Get your kicks
Our new playlist just dropped: Cooking Vol. 6, in which Marvin Gaye gets remixed, TLC comes back, Beyonce preaches, and The Rolling Stones bring some brown sugar.
We're all learning together in real time what it's like to live through a pandemic. And, on the lighter side of things, we can clearly note the various stages of lockdown. There was the jigsaw puzzle moment, the era of sourdough and banana bread, I vaguely remember a social media craze for Dalgona coffee around the time of the murder hornets. But the current era is harder to define. It's multi-faceted: not only does the world around us seem to be on proverbial (and, scarily, sadly, in Northern California actual) fire, but we've been cooking and cleaning all the things for months now with very few signs of light at the end of the tunnel. (Don't I seem fun at parties?)
Most helpfully, I have zero answers. But don't delete this email! I have great reads and easy recipes and links to things I've bought and loved. This email promises to solve exactly none of our collective or individual problems. It does promise some levity, some inspiration, some ideas, and something called a nap dress.
What I'm reading in the rare moments I'm not eating:
Quarantine sweatpants, five ways (The New Yorker)
School districts' reopening survey (McSweeney's)
A case for Sunday rituals (Girls Night In)
When playtime and coronavirus collide (NYT)
Rolling Stone's take on the 'unraveling of America' (Rolling Stone)
Italy's plague-era wine windows, which the US should adopt immediately (Afar)
A totally enticing fall cookbook preview (Stained Page News)
Online retail therapy between snacks:
If loving the Our Place Always pan is wrong, I do not want to be right
Prose hair care is so legit, I'm recommending it to everyone I know
The nap dress from Hill House Home, as I only wear floaty dresses now
I moved recently and have fallen for Goodee's pitch-perfect curation of home stuff
New books: A Gentleman in Moscow, Lady in Waiting, The Italian Table, and Untamed
Lastly, LA Little Gems is my forever fruit and veggie dealer. Other cities' options: NYC's Local Roots, Rubinette Produce in Portland, FEED in San Francisco
What I'm cooking and subsequently eating:
Some recipe inspiration, which I've been told is lacking for many of us lately...
Make pancakes: I make them with banana, with oats, with shredded zucchini, and more often than not I make them with this gluten-free mix.
Make leftovers: Use any ground meat for these Thai-style lettuce wraps and save the remaining meat to serve over rice for lunch the next day. Same story here with these foolproof chicken and ricotta meatballs, they're excellent day-of and day-later.
Make pasta: Pre-covid, I ate pasta frequently. During covid, I eat pasta constantly. And often with variations on Marcella Hazan's classic and super simple tomato sauce (which keeps very well, too).
Easy AND healthy: Asparagus (or any roasted veggie) with pesto and a poached egg, weeknight curry, a quick Brussels sprouts salad, summertime farro salad
Don't forget dessert: While we still have summer strawberries, this sparkling sherbert or this strawberry fool with rosewater are great treats
After dinner (and drinks), I've gotten into the habit of making a nightly cup of herbal tea and I'm really into this vanilla rooibos.
And for tonight, tomorrow, next week... a cooking party:
MENU
Playlist:
Our new Cooking Vol. 6, of course.
Les Nubians while you're in a cooking groove? Yeah.
Pre-dinner drink:
Bubbles
(prosecco, Champagne, sparkling wine)
Menu:
Grilled prawns with the best-ever marinade
Japanese-style potato salad on the side
Bali-style watermelon and tomato salad, summer on a plate
A pile of the best berries or sliced stone fruit you can find,
with homemade whipped cream for dessert
Wine:
A dry rosé or Gruner Veltliner
Happy cooking-shopping-reading-dancing,
Please join me in laughing way too hard at this (via @soul nate)