Disney days 🐭 & food fails

Hi friends!

How are you? Sorry for the delay in getting you this newsletter, I needed a few extra days with it to get it up to my rigorous standards. I’m doing alright, except that my skin has utterly turned against me because I dared to go in the sun. I had a beach day with a friend followed by a day at Disneyland two days later, and my face has been breaking out ever since. Does anyone else experience this? I wore SPF 50, of course, but it doesn’t matter, my skin gets furious with me anyway. I can feel (and see!) its indignation. Sorryyy, okay? Sometimes a bitch just needs to go in the sun! Damn!

Disneyland was a lot of fun! My husband Ross and I met up with my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and his two kids, our niece and nephew. We had a blast and got to ride all the rides, from Space Mountain to the Haunted Mansion to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (formerly known as Splash Mountain). I’m glad they rebranded Splash Mountain, because it was mad racist before, but I do wish they had gone with a less wordy name for it, because Tiana’s Bayou Adventure just doesn’t roll off the tongue compared to Splash Mountain.

The most disturbing thing I saw at Disneyland was a woman who had Slack pulled up on her laptop while she was sitting with her kid at a cafe in Main Street, USA. Disneyland is so expensive, can you imagine having to spend time there on your laptop, like it’s a Starbucks or something?? Ugh. I don’t know what her situation was, but I felt very grateful then that I’d been able to turn off Slack notifications.

Here’s what I ate at Disneyland:

• A large morning diet Coke from Star Wars land (because we couldn’t find plain iced coffee anywhere, and we NEEDED caffeine)

• A pretzel shaped like Mickey’s face

• A pretty decent Cuban sandwich at River Belle Terrace in Frontierland

• A Dole Whip!!! Delicious!!

• An iced coffee (we found some in the New Orleans part of Frontierland)

• A beignet

Every time I go to Disneyland, I’m like, “Why don’t we do this more often? It’s so close!” And then I remember that a) it’s expensive and b) I don’t really need to ride Space Mountain more than, like, once a year, max. The park is really only so big and you can pretty much ride all the major rides in one day, especially if you have the Lightning Pass thingy. We didn’t go to California Adventure this time, but I think we could’ve squeezed in most of the stuff we’d want to do over there in one day, too. Suffice it to say that I am not much of a Disney Adult, although I don’t judge them too harshly. Whatever makes you happy, as long as it isn’t harming anyone else, you know?

I will say that I grew up in a mostly “does-the-same-thing-every-year-for-vacation” family (we went down the shore nearly every summer, usually to Wildwood), and that’s not how I like to spend my vacation time now as an adult. I like to mix it up! There are so many places I haven’t been that I’d like to see! So I can’t really relate to the people who spend all their vacation time at Disney, but if that’s what they want to do, well, it’s their lives, not mine!

Speaking of vacations, Ross and I are just a few short weeks away from our big trip to Germany and Holland! I’m not looking forward to all the flying we’ll have to do to get there–being on the west coast of the U.S., it takes us just as long to go to Europe as it does to go to Asia. But it will all be worth it when I’m drinking a beer and eating a currywurst and looking at street art on what used to be the Berlin Wall!! Right?

I’m still plugging away at German lessons on Duolingo, but I’ll be honest, I can’t say much. For some reason, they keep making me say into my phone, “Amerika ist wunderbar,” or “America is wonderful,” which is not really how I’ve been feeling lately, lol. I don’t really have the words in German–or in English, for that matter–to describe my current feelings toward my home country. It’s complicated, let’s say.

I’m going to aim to get out one more newsletter before my trip, but then there may be a gap of an extra week or so between newsletters while I travel back and fight jet lag. Which, I don’t know, I’m not trying to be rude, but does anyone even care if I go an extra week without sending one? I know that while I look forward to all my favorite email newsletters, I’m also not holding it against them if they need to take some time off. I hope you feel the same!

Let’s get into a few things:

- Balatro (available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, Windows, etc.). This poker-inspired video game was my husband’s favorite new game of 2024, but I only recently got into it when a new update to Dave the Diver introduced it as a mini-game within that game. I got completely hooked on the mini-game, even though I was very bad at first, and so I ended up downloading the original game on Steam. It’s a card game where you are scored according to classic poker hands, but with a twist–you can buy Jokers and other cards that give you special “powers” to increase your score. It’s super addictive! I am terrible at real card games and always need the rules to poker re-explained to me every time I play (I’m a fun friend to have!!), but Balatro is not that hard and really fun! Check it out if you want to get sucked into a new game.

- Cooking. My cooking adventures this past week were thwarted by some ingredient mishaps, unfortunately. I was going to make chicken-spinach meatballs with a zucchini pasta, and started grating my “zucchini” only to realize that they were, in fact, cucumbers. That would not have been very tasty sauteed in butter and garlic, so I’m glad I figured it out at that point! That’s the risk you take ordering from Instacart, I suppose. Most of the time, they are great and super convenient, but sometimes things get mixed up. Anyway, I ended up just opening a jar of red sauce and serving the meatballs with some simple spaghetti marinara, but it was a bit underwhelming.

Then, I wanted to make a blackberry crisp, because berries are still in season and so good right now, but unfortunately I waited a little too long to use my blackberries and they got moldy in the fridge. Berries are THE WORST offenders of all the “oops you waited half a breath too long and now we’re bad” fruits. I ended up substituting some frozen strawberries I had laying around, with some raspberries that managed to hang on. It still turned out pretty good! I was surprised that frozen berries worked so well in that recipe, as I didn’t even bother defrosting them first or anything. A good thing to know if you are ever strapped for a dessert in the future and need to whip one up quickly.

