Mezcal & movie lovers 🎥 [Like You Know Whatever]

Hello dear friends!

It’s been forever! How are you?? I hope your holidays were restorative and fun. The last time I wrote to you was back in that musty old year, 2022, and now we have a brand new baby one! How does it feel to you so far? I don’t have any particular reason to be optimistic about it, but I have a good feeling about 2023. Numerology-wise, the year adds up to 7, which is lucky. Maybe that means luck will be on our side this year, and we should all take more risks. At any rate, Americans should certainly take advantage and enjoy their last reprieve before the next election year, 2024, which is sure to be a shitshow. 😂💀

I just got back from my vacation to Mexico City and Oaxaca with my husband, Ross, and our friend Ben from New York. It was so great, y’all. We saw petrified waterfalls and climbed up ancient pyramids and ate some of the best moles in the world. You can see photos here and here, and food pics here. Another friend already asked me for my recs, so I wrote an entire novel that I copied into a Google doc here for you. (You know how I like to write my long emails.) Check that out if you’re at all interested in visiting the region, or want to know exactly what we did! It’s like getting a second newsletter from me this week!

We ate at fancy tasting menu restaurants in beautiful surroundings and dirt cheap taco stands in the street. We walked miles around the city every day. We haggled in mercados and cheered at lucha libre and spoke in hushed tones inside a mezcal library. We got sunburned and our feet got sore and our stomachs got fucked up. We played cards and ate Takis and drank lots of Mexican beer. We said yes to mimosas at brunch and micheladas at lunch and ice block martinis at dinner, because after all, we were on vacation. We ate squash blossoms and cactus and steak and octopus and suckling pig. I got so used to speaking Spanish to strangers and avoiding the tap water that it was weird to come home and stop doing both.

We only brought carry-on-sized luggage, so I had to be very selective about what souvenirs I bought. I only brought three things back with me: 1) a ceramic calavera (skull) from an artisan market, 2) a small blue & indigo blanket woven by traditional Zapotec (Indigenous) weavers, and 3) a bottle of mezcal from a small female producer. I had to check a bag due to the mezcal, which I NEVER do, so you know it was good stuff. It was $85, more than I’ve ever paid for a bottle of alcohol, but it tasted like a perfect sunny day at the beach. I’m not sure what will be a special enough occasion to crack it open, but I trust that I’ll know it when it happens.

I also flew four times in 10 days, one of those times unmedicated, even!!! It was only an hour-long flight, but still! Longtime readers know that I have a good deal of flight anxiety that I use Klonopin to help manage. I don’t ever let my fear stop me from flying, because I love traveling so much, but it’s always stressful and uncomfortable for me. This time around, I worked on a plan with my therapist to mitigate my anxiety, and it really helped. Part of that plan was listening to a special playlist* I made during take-off (the worst part of flying for me), but on two of the flights, we weren’t allowed to have headphones tuned into our personal devices during take-off??? Have you ever heard of such a thing? I was like, well, FUCK, thanks a lot, Aeromexico. 

* Here is the playlist if you’re interested, but it’s very much to my personal tastes/needs, a mix of absolute favorites and high-energy bangers (they help me reframe my adrenaline from “anxious about flying” to “pumped up about traveling”). Put on shuffle, of course.

I also downloaded my own personal comfort viewing, the Scary Island episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City (season 3, eps 11-13). Watching Ramona get plastered on the Hooters boat and Kelly have a mental breakdown and Jill Zarin get kicked out of a villa is soothing to me in a way that is probably deeply sick, but what can I say? It works. 

Oh, and I wanted to follow up on one topic from my last newsletter, the prevalence of insects in Oaxacan cuisine. It turns out that I did not end up eating any after all! The only tiny bit of insect I had was some salt made with ants that was used to rim one of the drink pairings on the Criollo tasting menu. It happened to be my favorite cocktail of the night. I also had some mezcal from a bottle with a worm in it, but those were the only creepy crawlies I consumed. My position going into this trip was that I would eat insects if they were served to me, like as part of a tasting menu, but not seek them out or order them specifically. There were certainly plenty of opportunities to try chapulines, a/k/a grasshoppers, but I chickened out and ate chicken in the end. Sorry to disappoint ya!

Now I’m back in Los Angeles, and I couldn’t be more delighted to be staying in the city for the foreseeable future. The second half of my 2022 was very travel-heavy even before this big trip, and I need a break from living out of a suitcase every few weeks. I like being home with my cat and all my skin care products. I don’t even mind all the rainy and cold weather we’ve been having lately! It just makes me that much happier to be inside my cozy apartment.

Let’s get into Some Things:

- I think I owe you all an apology. Last time I wrote to you, I recommended The Sample, which will forward you a random Substack newsletter daily, weekly, or three times per week per your preference. I should have given you a big ol’ warning that the newsletters that will end up in your inbox are truly of random quality, and I do not endorse or condone everything they send out as part of that subscription.

Okay, so, I’m really just thinking of one specific newsletter I recently received. The subject line was “How to Find a Tradwife.” I thought, “Oh, how hilarious, this is going to be great satire!” Reader, it was NOT satire at all. This writer gave completely serious tips for men on finding women to oppress be their subservient homemaker wives, like avoiding college graduates (too liberal) or women over age 20 (too many sexual partners). (Do I really need to make a disclaimer here that of course there is nothing wrong with being a homemaker in itself, but the power dynamic these men are seeking is dangerous and not an equal partnership?) Obviously, that is pretty much against everything I stand for (the supremacy of educated sluts), and I was horrified that this shlock was part of a service I’d endorsed. So, sorry, everyone! Be forewarned! Honestly, most of the Sample newsletters I get are tame, if fairly boring, link dumps, with a few gems sprinkled in, but there might be some garbage in there once in a while, too.

