My biggest cooking fail 😵 & newest podcast obsession

Hi friends!

How are you?? I’m doing alright. My husband Ross was out of town last weekend, celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday in CDMX, so I took the opportunity to binge podcasts (more on that later) and go on a cleaning and organizing tear around the apartment in advance of my in-laws coming into town later this week. It’s amazing how cluttered my office has gotten in just the year and a half that we’ve been living here (moving was my last major purge). I was able to go through some piles and even threw out some old makeup and candles, two things that I tend to hoard.

Actually, should I do an office tour sometime? Would that be of interest? Let me know.

I can’t believe we’re two weeks out from Thanksgiving! Here’s a list of my Thanksgiving recipe recs, in case you’re interested. This is the first time in many years that we are neither hosting nor traveling for Thanksgiving, so I can kind of cook whatever I want. I might roast a chicken instead of a turkey, or forget poultry altogether and do a brisket or a beef stew. I might also try making this green bean casserole from Bon Appetit that had one of the best recipe reviews I’ve ever read:

I haven’t spoken to my extended family in over 2 years, and I truly feel like it is their loss. Not because of me, but because they don’t get to experience this absolutely incredible recipe. If I was a tattoo person, it would be tastefully inked on my side. Making again for Christmas. Left out the garlic, bc spiritually I do not believe in using garlic in thanksgiving dishes. My compliments to the creator. May he find riches in this life.

I’m so curious about this spiritual objection to garlic in Thanksgiving dishes! Well, I’m curious about a lot of things in this review, to be honest.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, a programming note: I’m going to try to get the next issue of this newsletter out a little bit earlier in the week of the 24th, because that one will be my second annual holiday gift guide! You can check out last year’s gift guide here. I still stand by everything in there, although a few of the items may be sold out now. I have plenty of new ideas I’m excited to share in this year’s guide, and this year, all of the items will be under $50, because times is tough, and your friends and family do not want you going into credit card debt to buy them stuff (and if they do, fuck ‘em).

And after that, believe it or not, we’ll be getting into my Best of the Year series! I’m going to try to send those out in early-mid December, before my work goes on break for the holidays, so I can take an actual real break from everything. Can you believe it’s almost time for end of year lists? I can’t wait.

Let’s get into a few things:

- Beth’s Dead. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I binged this entire podcast in one night. I threw it on while I was making dinner thinking I’d give it a try and bail if it was boring, ended up subscribing to the Patreon so I could get all 10 episodes immediately, then proceeded to stay up past midnight listening to all of it because it was so compelling. I have not gotten this sucked into a podcast since My Dad Wrote a Porno–two very different podcasts, but equally well done in different ways, I think.

In this true crime podcast, Armchair Expert’s Monica Padman and comedy podcasters Elizabeth Laime and Andy Rosen, formerly of Totally Laime and Totally Married and currently of Nobody’s Listening, Right?, investigate how a boundary-crossing parasocial relationship formed between Elizabeth and a podcast listener about eight years ago. I was a longtime listener of all the Totally podcasts, so it was fascinating to hear about everything that was apparently going down in the comment section on the site and in emails between Elizabeth and the listeners. Elizabeth and Andy are also just really funny and self-deprecating, and Monica comes from a real place of compassion throughout.

One thing I like about this show is that none of the creators are true crime podcasters, they all come from the comedy world, so it has kind of a refreshing angle of amateurs trying to thoughtfully unravel a mystery. It’s hard to talk about the podcast without giving away spoilers, but I’ll just say that one of my favorite episodes, episode eight, unfolds in real time, allowing us to be a fly on the wall while they figure out how to approach a tricky situation. It’s creepy, voyeuristic, and funny, and just so well done.

One thing, though: if you subscribe to their Patreon, don’t read the comments. They do not pass the vibe test, as the kids say. Lots of dumb-dumbs with crackpot theories in there. Maybe they come from the Armchair world? I’ve never listened to that podcast, but from what I gather they have a pretty broad audience. But yeah, Beth’s Dead is my favorite podcast of the year, for sure.

- Doll Parts by Penny Zang. I finished this book in mid-September, right before we left for our European vacation, and it was the perfect kickoff to spooky season and fall for me. Doll Parts is part thriller, part literary fiction. It’s a dual timeline story that takes place in the nineties at an all women’s college in New England and in a WASPy present day gated community. It’s about a woman who is trying to uncover a mystery surrounding the death of her estranged best friend from college. The writing is haunting and lyrical and hallucinatory at times. The ‘90s vibes are off the charts, and Sylvia Plath and grunge music are two huge motifs. I would say the biggest strength of the book is in the relationship between the two main characters. It really brought me back to those female friendships I found in high school and college, how deeply close you get in those years from spending so much time together, like sisters, or almost even platonic life partners.

