week span that’s long on celebration and short on time for the serious consideration of monetary matters. I’ll get back into the swing of things next week, so be sure to check back! And happy birthday to all the August babies! (Including Workman’s own Generation T(eacher), Megan Nicolay!)