Verbatim

If you do the daily NYT crossword puzzle, perhaps you also do the mini, and you’ve no doubt seen that they recently added a “midi” puzzle too. As you might guess, it’s smaller than the regular puzzle but larger than the mini, and it tends to have some sort of trick or gimmick to it. It’s generally not hard to solve, and I certainly don’t mind having another puzzle to solve in the evening with my cocktail.

I usually do my Wordle/Connections/Strands thing early in the day when taking a break from work, and lately I’ve added two non-NYT games to the routine. The first is Raddle, which is a takeoff on those old ladder-style word games where you have to change a letter at each successive “rung” to change one word to the next. But this has add a letter, drop a letter, anagram, fill-in-the-blanks, etc.—and the clues are all out of order! If you get stuck working your way down, you can try to start from the bottom up. I think it’s very clever and lots of fun (and if you like it, you can go back and play all the previous games that you missed). After that I play Quintumble (but I ignore the timer, since you know I don’t like to rush when I’m having fun). It’s just a list of five 6-letter words, all jumbled, and you have to sort them out by swapping letters. Really fun.

Another game, which I remember to play only infrequently, is Color Memory Game, and I am shockingly good at it! They show you a color for 5 seconds and then the screen goes black and you have to recreate the color from memory using hue/saturation/brightness slider bars. You can take as long as you want. When you think you’ve got it, it then shows you how close you were on a scale of 1 to 10. I have never scored less than the mid to high 9s! Which I think is surprising, given my aphantasia, but maybe color memory lives in a different part of my brain? It also gives out snarky comments for each one, like “You remembered that color like it owed your money” or “Genuinely unsettling accuracy. Please find a hobby.” I don’t know what the negative comments are because I’ve never had one! Woo-hoo! Anyhow, give it a try and see what you think. Each time you play you get 5 rounds (5 different colors).

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I was very eager to read Fredrik Backman’s latest, My Friends, because I had absolutely loved Anxious People (and A Man Called Ove, although less so). But I didn’t love this one. The main reason was that it was just TOO SAD. I think he was trying to make it less sad by adding humor, but that felt forced to me. There were some really great moments and characters, but overall I give it a thumbs-down, sorry to say. (When our flight was delayed coming home from the Azores last fall, I saw a woman reading My Friends and we got to chatting. She told me about Backman’s “Beartown” series, all about hockey, which I’d never even heard of, so maybe I’ll take a peek at those.)

Next I tried to read two books but disliked them enough to stop after 100 pages (I used to force myself to finish a book no matter how awful, but no longer!). I don’t even remember the titles, but they were both about a millennial/Gen Y-er going through a terrible breakup and trying to be very funny about it. I found them both tedious. But then I read a truly great book called The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. This one had somehow slipped under my radar despite having won tons of awards. Brief summary: “Dysfunctional Irish family grapples with personal crises amidst societal collapse, exploring themes of morality and resilience.” Murray is a fantastic writer, and although the book clocks in at a whopping 656 pages, I never tired of it for a second—in fact, I didn’t want it to end! If you go to the Amazon page linked above, you can read all the accolades—here’s what former WaPo book editor Ron Charles (now on Substack!) had to say: “Anyone who starts The Bee Sting will be immediately absorbed by this extraordinary story. Although Murray is a fantastically witty writer, his empathy with these characters is so deep that he can convey the comedy of their foibles without the condescending bitterness of satire . . . The Bee Sting never fails to dazzle with its colliding coincidences, the great sprawling randomness of life all somehow brought to glamorously choreographed climaxes . . . Every paragraph is marked by Murray’s stylistic brilliance ― and daring.” (And although my links go to Amazon, you can do what I do and go there just to read all the reviews etc. and then get yourself a used copy at Better World Books—they donate to literacy programs with part of the proceeds of each sale!)

The next one up on the teetering pile was Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano (you may recall that I enjoyed her much longer book Hello Beautiful). Here’s the summary: “One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.” Although with a premise like that, you know it’s going to be sad, it’s not the kind of sad that makes me wish I’d never read it (like My Friends above). I really liked this one.

And speaking of plane crashes, last night I started Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty. (I liked her blockbuster Big Little Lies, but What Alice Forgot really knocked my socks off.) I’m only about 40 pages in, but I’m totally hooked. Here’s the premise: On a short (delayed) flight from Hobart to Sydney, Australia, a woman suddenly gets up and starts walking down the center aisle of the plane pointing at people and telling them when and how they’re going to die. I can’t wait to get to my reading chair tonight and keep going.

And you—what games and books are you into these days?

