Friday Flames | 10.27.23
A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about anagrams, archaeology, freedom, love, solitude, and "rolling up into your Libby."
Them apples
You may have noticed that this newsletter now references the meals we cook (or try to cook) each week. Magda’s current project is apples, and how many ways she can prepare the thousand or so she picked while our son was visiting.
We’ve discussed apples before, but this is different. This is Apple Season. And even though that apple-picking bag they sell you seems small, when you dump it out you have apples for weeks. Magda has tried three different apple cake recipes, all with problems. Then she added chopped apples to one of her favorite Depression-era cake recipes (with oil, vinegar, and baking soda but no eggs or butter), but the cake deflated. (Or "concertina'd," as Paul Hollywood would say.)
So now, she's back to the old standby of apple pie: Make a double crust. Peel and slice a bunch of apples. Sauté them in butter, cinnamon, and a touch of sugar to get the juices out. Cool down and toss with more sugar, salt, nutmeg, cardamom, and more cinnamon. Deposit gloop into the crust, affix the top, and bake. Eat often, throughout the day. Take long, daily walks to work it off. Repeat.
Bonus points for getting involved with a person who thinks making apple pie is a miraculous task, so you bake one and they're completely astounded.
Dipping our toes into Club Thread
We’re now on Threads! Is this life-affirming news? Hardly. Threads is just another plaything of another feckless billionaire, who seems slightly more stable than that other billionaire who snuffed the bird. But the people we’ve connected with over there are fun and curious and helpful, which is still the only reason to use social media.
Anagram of the week
Doug procrastinates during his writing projects by anagramming people’s names. Magda is unimpressed, even though MAGDA ZARIN anagrams to AMAZING! RAD!
This week on the podcast
In 2008, Elizabeth Mosier cleaned out her parents' home quickly and under emotional duress. Her memoir explains how her archaeological training "saved her life."
Episode 21: "The things that are most important are the things that get broken."
Listen now (63 mins) | After her first day volunteering as an archaeological technician at The President’s House in Philadelphia, author Elizabeth Mosier ended up spending seven years exploring meaning behind the artifacts she found and cared for. Her memoir, Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home
News from Podcast Alums
On Wednesday, Episode 14 guest
“Stewart” Reynolds posted photos of his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, presumably to discuss Canada, Stupidity, and wherever they intersect.
Currently reading
Magda read If We Break, the Kathleen Buhle Biden memoir, when it rolled up into her Libby. Hunter Biden displays all the traits of a classic narcissist, and Magda can't be the only reader who had to cut away to Wikipedia to find out when Kathleen finally got away from him. The whole memoir seems very Of An Age: women 10 years older than Kathleen would have just buckled down and resigned themselves to the life, and women 10 years younger would have just walked out when he moved them to Delaware. Gen X thought we were so cool and tough and ironic, but we still walked right into the meat grinder. Anyway, Kathleen is great and seems free now, so the memoir is an HEA. Magda also followed her on Instagram.
Doug spent much of last week down a James Baldwin rabbit hole, reading about the social structures we build in the fruitless effort to deny that freedom is unbearable, love does whatever it wants, and torment unites us all. It’s time to watch I Am Not Your Negro and The Price of the Ticket again.
Currently watching
Drafting off his Colorado camping trip, Doug is enjoying the stories behind Alone (particularly in the Arctic episodes). Behind all the usual over-heightened, reality-show whack-a-doo are people of all backgrounds compelled to train as survivalists and cope with solitude. Plus, did you know you can fell a grown moose and still starve?
Magda is watching, uh, nothing while her Firestick keeps resetting itself. Once again, she's way behind on Days.
Currently cooking
For Magda, see above. Apples out the yin-yang.
Doug has been futzing with this chicken rendang recipe and eventually Thai’d it up a bit by adding a bunch of cilantro to the spice paste. If you add the creamiest coconut milk you can find, this meal’s a humdinger.
Next on the podcast
In Episode 22, writer and entrepreneur
discusses her post-BlogHer life and the many myths that women are told about what their 50s should be.Thanks for reading, and get your shingles shot!
Magda and Doug