Eat, drink, flip channels, turn pages, crank tunes, and be merry
What I'm ________________________ Wednesday
Good morning one and all. Time is peeling rubber, fishtailing, and speeding, so here I am hanging on for dear life to bring you another Wednesday roundup of my “cultural” pursuits. 😉
In general, I’ve been committed to finding a new job. I’ve done lots of networking and had a fair amount of activity, enough to keep me from feeling too unsettled or getting too blue. Though I still lack complete clarity about what the best next move for me is, and my unemployment claim continues to be an issue. Oy.
Anyhow, with that as a backdrop, here’s the “What I’m ______________Wednesday” roundup:
Eat: in the kitchen…and out…
TBH I haven’t been channeling my inner Julia Child, Rachel Ray, Ina Garten, or anyone else who cooks lately. I did make one of our faves which I know I’ve mentioned before here, a delicious sheet pan sausage, peppers, onions, and gnocchi dish. This time I made it with chicken sausage which works just as well as pork. And it’s so delicious when it’s leftover. I also tag-teamed with my mom on dinner as we squeezed in one last meal together before she went to FL for the winter. If you stock shrimp in your freezer and gnocchi in your pantry, this Shrimp Scampi and Gnocchi is a winner on those nights when you’re stumped for what to do but want something good.
Kerri, however, has been lighting up the kitchen lately, with this obscene French Onion Mac & Cheese and an old reliable, Buffalo Lentil Loaf.
The Mac & Cheese…just absurd:
She made it with chickpea pasta, a fact I was completely unaware of until she mentioned it halfway through dinner. I find chickpea pasta to be much better “classic” pasta substitution than whole wheat pasta—taste and texture are much more similar, IMO. It’s up to you what you eat, but also worth a mention.
On Friday night we went old school with my sis and bro-in-law and hit the Lynwood for South Shore’s best bar pizza (pronounced “baa peetsah”), and after a short wait for a table it did not disappoint. Plus I hadn’t had a beer in more than a week so the ice cold Mich Ultra was like a long, cold sip of heaven. (Now that I type that I realize I also hadn’t had a drink of any kind in a week…but my last beer was on NYE. And no, it’s not dry or damp or anything special about this January, nothing beyond some lingering head/sinus congestion. Fret not.)
Lastly, I just had to cook to a football fave for this past Monday’s game watching, Instant Pot Green Chile Chicken Enchilada Soup. It’s so good. (And also fantastic left over.)
All these years later, I’m still a huge fan of the IP. Nothing “instant” about it, though there’s something special about setting it and forgetting it and having some restaurant quality meals result.
Speaking of cooking, the other day I saw a story on the news about the price of eggs spiking but the price of lettuce going down. Um, when I’m hungry, I don’t reach for a head of lettuce. Am I the only one in America who does not run on lettuce? To me, the decreasing price of lettuce isn’t good news, and it certainly doesn’t take the sting out of the rising price of eggs. But maybe the vegans out there would disagree.
Drink: on the bar…
You know me, I’m pretty much all beer and bourbon, with an occasional glass (or bottle) of wine. For beer I’m mostly drinking what’s in the garage fridge…I feel like if I drink the inventory down, then maybe I won’t do a big re-stock until Spring, thus limiting what’s available for me to get into until then. Wouldn’t be the worst thing. But we’ll see.
With the bourbon I’m kind of obsessed with recipes that include Cherry Heering liqueur after seeing this one. I’m also kind of into the bourbon-tequila combo since having a delicious and surprisingly refreshing Maple Bourbon Margarita (reposado tequila, Bulleit, bourbon, lime and maple syrup) when I was out for dinner recently. A little bit of research led me to this beauty featuring bourbon, tequila, and Cherry Heering, in the form of And to all a Goodnight:
Also, I know the recipe says you need an orange peel but I had none and had even less interest in running out to Shaw’s so I forewent it. (Not sure forewent is a word, but this is my newsletter and I’ll invent words if I want to. Lord knows I have before. I much prefer the efficiency of “forewent” to “decided to forego” in any case.) Maybe an orange peel would elevate the drink but it was delicious without it.
Bourbon and tequila are a great combo given the two drinks I’ve tried it in…if you’re the slightest bit intrigued (as I first was) give it a chance. Also, give the tequila espresso martini a chance as well—I had one with tequila and Licor 43 (vs vodka and Kahlua) and it was chef’s-kiss (👩🍳’s 💋) exquisite. Kept me up for most of the night, but that’s a whole other matter—I need to start brunching more on weekends and limiting my caffeine to the morning. Or maybe I need to start stocking some decaf Nespresso pods. Either way, afternoons and/or evenings and/or late-night and caffeine don’t mix for me. More than a little jealous of those folks who can drink coffee and sleep whenever the hell they want to. Jerks.