Warning: This is mostly a political rant, which I try to stay away from on this platform. So if you are just here for the cauliflower, scroll on down.

I had never subscribed to The Washington Post until the Idiot-in-Chief’s first term, and then I felt it was important to do whatever I could to support responsible journalism. (I already subscribed to The Boston Globe and The New York Times.) I was pissed off when Jeff Bezos refused to allow the newspaper to endorse Kamala back in 2024, but I kept on, hoping that the many good, solid journalists there could keep fighting the good fight against all odds. This recent round of hundreds of layoffs—fully one-third of the staff, by most counts—was the final straw. No more daily food newsletter from G. Daniela Galarza, and no more Aaron Hutcherson either. No more weekly “Book Club” newsletter from Ron Charles. No more sport desk. No more bureau chiefs in Sydney, New Delhi, Cairo, etc. To wit: Our nation’s capital no longer has a real newspaper. Let that sink in for a minute. And this wasn’t just any newspaper, this was WaPo! Go back and watch The Post (you really can’t beat Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee) or All the President’s Men (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein? Yes, please.).

Anyhow, when it happened, I still wanted to hang in there. A friend who works there (and managed to keep his job … for now) said he wouldn’t blame me one bit if I unsubscribed. But I still stayed. Then Andy rightly pointed out that if everyone did that, then Bezos would say, “See? We fired all those people and didn’t lose any subscribers!” and thus conclude that it was a good decision. As Andy always says, “Vote with your wallet” (or “Vote with your feet”). So I unsubscribed last night and will use my last few weeks to download whatever recipes I still have bookmarked over there (that’s where the cauliflower comes in—see below!). I immediately received a “We want you back” email that had the nerve to say “We hope you’ll reconsider the value of the necessary and important work our journalists do to keep citizens informed. Absolutely nothing has changed about that. In fact, it’s more important than ever.” If I roll my eyes any harder I’ll hurt myself. Boy did they get an earful when I wrote back (although I doubt anyone will actually read it…).

I did the same thing just over a year ago when Target gutted its DEI initiatives. I marched in there, returned the one unopened Target item I still had in my possession, and cut my Target card in half. I have still not bought another thing from them since. Costco, on the other hand, took that opportunity to double down on their own DEI program, and so I went straight from Target to Costco that day and spent several hundred dollars. I will be the first to admit that I am still having great difficulty breaking up with Amazon, but little by little I am finding ways to buy what I need from Costco and Chewy and Better World Books and CVS and wherever else I can. There are still some items I can find only on Amazon, and there are instances when I really do need something overnight, and for those reasons I can’t boycott them entirely as I’d like to. And, sigh, I still shop at Whole Foods, too. But every little bit helps, and I’m really trying to do the right thing as much as I can.

Meanwhile, Daniela Galarza and Ron Charles are both over at Substack now (and Aaron Hutcherson still has a blog). I have some big problems with Substack, but again, we are all trying to do the best we can. (Just google “Substack Nazis” and you’ll get plenty to read—or start with this article from The Guardian. Which reminds me, The Guardian and other good overseas newspapers are also great places to learn what’s really going on in this world, not just what the US mainstream media wants us to know. For instance, TV viewers all over the world got to hear the crowds loudly booing JD Vance at the Olympic games, but here in the States it was muted out. Oh, you thought those sorts of tactics used were used only in places like Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, etc.? Welcome to the new regime.)

Anywhoooo, just chalk it all up to yet another rich white guy taking over something and destroying it—Bezos destroyed WaPo, Elon Musk destroyed Twitter, the Idiot-in-Chief is busy destroying our very democracy as a whole, but also the Kennedy Center, USAid, the Smithsonian, the CDC (whose destruction he subcontracted out to another rich white guy, and all I can ever think about is how the real Robert Kennedy must be writhing in his grave over his son), etc. etc.

OK, so the last WaPo recipe I made was this really delicious cauliflower. I frequently roast cauliflower with just a drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper, but this was an excellent change of pace. I served it alongside this easy-peasy flank steak, which is a recipe I turn to again and again. Yummy photo at the link.

Char Siu Califlower

1 (2-pound) head cauliflower
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon agave syrup or mild honey
1 tablespoon ketchup
1½ teaspoons soy sauce
2 cloves garlic teaspoon, minced
¼ teaspoon five-spice powder

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Pull off or cut away the large leaves from the cauliflower. Trim a slice from the core end, where it’s likely discolored. This next part sounds complicated, but it takes exactly 2 seconds: While holding the cauliflower at a comfortable angle, curved side down, insert the tip of your knife into the core. As you push the knife in farther, gently rock the blade side to side and back and forth. The head should crack and naturally break into two halves. Then cut each half into four wedges. I then trimmed off the biggest core pieces and split some of the wedges into large floret sections.

