#300
Some recipes, some fretting
As I’m writing this, we have been back home about four days. Exactly a week ago, I was sitting down to this:
…at the same restaurant where we celebrated my 50th birthday in 2023. That time, we took a cab to the restaurant, but this year, I felt sheepish when I discovered it was quicker to walk. So we walked there and back, down some streets that sincerely look like time tunnels to the Belle Époque.
Thankfully we ended up back at our hotel and not in an opium den with Toulouse-Lautrec. Though given the news most days, it might have been an improvement.
Anyway, all that to say that I miss vacation in general and Paris specifically. Imagine, if you will, doing something like scrubbing your kitchen sink after a week of this:
I suppose one mark of a good trip out of town is that returning to normal life feels dumb and flat, however glad you feel to be home with your dogs (I did really miss them!). Nevertheless, I have done all our vacation laundry and put the suitcases away, I’ve been to the grocery store, and I’ve somewhat reluctantly returned to cooking.
Which is a good segue into some recipe talk, because I actually made some quite good things our first week back.
The day after we got home, my husband requested a summertime house favorite, Smitten Kitchen’s zucchini and ricotta galette. I usually just make this with frozen puff pastry but since I have nothing better to do, I made the pastry myself, and in the way of these things it was at least 75% nicer than it usually is.
I have been a paid subscriber to What to Cook on and off for a while, and on Wednesday decided I would wait no longer to make lemon-basil spaghetti (paywalled, trial subscription available). I marinated some chicken breasts in pesto for most of the day and grilled them as suggested and this was a 100% do-again dinner. (As the recipe suggests, you should not sleep on the crunchy bread crumb topping.)
I made spinach pesto and artichoke pizza one night; this is my go-to dough now, but the recipe as written is really nice if you’re not in the mood for a red sauce pizza. I just make the pesto with frozen spinach (I thaw it first) and it works fine.
Finally, on Friday we did a little France cosplay and had a charcuterie dinner with plenty of rosé.
This week, I want to make this. I also have a new issue of Milk Street to peruse and have no doubt I’ll find something to add to my list.
After deleting all thoughts of job hunting from my brain while on vacation, I am back to feeling a lot of job despair. I mentioned receiving another rejection when we got home from vacation. It was a pretty soft letdown in that they simply decided the role had to be based in Europe, but in a way that only made it worse. Also: I WOULD MOVE TO EUROPE at this point so talk about adding insult to injury.
This was the fourth time I’ve reached the final round of a process and it hasn’t worked out, twice for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with me (well, except for the fact I don’t live in Europe, I suppose). To say this has been “frustrating” is putting a very thin crumb coating of euphemism over something that is causing me a pretty decent amount of distress, though I know I’m far from alone.
Anyway, without a main hustle to occupy my time, I’m getting back into my side hustle. There’s not a lot left for me to peddle out of my closet, I’ve sold on most things I didn’t want and everything else is already listed. I put myself on vacation mode on Poshmark and eBay for two weeks and turned off all related phone notifications, so I’m a bit out of the habit. But this week I’m going to start posting some non-clothing items, including some crafting stuff I probably won’t use.
I’m also going to take stock of some of the childhood toys that have landed in my house and perhaps sell or just give away a few of them. These things are sentimental to me but they are also in boxes, and even our nieces and nephews have outgrown most of them. This perhaps feels more acute because my parents’ basement flooded again last week and I spent a day helping them clean up, and although my mom has been getting rid of things for a good few years now, there is still so very much stuff. They’ve lived in the house for 56 years, it just happens. But I do not like to think about someone having to deal with my collection of mostly shoeless Effanbee dolls and practically antique Duplo blocks. We’ll see how it goes when I actually have to look these things in their plastic faces, but I’d rather send them off to new homes than continue to shift them around my basement and spare bedroom for another 30 years.
Finally, I took advantage of slightly chilly weekend weather to use the madeleine pan I bought myself in Paris. I used this recipe because I usually find that site reliable, and what do you know, it worked pretty well:
They have what looks like too many big air bubbles in them but they taste good, they’re the right texture, and they have the characteristic hump although it could be more distinctive. I’m going to try a different recipe next time just for the sake of experimentation.
It feels as if I should have had something more momentous to share for a 300th issue, but maybe just sticking with it all this time is the momentous thing? Ask any teacher I had in grades 7 through 12 (or for that matter, my mom) and they will tell you I was not always known for my dedication to things, even when I was relatively good at them. I guess you can also ask some of those craft supplies I am going to sell.
I had no idea, when I started writing this (at the time) daily newsletter in the early days of the pandemic, that I’d still be writing it more than six years later. It has not been daily for a while and at times it was not even weekly, though I like to impose that on myself now. Thank you for reading any of it, at any time. I’ve emailed you at least three hundred times and I hope they have all found you well.
I loved Midwestgrrl (sp?) and so thankful you kept this thing going. I will never stop reading.