Pizza tattoos 🍕 & Paul Giamatti will save us

Hi friends!

How are you? I’m… well. That is to say, not “well” as in “good,” but “well” as in, “well, I’m not quite sure what to say.” I’ll tell you what my therapist said the other day. They compared this time period to the early quarantine timez of 2020, in that things are really hard, and we have to hold onto the belief that this will end and things will get better eventually. And that I may have to deploy some of the same coping skills as I did during that time period, but I can’t replay Stardew Valley for the first time, and doing Zoom happy hours at four P.M. just… well, actually, those both sound pretty fun. Maybe I should rethink?

I got a tattoo last Saturday! I ended up getting a pizza slice on my wrist, because I will always love pizza, and pizza will never get canceled (god willing!). There’s a longer story there, but you’ll have to ask me IRL. But boy, did that hurt like a motherfucker! I think I picked one of the most painful places to get a tattoo, unfortunately. I am also, apparently, a huge wimp, especially when it comes to needles. The tattoo artist just finished doing the outline and I got really sweaty and light-headed and started kind of not being able to hear?? So they brought me a lollipop and some water and that really helped! Then he finished doing the shading and bandaged me up (they have these clear, super thin bandages you can’t even see!), and I was off with my brand new ink!

The funny thing is, I always thought I would be the kind of person who would end up with a bunch of tattoos. I love how they look on other people, I’ve never held a job where I couldn’t have tattoos, and I’m a decorator. I love to surround and adorn myself with art and color. But fuck, that hurt!! And was expensive! And perhaps the biggest reason of all that I don’t have more tattoos is that, as a Libra, I just cannot make up my mind on what I want to have permanently on my body. And they are permanent to me. I think it’s kind of fucking lame that Pete Davidson is getting all his tats removed. Like, do what you want with your body (paraphrasing Lady Gaga), but also, fucking commit to something, you know what I mean?

Let’s get into some things:

- Current events time! If you are not feeling up to hearing me ranting about a bunch of terrible things happening in the news, feel free to skip down to the pop culture & food section below.

I can’t stop thinking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the U.S. citizen who was illegally deported to a notorious El Salvador prison, who the Trump administration is refusing to bring back to the U.S. That poor man, and his poor family. This country has lost its goddamn mind when it comes to immigration. But then, maybe it’s always been this way. I remember many years ago, when I was living in New York, I invited a friend who happened to be from another country to some protest or another, and they declined, saying that they couldn’t go because in the rare circumstances that they were arrested, it would jeopardize their ability to stay in the U.S. This idea that you can’t criticize the government at all if you’re not a citizen is pretty fucked, if you think about it. 

This week was Tax Day in the U.S., meaning the last day you could pay your taxes from 2024. I of course did my taxes weeks ago, and luckily, my husband and I ended up getting a nice chunk of money back from the government this year (vacation fund!). Still, there is a certain amount of rage I feel at so much of our money going to pay for bombs overseas. Whenever I go visit my friends who live in Redondo Beach, I have to drive past the Northrop Grumman campus, and I either flick them off or boo inside my car every time. I know, a futile gesture, but it makes me feel a tiny bit better.

But there isn’t just bullshit at home. I’m also pissed about the U.K. Supreme Court pulling their gender police bullshit. I’m not a huge Harry Potter person, outside of having enjoyed the books and the movies many years before JKR went insane, but I guess I can understand how people feel the franchise is somehow bigger than its billionaire nightmare creator. But even beyond her disgusting targeting of a very small minority of people, does she understand the gross ramifications this has for her precious cis women and girls having to prove their cisness? Like, the policing is not just going to stop with trans folks. What if a cis woman doesn’t have a uterus or is infertile or has a hormonal imbalance or doesn’t have tits or doesn’t get a period or has hair on her face, is she not a woman either?

This is why my answer to the question, “What is a woman?” is “Whatever. I don’t care.” If you’re willing to take on all the bullshit that comes with being a woman, then you’re a woman. That’s it. Maybe that makes me a lazy feminist, that I can’t be bothered to define womanhood enough to exclude people from the club. But that’s fine with me.

I just don’t understand all the hysteria around trans people, especially when it comes to bathrooms. What is the fear? Peeing next to a man? Don’t make me talk about how my college dorm bathrooms were all fully co-ed 20 GODDAMN YEARS AGO and I peed and showered and brushed my teeth next to actual cis dudes and it was FINE, Joanne!!! It was fine. God!!!

