Tonight’s dinner was a piece of salmon with some sort of BBQ sauce creation, farro, carrots, broccoli, and asparagus. I included some books that were on the table and my bottle of sesame seeds because I thought it all kind of color coordinated, except I’m now realizing that orange and red are not the same color.
Well let’s first address the elephant in the room, which is my new beautiful gorgeous fun email banner. Just like an elephant, it is smart, beloved, and gray. Here’s some behind the scenes of that photoshoot today.
I’ve always been hesitant to take myself and the things I do for work seriously, because to be honest I sorta think that the only work that actually matters at all is in healthcare and early education. My therapist helped me realized I started feeling this particular brand of nihilism in 2020, when literally almost everyone was able to just drop what they were doing, except for doctors and teachers (and therapists lol).
It’s a double-edged sword of a mindset - it helps me not to get too stressed about things that are ultimately pointless (food styling an instagram ad someone will quickly scroll past/be annoyed at), but it can also play into my self-esteem: nothing I work on really matters all that much, so there’s no point in sharing it or perfecting it or even believing that any of it’s a little bit good or worthwhile.
Plus the world feels noisy to me, a hundred thousand things are always trying to get my attention, and I hate the idea of being part of that noise (ironic from a talkative person?? Yes I know). I always think of my grandma (RIP) staring at all the mustards in the mustard aisle: “there are too many mustards!” (It’s a metaphor.)
Anyway, all of this to explain why this newsletter started as a throwaway fun hobby, until I started therapy a bit ago and my perspective is enlightened, there’s likely an audience who appreciates what I have to offer even if I think it’s meaningless, showing up consistently for something is rewarding and enriches the fun, yada yada.
So here we are, taking this bs slightly more seriously for my dumb mental health, etc. Hence the banner. I hope you like it.
John spent some time tonight at a nerd space called NYC Resistor, working on this 900 year old vintage computer he’s trying to repair. Adorable and simultaneously embarrassing, no?
Anyway, his absence led to this productive conversation:
The dinner was indeed good, but it took me a second to get there. I was talking (“talking”) to my brother Michael on the phone while I was staring into the fridge figuring things out, and my thought process was just saying ingredients out loud while he ignored me and cooked his own dinner (one of our better conversations).
I landed on some farro, which I boiled, along with some broccoli, carrots, and asparagus that I steamed in the microwave.
I cropped this picture a bunch so you wouldn’t be able to tell that the inside of my microwave is really dirty, but you can still kind of tell. Send me a pic of the inside of your microwave if you think you’re better than me.
I mixed it all together (with chopped cilantro) for a salad so healthy I felt like the goddamn CEO of sweetgreen.
I cooked a piece of salmon in a skillet with a little oil, then I added some water when it was hot, and covered it to let that steam too. Steaming food is underrated. I’ll talk about this more some day.
While the salmon was cooking, I juiced an orange I had already zested for something else (salad dressing) that was losing life in the fridge. I whisked that with soy sauce, sesame oil, miso paste, a small scoop of cornstarch, and a little bit of some BBQ sauce that is probably 97 years old.
When the salmon was almost done, I added that mixture to the pan and whacked it up to high for a second so the corn starch could do its corn starchy business. I ate it at my desk in true bachelor fashion.
For dessert, I combined frozen blueberries, sour cream, a bit of maple syrup, vanilla, and a pinch of salt with my immersion blender in a plastic pint container. I thought I was onto something until I realized I invented a thick smoothie. It’s still in the freezer firming up, but I snuck a bite in its slightly melty state, and I can already announce that it was good. Newsflash: smoothies are good. And my sisters should be glad to know there are no traces of plastic in it that I know of.
Do you like my surprise second banner??? This is a whole new section I’m calling “a tangible thing” because I thought it’d be fun to give my devoted readership some non-food content, and my second favorite thing behind food is stuff.
My first ever tangible thing showcase is this bottle of stones that sits on a shelf above my desk. I collected them over the course of 3 months of morning beach walks when I was working in Tuscany in 2019. Here they are below, in good light. Note the one that looks like a chocolate chip cookie. I guess it all leads back to food in the end.
Hey Laura, I love your posts! Keep 'em coming!