Like most dual timeline books, I did find one storyline weaker than the other, and that was the one set in a present day gated community. The final unraveling of the mystery also did not blow me away, but I enjoyed the journey so much that I didn’t care so much about the final destination. If you’ve read Doll Parts, let me know what you think!

Oh, and the book comes with a killer playlist–you can check it out on Spotify here. I’ve had “Darling Nikki” stuck in my head all week.

- Calpak Water Bottle Holder ($31 - $48, depending if it’s on sale or not). One of the most useful purchases I made this year was this compact little bag from Calpak. When I leave the house, I like to travel pretty light these days, but I always want my water bottle with me. Enter: this insulated water bottle holder bag with three side pockets and a zippered pouch that’s the perfect size for your phone. I have it in the green checker pattern, but it comes in a variety of different colors and prints. It’s perfect for me to take on long walks around the reservoir, but also if I’m just running out for a quick errand. I even took it with me to Disneyland, and it carried everything I needed that day with nothing extra to weigh me down.

As I write this, it is 20-35% off on an early Black Friday sale (depending on the color), but if that’s over, you can still get 10% off by signing up on the site—or just wait until actual Black Friday, and I’m sure they’ll have another sale. Calpak also makes luggage and really high quality makeup and toiletry bags (I have one of the medium ones, and it holds so much stuff!), if that is of interest to you as well.

- Cooking. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve made two different versions of chicken and rice, this more traditional version of arroz con pollo, and this paella-inspired version with tomatoes and dry chorizo from Smitten Kitchen Keepers that I’ve raved about in here many times before. I’m not hardcore about it or anything, but I do love a one-pot meal.

One weekend, I was really feeling autumnal despite it still being warm and sunny out (L.A. is gonna L.A.), so I made French onion soup. It was delicious, but then the house smelled like onion soup for two days. That’s the thing about having an open concept kitchen; everyone thinks they want one until whatever you cook smells up the whole house.

Then, I decided to make chicken parmesan, but I wanted to level up my usual technique a bit, so I read the Serious Eats recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt. That recipe is very time-consuming and I certainly didn’t do all of it (ain’t nobody got time for buttermilk brining and making your own breadcrumbs over here), but one interesting tip was to add the mozzarella on top of the chicken in cubes, not shreds. I gave that a go and it worked out really well! It’s kind of funny that Kenji made this dish so complicated in the end, because he started out talking about how it’s almost impossible to screw up chicken parm. I guess overly complicated recipes are kind of the Serious Eats brand, though.

Finally, I made the newest Smitten Kitchen recipe, baked potatoes with crispy broccoli and bacon. It was so easy! Perfect for a Friday night dinner after a long-ass week. You could easily omit the bacon if you don’t want it and just have a delicious crispy broccoli and cheddar potato.

- Cooking fails. I greatly enjoyed this recent Reddit thread on r/cooking of people’s biggest cooking fails. Anyone who cooks a lot has a few stumbles, of course. I think the biggest one I can remember happened over the summer between my junior and senior years of college, when I was living at my parents’ house and just starting to get into cooking. I had watched an episode of some show on the Food Network where the host made potato gnocchi and swore up and down how easy it was. Believing them was my first mistake, and it goes to show how truly inexperienced I was with making food that I didn’t immediately call bullshit. Today, if I saw a show where someone was promising how easy, say, beef wellington is to make, I would know that that’s a famously difficult dish.

Well, the recipe was NOT easy. It took hours and dirtied up the entire kitchen, which maybe would have been worth it if the final product turned out well, but it did not. The “sauce” was a mixture of ricotta and pesto which was not very visually pleasant. I must not have baked the potatoes long enough–like, at ALL–because the gnocchi was not soft and pillowy. It was lumpy and even, in some cases, crunchy. I was so upset after all that work that I think I actually went up to my bedroom and cried.

It took me over 10 years after that to try making gnocchi again, and I still haven’t attempted potato gnocchi again (ricotta gnocchi is so much easier!). I’m a much better home cook now, of course, but some food fails can be mildly traumatizing! What was your biggest cooking fail?

That’s it for now! This newsletter is going to be a little bit shorter than usual because the next one will be looong.

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—gnocchi should never be crunchy.

Love,

Liz

XOXO