In a large bowl, stir together the hoisin, sesame oil, honey, ketchup, soy sauce, garlic, and five-spice powder. Add the cauliflower and gently toss and stir to coat each piece well. Spread the wedges out on the lined baking sheet, cut sides down. Smear any remaining hoisin mixture from the bowl onto the cauliflower.

Roast for 15 minutes, then use tongs to turn over each piece and continue roasting for another 15 to 20 minutes, flipping the cauliflower pieces once or twice more (and rotating the baking sheet if your oven has hot spots, like mine). Liquid will appear on the pan, then begin to concentrate, bubble, and thicken. The cauliflower should be richly browned and tender but slightly chewy.

Whoops, I guess I missed half of November and all of December and January. Well, I hope your holidays were happy. We had a small (by our standards) Thanksgiving—just 10 people—but it was nice. (And during the frigid temps we’ve been having, I’ve been delighted that November-Me had the foresight to make and freeze several tubs of turkey soup for February-Me.) Andy and I watched a bunch of movies and TV shows over the long Christmas weekend (more on that below), and for New Year’s Eve I made duck. The recipe is still at that link, but since all my photos are GONE (yes, I’m still bitter about that), here you go:

And while I’m on the subject of duck, yesterday Andy and I popped over to Chinatown to bring home a few meals’ worth of duck, ribs, and fried rice:

Nom Nom Nom.

In December I had to get a new iPhone. I still had a 12, which would no longer update and could barely hold a charge for like 8 minutes, so off I went to the Apple Store. It came with a free trial of Apple TV (and Apple Music, which I don’t see the need for), so we’ve been trying it out.

First, Pete wanted us to watch the first (and last?) season of “Pluribus.” It stars Rhea Seehorn, who we loooooved as Kim in “Better Call Saul.” And we still like her as an actress, but they made her play the most unlikable character imaginable. And not the kind of unlikable character you love to hate, we just plain hated her. The premise was very interesting—an alien virus has taken over the entire world, and now everyone (except for 12 people) shares the same mind and is happy all the time. Seehorn’s character most definitely does not want to be happy all the time. Anyhow, we felt that some episodes really dragged, and the main thing we were waiting to happen (no spoilers here) felt both anticlimactic and rushed. So, we did finish it, but no thumbs up.

Then we watched a few episodes of “The Studio,” starring Seth Rogen as a film studio head. The first episode was hilarious—we loved it! The second episode was dumb—we hated it! The third episode was somewhere in the middle. And that’s as far as we got, although maybe we’ll give it another try. There are many celebrities in it, which is fun—think Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, etc.

And yesterday we watched the first few episodes of “Shrinking,” with Jason Segel as a therapist who is completely falling apart after the death of his wife (but it’s also a comedy, I swear!) and Harrison Ford as his coworker/boss. So far, so good on this one—I think we’ll keep with it. (BTW have I ever mentioned that Andy has an almost frighteningly supernatural ability to identify actors? Honestly, he can see someone on screen for 30 seconds and remember the tiny part in some movie the person had decades ago. In the case of “Shrinking,” there’s a minor character named Derek, who is Jason Segel’s next-door neighbor. He’s in the first episode for a total of maybe 1 minute. But after possibly one-third of that minute, Andy said, “You know who that guy is?” No, I did not. “It’s Ted McGinley, from ‘The Love Boat.’” Yes, Andy recognized him from the 1970s. More on his superpower below.)

That’s it so far for Apple TV unless you can suggest something else we should watch? (And you’re right if you’re kind of surprised that I’m watching TV shows since that’s normally not my thing. Perhaps I’m EVOLVING!)

We also watched a couple of movies. First was “One Battle After Another” with Lovely Leo, who I like very much. He plays a member of a former radical revolutionary group who is now trying to live a normal life with his daughter under the radar. My fave Benicio is in it too, and that’s always a good thing. And in case you were wondering if Sean Penn can play the creepiest character imaginable—no, even CREEPIER—I will tell you that the answer is yes. So this is a really good movie and probably deserves all the awards it’s getting, but it was just too long—almost 3 hours. The book editor in me wanted the film editor to make some judicious, if difficult cuts for everyone’s benefit.