Finally, I had a successful cooking endeavor when I made chicken scampi pasta, which is exactly what it sounds like: shrimp scampi but with chicken instead of shrimp. I was craving that garlic-butter-white wine-lemon sauce, but had a weird nightmare the other night that involved shrimp falling out of my mouth with fleas on them that I’m still not over, to be honest. Also, apparently chicken scampi is a pretty well-known dish at the Olive Garden? I haven’t been to the OG in about a decade (although I am dying to go back tbh!!! Need that salad and breadsticks combo!!), so I’m not sure.

Anyway, the chicken scampi was delicious!! I couldn’t stop eating it. I even left out two of the many, many tablespoons of butter called for in that recipe, because it just seemed like enough already. One thing that recipe lacks, I think, though, is salt. Once I finished making it, I realized that I hadn’t used any in the sauce and threw a big pinch into the pot and tossed everything around with it (plus I ate it with grated parm on top, which helped in the salt department). Delish! But if I had to pick one protein to scampi, I would probably still go with shrimp. There’s just a lightness and a mild of-the-sea flavor to shrimp that work so well with that kind of sauce.

- Love Is Blind UK, season two (Netflix). I finished this season and have some final thoughts–SPOILERS ahead! I didn’t watch the reunion, but I did read this recap of it from Netflix’s Tudum, which was pretty good. I was disappointed to find out that only Megan and Kieran are still together! I’m not surprised that Billy eventually bailed on Ashleigh, although it’s too bad he didn’t do it until after they got married. It’s so interesting to me when divorced people go on this show and are like, “I really have to get it right this time.” Man, then why did you go on a reality show that makes you get married in six weeks? If I really wanted to get it right, I would give myself a little more time!

It’s also unfortunate that Kal and Sarover didn’t make it, although again, I’m not totally surprised. One of Kal’s friends was pretty adamant that he wasn’t the marrying type, and that stood out to me. I also cringed so hard when they first met in person and he said, “Princess, your prince has arrived.” Gag! Talk about Disney adults!

What do you think really happened with Javen? I think he was probably flirting with other women, particularly Sophie. We already watched them flirting at the party, and it’s weird to go into a non-operational photo booth with someone you don’t plan on smooching. And he claims they went in there to “argue?” To use a British expression, what are you on about? Curtain or no curtain, that’s plain weird. Although, I never saw him and Katisha working anyway. He never seemed that into her, I mean, they got engaged and still hadn’t said “I love you” to each other. I get that this show has pretty strict mechanics that kind of force people to get engaged so they can move forward, but I still think they weren’t going to make it.

All in all, a pretty good season of trash TV! Good job, Brits!

- Wednesday, season two (Netflix). Naturally, I had forgotten absolutely everything that happened in Wednesday’s season one when the first batch of season two episodes dropped, because that was released THREE YEARS AGO. I’m not even exaggerating; I looked it up and could not believe my eyes when I saw that the release date was in 2022! Y’ALL. Why does Netflix do this?? Especially with shows where the characters are supposed to be kids. Insanity.

I liked this season (Steve Buscemi was a highlight, as was Lady Gaga’s brief cameo), but LIGHT SPOILER, I didn’t like how much the story focused on Tyler Galpin again. It’s like, we’ve waited three years, can we get a new villain, please?? Ross and I also both agree that the transformed Hydes look goofy as shit. They have these Pixar-ass bulging eyes and they just kind of look like Gollum on steroids. I’m not into it. The werewolves look pretty good, so I’m not sure why they flopped with the Hydes. Oh well! I also think this season’s storyline felt just a little rushed. Bring back longer seasons with more episodes! PLEASE!! I just finished watching a season of Melrose Place from the ‘90s that had 34 episodes. Modern TV execs would shit themselves! I know Wednesday isn’t a primetime soap, but still, to be down to less than a quarter of that episode order? Ridiculous!

- Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham. This book is a thriller about a journalist who goes back to her Southern hometown where her sister disappeared 22 years ago as a teenager and decides to accept a summer job on the vineyard where her sister briefly worked. While there, she finds an old diary and of course gets sucked into investigating a mystery.

I love Stacy Willingham’s writing (she’s also the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things, which I both enjoyed), but this wasn’t my favorite of hers. I kept feeling like there was more promise there that wasn’t quite being fulfilled. I thought the setting of a vineyard would be really beautiful and giving upscale summer vibes, but it was more like this crappy overgrown farm that was half-abandoned. Without spoiling anything, I can also say parts of it felt like it could go into Manson Family-ish territory, but that thread kind of fizzled out, too.

I also think that structure-wise, incorporating an old diary into your story is TOUGHHH. I had a writing professor who once said that flashbacks always need to be used to move the story forward, because otherwise they halt all forward momentum. I think Stacy Willingham did a good job with that, but it’s just not my favorite device. It’s why I’m also not a huge fan of dual-timeline books. People sure do loooove to write them, but I think it’s really hard to make both storylines equally compelling. I don’t know, if you read Forget Me Not, what did you think?

Alright folks, that’s enough out of me for this week!

If you have a second, I’d love it if you’d like or comment on this post–just click this link to go to the post page. This post is public, so feel free to share it on social media, or forward it to a friend.

Until next time—don’t wait on berries!

Love,

Liz

XOXO