- If you want to see some Substack newsletters I DO recommend, check out the new Recommendations section on the Like You Know Whatever page! And if you’re a Substack writer who enjoys LYKW, please consider adding a recommendation to your page! They are really helpful for letting new readers find out about my writing.

- I feel like I’ve written about this before, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when people you’ve just met ask you overly personal questions as a way to force intimacy. Don’t ever feel like you have to bare your soul to a near-stranger. One time, at an old job, my team had a mandatory “get to know you” meeting with the company’s new CEO. I’ll be honest, this guy always seemed like a tool to me. When he introduced himself at a company all hands meeting, he tried to make himself sound cool and edgy but ended up saying things like, “...so then I said ‘fuck it’ to law school and went to business school instead.” Wow, what a free spirit! Anyway, he asked us all what our passions were. I loathe that question. Most people answered it honestly, but there was no way I was going to share my most deeply-held hopes and dreams with this dude. I said something like, “I like to travel.” He then asked me where was the last place I traveled, and added, “And don’t say Ojai.” What a dick, right? This job didn’t even give me paid time off! I think I muttered something about going to Portland. But at least I protected my heart. Only share your passions with people who truly deserve to know them, kids.

- One of Ross’s goals for the new year is to watch as many as he can of the best 100 movies of all time, and I’m along for the ride. He’s mostly going by the 2022 BFI/Sight & Sound list, although cross-referencing it with the AFI list of 100 best American films (which I find to be ridiculously male, white, and straight). As a film major and the daughter of classic film lover and the sister of a total movie addict, I’ve seen a good number of these movies, but there are still plenty I haven’t seen, which is so exciting to me! And I’m pumped to revisit some favorites from my college days spent in film theory class screenings. It’s been years since I’ve seen a Fellini film, for instance, and that just cannot stand!

So far, we’ve watched Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, which I’d never seen before, and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, which I hadn’t seen in years. ITMFL was moody and beautiful and filled with longing, and I’m obsessed with Maggie Cheung’s Cheongsam dresses. Dr. Strangelove is the darkest of dark comedies and is so, so good, apart from the fact that the only woman who speaks in it is basically a sex object. (I’m sorry, I know I’m a buzzkill about this stuff, I just can’t help but notice it!!) I’m so excited to make Ross watch 8 ½ and have him hate it while I’m bawling my eyes out at the beauty of it all.

If you’ve seen any of these 100 movies, which are your favorites? Which ones are overrated? Feel free to drop me a comment below or hit reply!

- I try not to recommend restaurants in here too often, because I know that most of you don’t live in Los Angeles, but sometimes one comes along that is simply too good not to share. There’s a small sandwich spot in my neighborhood called Jeff’s Table that is unfuckingbelievable. Angelenos are not really sandwich people (the carbs), so that’s saying something. It’s kind of a semi-permanent pop-up based out of the back of a liquor store on Fig, and you can pick up, or they deliver in the Highland Park area. They’re only open for lunch Tuesday through Sunday. THEY’RE SOOO GOOD! The cold sandwiches are delicious (love the OG Roast Beef), but the hot sandwiches are really where it’s at. I’m obsessed with The Dirty Baby, a chicken salad melt with fried shallots and chili crisp (I’ve been really into chili crisp lately—a bagel spot in my neighborhood puts bacon chili crisp on their BECs). And I famously don’t like mayo-based salads! This one is just so good. Their Thai peanut macaroni salad is spicy and great, too (another exception to my mayo-based salads rule). Oh, and I love the Hot KimCheezy, which has kimchi and smoked pork shoulder and melted cheese, OMGZ.

The same people behind Jeff’s Table also recently opened Oy Bar in Studio City, which has booze and Jewish-inspired bar snacks. I’m dying to get there as well.

- Smitten Kitchen Keepers. You all know I’m a big fan of Deb Perelman’s recipe blog, Smitten Kitchen, so of course I had to complete the trilogy and buy her most recent cookbook, Keepers, to sit alongside the other two on my cookbook shelf. This is a really good one, y’all. I love her recipes as one perfectionist recognizing another, but sometimes they can be very involved or fussy. This book is different. She has really simplified and pared down these recipes so that not only are they delicious, a lot of them are weeknight-friendly, too. They’re the kind of recipes that almost don’t even need a recipe. I should also note that most of the recipes are vegetarian, which I love.

Here are the recipes I’ve tried so far:

• Slow-roasted chicken with schmaltzy croutons (page 191). This was the juiciest chicken I’ve ever made. I found the amount of croutons to be just a bit too much bread for me (and that’s saying something), but they were certainly delicious.

• Portobello hoagies (page 141). The combination of umami-rich mushrooms, caramelized onions, and melted cheese was such a great meatless dinner. I tweaked a few things and made these into vegan paninis.

• Green angel hair with garlic butter (page 125, also free online here). I never make angel hair pasta, but this was wonderful, and it all came together quite easily. It’s the kind of pasta you can’t stop eating, sneaking off to pull strands out of the pot with your fingers when no one’s looking (or is that just me?).

And there are so many other recipes in there I want to try, like her turkey meatloaf for skeptics (that’s me, I’m a meatloaf skeptic), fettuccine with white ragù, charred salt and vinegar cabbage, and toasted ricotta gnocchi with pistachio pesto. Mmmm. I gotta be honest, in the past few years I’ve taken much more to cooking recipes from blogs than from books, but I think I seriously need to revisit that practice.

Okay dears, that’s about it for now! Don’t forget that there’s a whole Google doc full of Mexico recs that I wrote for you, too!

And remember to like, comment, and share this newsletter if you’d care to–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top.

Until next time—stay cozy, homebody.

Love,

Liz

XOXO