Happy holidays to everyone who celebrated this month and good riddance to 2021! I started my month with a visit from my best friend Rose and ended it with a canceled trip to New York and Maine. C’est la vie I guess!
What I ate and drank:
Tusk
I cannot stop raving about how perfect this meal was. I talked about it briefly in my Best Food of 2021 newsletter, but I have to sing Tusk’s praises again here. Everything was delicious: the Hazy Jane cocktail with hibiscus and yogurt in it, the fresh hummus and pita, the broccoli and cauliflower with golden raisins and vinegar, and the spiced beef kafta with whipped feta… Incredible.Someday
Another smash hit restaurant experience. Located in an alley between two shops on SE Division, Someday serves up delicious cocktails, warm olives, chips and dip, oysters, white beans in broth, and chocolate chip cookies from the Ruthie’s truck parked out back.Beet ravioli with goat cheese & ricotta filling
I had some leftover ricotta and decided to try my hand at homemade ravioli. I happened to have leftover beets as well, so I found this recipe for pasta dough colored with roasted beets. Using my family’s pasta crank was actually quite fun and I found the process a lot easier than I expected!Susan Spungen “abstract art” cookies
We decided that we needed to switch up our Christmas cookies this year which was the perfect opportunity for me to try out this Susan Spungen recipe that I found through Tik Tok. Using a base of sugar cookie dough, I added loads of lemon zest and rosemary and decorated each cookie with lemon icing, freeze dried raspberries, and crushed pistachios. They were absolutely delicious.Woodland Bitters
When Rose was in town, we stumbled into The Meadow, I store I had always seen growing up but never went inside of. I was absolutely blown away by their selection of niche culinary products (they’re known for salt, chocolate, and cocktail accoutrement) and ended up leaving with a bottle of bitters made out of pine needles and sage. I’ve been making cocktails with it all month and my favorite combo so far is adding ginger beer, cranberry juice, vodka, and a few drops of the woodland bitters to a glass with ice.
What I read:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
I’m not the hugest Didion fan to be honest, but I got this book for $1 at a Goodwill in South Carolina this summer and never read it until this month. I understand completely why people love her and this book, but it wasn’t for me. 6The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
An oldie, and to my surprise, a goodie! I remember my mom reading this book when I was little, so I borrowed her copy and finished it in about a day. Not to spoil it, but I thought this book would be a lot more racy than it was? It’s about a teen girl hired to be a maid at the famous painter Vermeer’s house. I thought this book was about their illicit affair but it was much more tame. 8.5The New Fuck You edited by Eileen Myles
This book, like lots of essay collections, was pretty hit or miss. There were many essays in here that I absolutely loved, and many that I felt were outdated and hard to read. I will commend Myles on including a wide variety of essays on the lesbian experience; many topics were explored, from violence to gender to politics. 6The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I hate to say it, but this book is just as good as people say it is. It is a quick, entertaining read that kept me on the edge of my seat. It reminded me a bit of the show Hacks, and also a book I read last year called Lady Romeo. 9Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Lots of mixed reviews on this one, and I have to say I felt quite neutral about this book. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. One of my literary pet peeves is when contemporary novels adopt old time-y Southern hick vernacular; this book laid it on thick for the first half and then not at all for the rest. 7Old Monarch by Courtney Marie Andrews
I really loved this collection of poetry from folk/Americana singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews. I like her music, so I knew I’d probably like this book. The poems range in themes from nature to family to heartbreak. I especially loved her vivid descriptions of the American southwest, a region I really love. 8Tacky by Rax King
If you love Jia Tolentino’s writing, you’d probably like this book as well. Although it was not what I was expecting (I thought this was a collection of analytical essays on tacky pop culture phenomena, but it was more memoir-y), I still enjoyed it. 7.5
What I watched:
House of Gucci
I personally loved this movie! Watch it for nothing if not the outfits.Killing Eve
Nico has been badgering me for so long to watch this show, and I’m so glad I finally did. Violence and gore are absolutely not my thing, but Killing Eve is so addicting that I had to keep watching to find out what happened next. If you love action-packed shows and are one of the only people left on earth who has not watched this Emmy-winning show, do yourself a favor and watch it.The Chair
After finishing Killing Eve, I had to enter my Sandra Oh era for a hot second, which is when I turned to The Chair. I haven’t really heard people talking about this show, but I thought it was pretty good. Sandra Oh stars as the middle-aged chair of the English department at a prestigious university and has to navigate career-related drama, parenthood, and her love life.Yearly Departed
A must-watch! This yearly comedy series which started last year, gathers the best of the best female comedians to give a short stand-up set. Meg Stalter was in this year’s, so of course I had to watch.
What were we all collectively obsessed with this month?