…okay so there was one time, on April Fool’s Day, when someone stole everyone’s toothbrushes and stuck them in the quad. But we don’t know who was responsible for that, or their gender. Mostly it was a goofy fun time with friends of all different gender combinations giving each other questionable haircuts. And I think that’s beautiful. 💜

And now I’ve brought up Vassar again and everyone is rolling their eyes at Grandma’s Millennial aughts nostalgia. So, let’s get into some (other) things:

- Actor Caitlin Reilly posted an Instagram Reel the other day titled “How they all thought we would react to the all female Blue Origin flight” and I can’t stop watching it, it is so funny and such an accurate critique of toxic right-wing girlboss energy. You know what I mean, that idea that because a woman did something for the first time, we should all be so fucking thrilled, even if that woman or that something is terrible. See also: Usha Vance discourse. “Are you trying to tell me that six bitches went in space this morning? FUCK YEAH!” I’m dying.

- Black Mirror, season seven (Netflix). I watched the first episode of this season, and then I felt so depressed that I had to watch two episodes of Gossip Girl to wash the taste out of my brain. But then I watched the next three, and I was fine. I don’t know why Black Mirror structures their seasons this way, by frontloading the horrors. I remember sitting down to watch the show for the first time, and what was the first episode about? A man being forced to fuck a pig on live TV. I was so horrified by that episode, it took me YEARS before I ever watched another one. I’m just saying, ease us into it a little, this is supposed to be entertainment after all.

The thing about Black Mirror is that despite it messing with my mental well-being, the writing is SO GOOD that I keep coming back to it. Also, Paul Giamatti is the star of one episode, and Paul Giamatti is GOAT. Actually, you know what? I’m going to buy a t-shirt about it.

- Cooking. If you celebrated Passover or Easter recently, I hope you had a lovely holiday. My husband Ross is Jewish and I was raised Catholic, and when we lived in New York City near our families, we would get to celebrate with them in Long Island (Passover) and New Jersey (Easter). There was never a lack of great homemade food at any of those celebrations, in case you were wondering. Since we’ve been living on the west coast for the past, lord, almost 10 years now, I’ve used Passover and Easter as excuses to make some of my favorite holiday foods for us, such as slow-cooked red wine brisket and potato kugel (Passover), or a ham-laced quiche lorraine and Starburst jellybeans (Easter). This year, I was feeling especially homesick for my mother’s Easter ham, and decided that making a ham was a must-do. So, for Passover the weekend before, I decided to go with salmon instead of brisket, because cooking an enormous hunk of red meat two weekends in a row just felt like too much to me. What am I, a pit master?

Well, I don’t know what was up with me that Sunday – hormones, maybe? – but I ended up spending like half the day cooking, and made way too much food. It started in the morning, with me making matzo brei for breakfast, which I like to eat with maple syrup, and Ross always eats with sugar on top. Then, I made lemon bars, which are totally not kosher for Passover, just because I felt like it. I have been using the same Smitten Kitchen recipe to make lemon bars for years, but then Deb went and updated it on me when I wasn’t looking. This new recipe is fine, except that I don’t like how soft the lemon custard part was. It made it very messy to cut the finished product into bars. Next time, I’ll use the old recipe, which she linked as a PDF.

Finally, for dinner, I made some easy pan-seared garlic butter salmon, with herby roasted red-skinned potatoes. And maple butter roasted baby carrots. And a little gem salad with radishes, shallots, parsley, pistachios, and a simple lemon dressing I whipped up. Oh, and the first noodle kugel I’ve ever made!! I told you it was way too much food. It had shades of when my Grandma Sophie would go manic every Christmas and make, I’m not exaggerating, hundreds of Christmas cookies to give to everyone she knew. We would’ve invited our friend who lives in the neighborhood over to help eat everything, but he was going out of town that day, so we just had lots of leftovers instead.

The next Sunday, which was Easter AND 4/20, I took a 2.5mg edible (I know, I’m WILD) and made this orange marmalade-glazed ham, recipe courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa. I only put half the dijon mustard into the glaze because I wanted it on the sweeter side, and it was perfect. Also, serving ham with mango chutney? Downright inspired! Ina Garten is just so reliable.

I also served the ham with roasted asparagus, cheddar bay biscuits (you can buy them in a box mix or, like I did, the frozen section!), and a riff on this NYT sugar snap pea, radish, and cheese salad. That recipe uses ricotta salata, but I subbed feta because I don’t have a ricotta salata hookup, and it was delish. And then finally, I made twice baked potatoes, which my mom used to make all the time when I was a kid but I have never attempted myself! Turns out they’re pretty easy, actually. I baked the potatoes, scooped them out, and then mashed the innards and folded in some green onions and cream cheese (because cream cheese is an elite addition to any mashed potatoes). I skipped the bacon, because we were already having ham, and just topped the potatoes with cheddar cheese. Popped them in the onion to rewarm and melt the cheese on top, and that was it! Delish!

Alright, that’s about it for now!

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Until next time—be well.

Love,

Liz

XOXO