I also had some sinus clearing tea, which was mildly effective and exceptionally delicious. That was ginger (recipe called for fresh, but all I had was frozen minced), honey, and lemon slices (I had fresh lemon juice so I went with that), with boiling water…cover and let it sit for 15 minutes then strain it, drink it, and let it work its magic. (Add some bourbon if you like and decrease the water and you have yourself a solid hot toddy. It’s that time of year when sometimes any sinus relief will do.)
Also…I had to drink 64 ounces of PEG 3350.
IYKNY.
But if you don’t know, sit down, and buckle up. PEG 3350 is a common prescription for those of us for whom a colonoscopy is a standard component of our preventive care regimen.
After a clear liquid diet day (three cheers for Glacier Cherry Gatorade Zero, Sprite Zero, and Lime Jello)…
…you mix the first of two batches of PEG 3350 up, drink (gag) it down in four 8 oz. portions, and then this happens:
Just kidding. The PEG 3350 aftermath is nothing like that. There’s no rainbow and it involves a different expulsion point. 😂😂😂🤦🏼♀️🤷♀️
Then, just when you think you can’t take any more, you have to set an alarm for the middle of the night (or some other time depending on when you have your appointment) that inevitably goes off right when you’ve finally managed to fall asleep…at which point you get up and do it again with the second batch of the “drink.”
And then you’re up the rest of the night.
Good times.
It’s unpleasant, duh, but the alternative is potentially deadly. And the propofol nap you get during the procedure itself is something to be savored…though my anesthesiology nurse was a little chintzy with her dosing and I woke up sooner than I’d have liked. Sigh.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before I drink the PEG, I always watch this (for real):
So funny. (RIP, Phil.)
For the most part, people don’t like to talk about colonoscopies, so I realize this might be slightly uncomfortable and/or awkward. I don’t love to talk about them either, but even so, here I am, fingers tapping away on the subject. Because it’s so important. Preventive care is not to be trifled with. Schedule your -scopes, your -grams, your scans, and your regular doc visits. You think you can put it off—and maybe you can—but knowing that this is the one thing you can do to cheat death, well, is it worth rolling the dice? You never know what a routine test will uncover, and knowledge is power. Get yourself checked. The good news for me was 1) getting my insurance situation straightened out at 8:30AM for a 9AM appointment and 2) the camera revealing only one (in the words of the doc) “not very impressive” polyp, which was successfully removed.
The reason I didn’t tell you I was heading off to the doc for my colonoscopy last Tuesday when I was writing is simple: superstition. Given family history, the colonoscopy is beyond stressful for me mentally, and I don’t like to say anything until I know something. I got my pathology report and letter from the doc yesterday. My polyp was benign and so the next step is another colonoscopy in three years. There was a chance I was going to “graduate” to five years between screenings, but three is ok. I don’t mind going as ordered because I know this: you can have polyps without cancer but you can’t have cancer without polyps. So I’m happy to get my polyps snipped.
Call your doctor now if you’ve been putting anything off, if you’re overdue for something, if you think you don’t have time, or if you (whatever other lame excuse you tell yourself).
Repeat: Get yourself checked; don’t roll the dice.
Flip channels: over the airwaves…
We watched, and enjoyed, the Barbie movie, very much so. I know the jury was out on it, but I deliberately avoided other people’s reviews and anything else that might have tipped me on the movie’s plot, and I found it to be a nice treat. I’m going to support something that inherently supports the inherent power of women 10 times out of 10.
We’re also back to watching Cobra Kai on Netflix and are enjoying the hijinks and exploits of adult Daniel and Johnny as they perpetually attempt to set their always-simmering rivalry aside to fight off other simmering, but shared, decades-old rivalries.
In general we really need to make a concerted effort to chip away at our list, or we need to stop with the charade of curating and maintaining The List.
I also re-watched some Season 1 episodes of Somebody Somewhere the other night when I had too much adrenaline to sleep. I’ve mentioned it here a few times (click here for my first mention of it) and mention it again because I can’t recommend highly enough that you get caught up on the first two seasons before Season 3 comes out. The cast, led by Bridget Everett, is fantastic. The episodes are short, but each is a roller-coaster ride of all the emotions. Just watch it already. You won’t regret it.