We also watched “The Life of Chuck,” which we thought was just lovely. But even though the three parts of the movie are clearly labeled Act 3, Act 2, and Act 1—IN THAT ORDER—we managed to watch the whole thing and end up totally confused. So I hopped over to Reddit and was immediately like DUH! It was all so obvious as to be almost heavy-handed. So the next morning we watched the whole thing again, just to see how they pulled it off, and liked it even more. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just give the plot synopsis from online: “From childhood to adulthood, Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz experiences the wonder of love, the heartbreak of loss, and the multitudes contained in all of us.” Although it’s adapted from a previously unpublished Stephen King novella, there’s no horror in it at all. In fact, the one part that seems supernatural can also be explained rationally, as someone at Reddit point out beautifully. I of course then had to get the Stephen King collection that has this piece in it, and the movie was perfectly faithful to it. (This may come as a surprise since I don’t really like horror and scary stuff, but I used to read every Stephen King book as soon as it came out. I just loved his writing so much I was willing to put up with the terror. But finally I had to stop—I can’t remember which one it was, maybe The Tommyknockers that put over the edge? But I read ’em all—Carrie, Christine, It, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Cujo, The Stand, etc. etc.) Oh, and one last thing. In Act 1 of the movie, when the main character is a little boy (who grows up in Act 2 to be Tom Hiddleston, a splendid dancer BTW), his old Jewish grandfather is played by an almost unrecognizable (at least at first) Mark Hamill! And his grandmother was on the screen for again, less than 30 seconds, and Andy immediately recognized her as Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend Sloane, even though we hadn’t seen the actress, Mia Sara, in the 40 years since that movie came out, when she was 18. It’s really a little scary.

I still have the New Blog Blues, but we’re getting there. The photos are gone forever (sob, sob), but I have some good news: My list of recipes is back! You can find it over there to the left, in the otherwise nearly barren left sidebar. I was starting to get into a panic regarding Thanksgiving, but now we can all relax.

While I have you, I recently made two very different chicken recipes in the ol’ slow cooker, which I tend to forget all about because I keep it in the far recesses of a lower cabinet, but it really is such a great tool. These are both from the Times, and both turned out yummy. No photos not because I’m traumatized about losing all my photos but because slow cooker chicken tends to just look kind of gloppy. There are professional photos at the links below.

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This first one I served with steamed white rice and sautéed baby bok choy.

Slow Cooker Hoisin Garlic Chicken

2½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
¼ cup hoisin sauce
6 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar,
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Sliced scallions, for garnish

Combine all the ingredients (except the scallions, duh) in a slow cooker. Stir well. Cover and cook on high for about 2 hours.

Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a large bowl.

Pour the sauce into a small saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook at a vigorous simmer until reduced and syrupy, 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, using two forks, coarsely pull apart and shred the chicken. Pour the reduced sauce over the chicken and toss to coat. Top with scallions.

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We prefer burritos to tacos, so I served these with tortillas, salsa, guac, sour cream, and pickled red onions.

Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos

1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 to 4 chipotles (I used 2, which was plenty hot for us) from a can of chipotles in adobo, finely chopped, plus 2 tablespoons adobo sauce
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
Juice of 1 lime

Combine the chicken, honey, onion power, garlic powder, cumin, salt, and chipotles with adobo sauce in a slow cooker. Stir well. Cover and cook on low for 3 to 5 hours.

Using two forks, coarsely pull apart and shred the chicken in the sauce. Stir in the black beans and lime juice. Cover and let the beans warm through, about 5 minutes.

Microbes, really? Yes, but first a very quick book review: I at last allowed myself to read and savor the final book in Claire North’s fabulous Odyssey trilogy. This last volume begins right where the second one left off: Odysseus has finally come home to Ithaca! It is fantastic. I just can’t say enough about this series. If, like me, you loved Circe and Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, wait till you get your hands on these. Start with Ithaca (told by Hera), then House of Odysseus (told by Aphrodite), then The Last Song of Penelope (told by Athena). (Oh, new blog, I’m trying to love you even though all my photos are gone and all my links are broken! Sigh. First volume review here, second volume review here, Circe review here, Song of Achilles review here.) You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, this is apparently my alter ego:

OK, so now two things about microbes as they relate to nutrition:

