Food Entrepreneur Jessica Young Ends Each Night With a Home-Cooked Meal and a Bath
A recipe for relaxation.
Published Sep 23, 2019 5:52 PM
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We spend a third of our lives asleep—that means our bedroom is the most lived-in space in our homes. It’s the room where we start and end our days, and that’s why the rituals that happen there are extra important. In The Wind Down, we’ll be exploring the nighttime routines of people we admire and taking their advice to make the moments just before bed when we feel our best.
Jessica Young isn’t against a nighttime snack. After all, as the founder of the healthy snack e-commerce platform Bubble (which is Karlie Kloss–approved), she knows her way around the kitchen cupboard, and as a trained chef, she manages fine around the oven too.
When you’re the founder of a quickly growing company, it can be hard to fit time into your schedule to relax, but Young swears by a few go-to activities to keep her calm. For one, she cooks at home—“For some reason, people think I am always out on the town at schmoozy dinners, but most of the time, I’m at home cooking,” she jokes, and she opts for baths over showers on a regular basis. Of course, she also treats herself to the occasional scoop of chocolate hazelnut goodness in the form of Bubble’s first in-house launch, Hella (it’s like another chocolate-hazelnut spread that also rhymes with ‘umbrella,’ but this version contains just three vegan ingredients).
Read on to find out how she winds down on a typical night.
Home cooking: I am definitely a night owl. I’m at the office all day and do meetings until late. I start cooking dinner anywhere from 7 pm to 9 pm, and often again take calls while I’m making dinner. Most of the products we try at Bubble, we test in the office, but there are a few things that we’ll bring home as a team because we need to cook and we don’t have a kitchen in our office. We actually just got this amazing product called Sichuan Chili Crisp—it was the highest-grossing food product on Kickstarter.
Work from home: After dinner, I do a little bit more work. I love trashy TV, like really bad television, though this girl loves a good documentary. I put on The Bachelor and I do work. It’s kind of like mindless TV, like the worst shows I watch on TV. I was watching something about rich Australian stay-at-home wives. It’s just like the trashiest TV—sign me up.
Bath time: I love taking a bath around 10 pm. I love Doctor Singa’s detox mustard bath powder, which turns your whole bath yellow, kind of like a bath bomb. It pulls stuff out of your skin and makes you feel really good. I also light a candle. I love the Keap Wood Cabin scent. It’s also a coconut wax candle, which I like because it doesn’t have smoke and lasts a little bit longer. I practically live in the bathtub. I bring a notebook and I literally camp out. I have one of those bamboo trays that go over the top of the tub. I do a lot of thinking and write a lot of notes in the bath—anything from light bulbs I need to buy to investors I need to talk to. I take a bath probably four times a week—more than I shower.
A quick snack: I’ll wander to the kitchen and have a scoop of Hella and then go back to the bathroom and do my face routine.
Skin saviors: I switch my products all the time. I use Perricone’s sensitive skin face wash. I do get dry skin, so I use vitamin E from CVS—the straight cheap stuff. And I also use Lauren’s All Purpose Salve for my body and face. That stuff is good for everywhere.
Tincture time: I don’t really take a lot of vitamins at night, but I will put tinctures in water. Especially in the winter, I feel really dehydrated. If I have cramps, instead of taking Midol or something like that, we have this stuff on Bubble called Moontime Magic. It has cramp bark extract, which I love. I also keep CBD actually right on the coffee table for when I’m doing work at night. I try to keep the tinctures where I’m going to use them. I don’t go nuts on it. I usually stay down toward the stuff that’s around 100mg bottles. I also like the Moontime tincture from Wooden Spoon—she also makes one for anxiety called Anxiety Ally that I like.
Sips tea: I love hot herbal teas at night. They help my stomach digest and feel cozy and warm, so I usually make a ginger tea or use Golde turmeric powder.
Perfect playlist: I usually put music on to relax for bed. I just love Nina Simone and Otis Redding.
A good book: I’ll read at night, something non-business related. Now I’m reading the autobiography of ASAP Rocky and I’m also reading Leaders Eat Last. I usually keep two books going at the same time. I love autobiographies. I save all my fiction for TV and movies.
Pajama party: I love matching pajamas or really old ratty sweats. I have a pair of Juicy Couture pants from when I was like, 17, that have holes in the butt. I love either one but nothing in-between.
Breakfast prep: I don’t have a juicer, but I’ll make things in a Vitamix. I’ve been making a lot of celery juice or ginger juice with water and I just blend it up and strain it. I’ve been making those [juices] and I keep them in the fridge so they’re ready in the morning. I am not a morning person, so I do a lot of stuff at night.
Ideal sheets: I love Belgian linen because I hate being hot at night. Belgian linen is cool and I love the feel of it—the really washed kind of soft Belgian linen. I actually got [my sheets] off of Etsy. They quadruple wash them so they’re super soft, and it’s literally a lady from Belgium selling them.
A pillow hack: I have this long pillow that I got from Anthropologie years ago. It spans the length of two pillows—it’s one long one, so it’s really easy for me to make my bed. I don’t like a top sheet, but I’m probably just lazy. I have a fitted sheet and a duvet, so it’s easy for me to make my bed. I just flip up the duvet and throw the cool huge pillow on top and it looks nice.
Nightstand essentials: I try to have a glass of water and books. I definitely try to keep my phone away. I keep my phone on vibrate all day, but at night, I’ll put the ringer on in case there’s a family emergency or something, but I keep it in another room charging. It actually helps me get out of bed to get up and turn it off.
Lights out at midnight.
See more nighttime routines: Chef Sophia Roe’s Nighttime Routine Starts at 6:30 p.m. Hannah Bronfman’s Nighttime Routine Involves Chilling Out to a Good Netflix Thriller LA’s Coolest Doula Erica Chidi Cohen Winds Down With Audiobooks and Palo Santo