I’m enjoying the final episodes of Good Trouble, the series no one has heard of that’s a spinoff of another series no one ever heard of, The Fosters…which probably explains why both are (going) off the air. Even so, I love(d) both—it’s hard to find a good serial drama these days.
Those crazy Real Housewives of Salt Lake City concluded their latest season and are now in reunion show mode…which means even more crazy. More yelling. More cursing. More denial. More delusion. The fact that this kind of behavior results in ratings, fame, and riches befuddles me…but I watch, so I fuel the machine. Because—as I’ve mentioned ad nauseam—life is not a zero sum game. So it’s not like my bank account would grow if I stopped watching. But honestly, after how they behave, it’s a wonder these women can show their face in public. Brutal. One more reunion episode left—no doubt it will be explosive. And they make up more words than I do, only unintentionally. Rebuttaled? Touchet? (Though my fave will always be when Ramona on RHONYC said “kadooz” where “kudos” would have been correct. 😂)
I watched the NFL’s Wild-Card weekend and I think the fact that almost all of the games were not competitive points to problems with the format of the playoffs. Layer on the fact that the (way-too-many) ads for the Chiefs-Dolphins game highlighted (bragged about?) the fact that the game was only available on a for-fee (on top of other fees) streaming service for the first time ever (as if that was an accomplishment worth celebrating, robbing people) and you’ve got me here today very disillusioned about it all. The sheer greed of everyone involved is disgusting. Disillusionment and disgust and general disappointment notwithstanding, from here on out I will be rooting for the Lions to keep winning football games and for Taylor and Travis to keep wining life, together or apart—it’s their prerogative.
Turn pages: from the bookshelf…
I started and finished reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent exposé of the Sackler family and their extreme greed, hubris, denial, and delusion, Empire of Pain. I’d been meaning to read it for a while, and *had* to read it before I’ll allow myself to watch Painkiller. I knew it would incense me, though I underestimated the extent to which it did. I mean, everyone who follows the news knows that the Sacklers made bazillions off of the sale of opioids. But the details in the book show the extent of the role they played in orchestrating the deadly opioid plague. Fueled by greed, the Sackler family (not all of them but many of them…others were complicit…and all benefitted from the family’s largesse) manufactured the opioid crisis to line their pockets, and attempted to mask it with some egomaniacal philanthropy.
If you’ve seen Hamilton or watched any documentary about mass incarceration, you know that to get to the root of (virtually) any social/socioeconomic problem you need to follow the money. Reading this book illuminated for me just how many maladies have been manufactured as part of a vicious cycle involving ego and greed. We are a mess of our own making. And as long as there is greed and ego, there too will be every systemic -ism and -phobia you can think of.
Really infuriating and sad to think about how much awful sh-t didn’t have to happen and how much has yet to happen but inevitably will. Money and power somehow manage to trump all, and in today’s day and age it has in a large part to do with a certain businessperson/criminal turned “politician” who may or may not share a name with another word in this sentence. Ahem. The extent to which wealth has been manufactured without anyone giving a hairy rat’s ass about what that was doing to the gaps between the haves and the have nots is something that we should be ashamed of, not proud of. I’m calling on every company to fund at least one full-time position and set aside a percentage of income to develop and implement meaninfulg corporate social responsibility programming. If you need help, call me—I have no shortage of ideas. And I’m available to work.
(Also, his book Say Nothing, which I read a long time ago, is a fantastic account of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Highly recommend that one too.)
I was gifted Winter Solstice for Christmas and it’s a gorgeous essay for this time of year. It’s a short book, but it is not a quick read. The words are rich and they are woven together to form complex, deep, moving sentences. Perfect for a day like yesterday, as I curled up in a chair with it, and watched the snowflakes fall all the while. It explores the nuance of darkness, both in the world and in ourselves, and about how we find things in these dark spaces, things both of the world and of ourselves.
My new pleasure read is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store a title that’s been included on most (all?) of the 2023 best books lists that I have seen. I’m not too far along but am excited to dig in based on the trusted intel I’ve gotten on it.
This is one reason I love books—the ritual! Check it out:
I’m still chipping away at—and learning a lot from—Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk. It’s reinforcing the key theme of Adam Grant’s great book Think Again, how important it is to be open to new ideas, to revisiting our own beliefs, to always be learning. It’s really helping me shape my thinking in this time of transformation, particularly regarding the matters of purpose and passion and making everything work as it’s meant to.
