Friday Flames: Under pressure
Will we outlive this relentless chaos? And other thoughts about pacemakers, chopped liver, dog moms, eating the BEACH, and dyeing Easter potatoes.
How's your week going? After we push send on this, we’re going to step out and stock up on stuff like vanilla extract and coffee beans before 1) tariffs send prices through the roof; and 2) conglomerate greedflation sends prices through the roof of the apartment above us. (Remember when the Mythbusters guys built up 40 tons of pressure in a water heater before it shot through the house? Like that.)
That’s the thing about prolonged descents: You never appreciate the level you’re at until you fall below it. Remember when everyone was super pissed about the price of eggs? That seems like quaint history, just like it will next week when we’re all pining for this halcyon time when stock indices were only losing 2,000 points a day.
It’s the kind of thing that’s really disrupting our sleep patterns right now. Apparently, being in your 50s offers two overnight options:
having three hours of insomnia and waking up exhausted, or
conking out for 10 hours and waking up exhausted.
So what’s the treatment here? Less blue-screen time? Melatonin? Magnesium? Maybe lay off all the vanilla and coffee?
Whether you’re not sleeping or your food budget is so screwed that you’re planning to dye Easter potatoes, we keep thinking about all the dummies who will still believe all this chaos is Biden’s fault. In a few months, we’ll have stopped using phrases like “what am I, chopped liver?” because chopped liver will have become the go-to elegant entrée for your daughter’s wedding. And yet, these older dudes who parrot the astonishingly wrong Jim Cramer tell us the tariffs will bring in "billions in foreign investments." Because that worked out so very frigging well in 1930.
You keep on waiting for that, Big Guy. We'll be in the bunker, rage baking with our vanilla extract stockpile and wishing we'd done more with our public schools while we still had them.
Embers in the News
Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:
Jesus was on to something The soles of the foot contain 600 sweat glands per square centimeter of skin, so you should wash them every day.
Are our kids done with situationships? Gen Z may have realized that any “relationship” can be confusing and end badly, no matter what you call it.
Remember to test your blood A new blood test for Alzheimer's disease is not only highly predictive, it also indicates how far it has progressed.
It works on hearts of every size A new, tiny pacemaker can be injected into the body by syringe and dissolves after it’s no longer needed.
Currently reading
Magda read the absolutely stunning, perfect Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and was eviscerated by the lush, fetishistic descriptions of stay-at-home motherhood. It was so extremely satisfying that she thinks watching the movie version might ruin the afterglow. She also just started Hate Won't Win by Mallory McMorrow, Magda’s state senator whom she is thrilled to support to become the next U.S. Senator from Michigan. The book gives a good glimpse of what made McMorrow get involved in politics in the first place and why she wants more people of good faith to get involved.
After The Power Broker, a 1,344-page tome about high-stakes political donnybrooks, everything about Anne Lamott’s pithy, sentimental Somehow hit just right. Newly 70, Lamott is focused on the very appealing desire to boil her life down to gratitude—for her son, grandson, new husband, and other simple yet essential pleasures.
Currently watching
Doug is a sucker for behind-the-scenes takedowns of neurotic celebrity gasbags (like The Larry Sanders Show) and can usually handle Cringe TV (like Curb Your Enthusiasm). But it took him four tries to get through the second episode of The Studio, just because it’s painfully obvious how tragically the many unforced errors are headed for disaster. (Maybe because there’s a bit of that going around now.)
Magda and Mike think the current season of Top Chef, the first with Chef Kristen Kish, is a breath of fresh air. Kristen not only focuses on being honest and kind, but the new power/attention dynamic of Kristen, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio makes the show feel more professional and less sensationalistic without Padma playing the sexualized disciplinarian. It seems a little odd, though, to wad up all of Canada’s radically different regional styles of cuisine into just one season. Magda could see five seasons in Canada alone.
Currently cooking
Magda and Mike remade some of their favorite recipes—such as Mike's butter chicken and Magda's kung pao chicken—with tofu. Both came out well, and Mike's habit of cooking for a crowd means they have leftovers for days and days. Magda also made chickpea socca, a fried flatbread that needs more salt than the recipe calls for.
Doug has spent this week experimenting with the many permutations that start with a BLT. Biggest hits include the BLAST (bacon, leeks, avocado, spinach, tomato), the BEACH (bacon, egg, arugula, cheese, and harissa), and the TOBACCO (tomato, onion, bacon, avocado, cheese, chipotle, and olive oil).
Thanks for reading and seriously, have a BLAST.
Magda and Doug