I finished Amy Schneider’s book In the Form of a Question…it’s kind of interesting in retrospect. The book wasn’t particularly eye-opening or “salacious.” The excessive use of footnotes continued to annoy me until then end (and no, I couldn’t simply ignore them), but the big and somewhat-surprising takeaway for me is what a typical life she lives, despite what an a-typical life she lives. She’s matter-of-fact, unapologetic, and without needless drama—how she owns her life is, in a word, admirable. No footnote needed.
Crank tunes: on Spotify and Sirius XM…
With MLK Day coming and going, it goes without saying that I listened to “Pride (in the Name of Love)” which led to me going on a bit of a U2 bender. Songs of Surrender has taken on a whole new level of meaning and experience for me since finishing Bono’s memoir. Plus, it’s staying light later so it’s not too early to plan for summer. Bono—the invitation for you (and the boys) to play a stripped-down set poolside in the backyard is still open.
I’ve also been enjoying (thanks to the news report that her cause of death was natural and to a Facebook memory respectively) two other Irish artists, Sinéad O’Connor (in general, but her cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” rattled my bones) and The Cranberries album Something Else.
I’ve been enjoying Teddy Swims lately, and you know I love a good cover—his cover of “Blinding Lights” does not disappoint. But his cover of TSwizzle’s “Cruel Summer” took my enamoredness of him to a new level.
Teddy Swims? Taylor? If you’re out there and you’re wondering, the backyard stripped-down set offer goes out to you too. We hang out in the yard as much as we can from Spring to Fall, and live music and good friends always makes for a perfect day. Let me know and we can get you on the schedule. 🤣
Also, speaking of covers, Spotify served me up this gem yesterday (enjoy!):
Billy Joel’s original of that one is on the current version of my Top 100 songs list…which is stuck at around 125 songs right now. I’m working on it!
I really like when you play a single song and let Spotify decide what you listen to from there—I have uncovered some real beauties this way, but beyond that it’s clear the algorithm can speak to my soul. Apparently I am nothing if not predictable.
I’ve also been enjoying Zach Bryan in fits and starts. I like to think that I’m a vibe…and his vibe is mine right now. Chill, introspective, edgy…side of attitude. (I kid, I kid, I’m not a vibe, I’m not hip…though I do try to be relevant-ish.)
OK…Zach, if you wanna come by the yard when you’re playing Gillette, we’ll make it work! 😉
Bottom line on the backyard concerts: LMK if you want to play out back and I’ll make it work. I have a lot of free time right now and that would be a fun way to use it, planning for better days ahead!
And be merry: the rest of it, not all of which is merry…
Oh, come on…we already touched on this. It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, but it is what it is and we—as we always do—have a choice about what we choose to focus and fixate on, and we have a choice about how we respond to things. Or not.
I’m following, with great unease and extreme nausea, the 2024 Presidential campaign situation, aka a three-ring clusterf-ck of a sh-tshow of a circus. Good news: Chris Christie drops out of the race and assures us he will do everything he can to ensure that the Cheeto won’t win. Bad news: he trashes the leading contenders in a hot mic moment on his way out, thus inadvertently giving support to the Orange Demon. Good news: Vivek Ramaswamy and his over-blown ego drop out of the race. Bad news: he can repress neither his sycophancy or his aforementioned ego and backs the Orange Grimace.
Bottom line, if you’re not scared sh-tless about that big orange criminal blob winning another term, there’s no way you support democracy. We all have to mobilize differently if we want liberty and justice for all. And by mobilize, I mean we all need to move, and then we all need to vote.
I’m helping my mom get settled in to her condo for the winter, despite being far away. When she seemingly butt dials me and then I can’t reach her to confirm it was an annoyance call and not an emergency call, she gets frustrated with me. Go figure. Oh, and she has some ceiling tiles she needs me to cut to size and hang when I’m down there next month, as if I have any skill in that trade.
And I’m gearing up for Week 3 of our 5-week pickleball clinic in a few hours. I love it. You don’t even notice you’re exercising, other than the profuse sweat…and the heavy breathing…and a little next-day stiffness. 😂 No, seriously, I think when the clinic is done we’ll have to find a way to play regularly. I get why it’s all the rage.
I should probably wrap it up here and get to my coffee so I can relax a little before I run around for 90 minutes.
Thanks to you for being here for all the days, bad, good, and otherwise. I appreciate it, and you, so much.
Have a great week.
Love you too.