As you know, I edit mostly cookbooks. Some of them are all about pies or chicken or cocktails or slow cookers or whatever, but some of them are more health-related. That could mean a book addressing a particular health concern, like prediabetes or food allergies, but often it’s just about how to eat “healthy,” whatever that looks like on any given day (it changes with the seasons, as you’ve no doubt noticed). I’ve done plenty of books that sound pretty sensible, plus a slew of fad diet books that made me roll my eyes. So, somewhere or other I read a pretty interesting idea. It was talking about how we have trillions of good-guy microbes in our gut, and they all might want to feast on a little something different. This book proposes that you try to eat 30 different plants each week. Which sounds kind of hard, but it’s really not! Think of a salad: You might have lettuce, cukes, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers—that’s 5 right there! But instead of buying a clamshell box of just red leaf lettuce, buy the one with red and green mixed—or, better yet, buy the “spring mix” that has several different varieties, plus baby spinach. If you usually have a handful of almonds as a snack, have a handful of almonds and cashews. Instead of just frozen strawberries in your smoothie, throw in a mix of frozen strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. (And don’t forget that grains are plants too—so if you like Dave’s Killer Bread as much as I do, you’re getting something like 21 different plants in each slice of toast, which pretty much seals the deal.) Anyhow, it’s kind of an interesting thing to think about, and I now enjoy seeing if I can add a few more plants to my weekly menu—even if it’s just a sprig of parsley or watercress as a garnish on your plate at a restaurant, that counts! And if you’re at a salad bar, throw in a bite or two of things you normally don’t get—some red onion, sliced celery, a few bean sprouts. You get the idea.

Next: I subscribe to a few email newsletters from The Washington Post, and one from back in July had what I consider kind of earth-shattering news. I can’t seem to link to wherever this appears at the Post website, but here you go:

Something happens when certain carbohydrates cool down, specifically the holy trinity of carbs: white pasta, potatoes, and rice. They turn into a source of resistant starches. Resistant starches aren’t the same thing as fiber, but they can have a similar effect. They ferment in your colon and feed your gut microbes. A resistant starch lives up to its name in that it’s a carbohydrate that resists digestion in the small intestine. Some foods are already rich in resistant starch, such as beans and oats. And some have more resistant starch when they are green and unripe, such as bananas. 

And then there are foods that magically transform into resistant starches. When you eat a bowl of hot rice or pasta, what typically happens is your blood sugar will spike, only to crash later on, potentially making you feel gross and sad. But when we cool pasta, rice, and potatoes after they are cooked, the starch’s molecular structure changes. This process is called retrogradation, which is a pretty fantastic science trick. The now-cooled starch bypasses the small intestine and instead makes its way down to the colon, like fiber. And reheating these carbs doesn’t change its benefits, either, which means you don’t have to eat cold pasta, potatoes, and rice.

At first I didn’t believe this, but I googled and found it discussed in numerous prestigious medical journals. And just a few weeks after I read that, I was editing a cookbook written by a nutritionist, and she talked about it too! So it turns out that those supposedly “unhealthy” white potatoes, pasta, and rice are actually good for you—if you cook them first, let them cool, and then either reheat them or eat them cold. Game changer! (But for heaven’s sake, you can still eat them freshly cooked—they’re delicious and plenty good for you, just maybe not at every meal…)

Hi, everyone!

I apologize for the lack of, um, ambience here. It’s like I got a new apartment and invited everyone over but didn’t bother unpacking anything! I still need to do some decorating. But in the meantime, I regret to inform you (and myself) that my 20+ years of photos did not make it over here in the Great Typepad to WordPress Migration. So if you want to see photos of my kids when they were in elementary school or that awesome meal I cooked, you can ask me and I’ll try to dredge it up on my phone … but it ain’t gonna be on the blog. I’m nearly sick about it but trying to “let it go” as the song says. I’d like to try to get a recipe list up if I can, as that is as useful to me as it is to you (likely more so) and will let you know if that happens.

In the meantime, I found a scrap of paper with a list of movies scrawled on it, which suggests to me that I had intended to review them for you. So:

The Accountant: Andy had seen the trailer for The Accountant 2, so we watched the first one first. It was good—your usual exciting shoot-em-up but with a side of autistic anti-hero (played by Ben Affleck). And Anna Kendrick, who … well, what’s not to like? The interesting thing was that throughout the movie I kept asking Andy a particular question about a particular character and he kept not answering (no spoilers here!). Turns out that the trailer for Part 2 (which I had not seen) had a big revealer if you hadn’t seen Part 1. So I got a nice surprise ending, and he got a bitten tongue for not caving and telling me throughout. (Oh, and we still haven’t watched Part 2, which precipitated this whole thing.)

The Phoenician Scheme: If you like Wes Anderson, you will love this, because this is about as Wes Anderson as Wes Anderson gets. Two points: Benicio Del Toro (LLOOVVEE) is in every freaking scene, and that is reason enough to watch. Also, there’s a new girl on the block! Mea Threapleton joins the usual crew and is absolutely fantastic. It doesn’t matter what the plot is. Loved this.

The French Dispatch: I was so high on Wes Anderson that I decided it was time to watch the only one of his films I had somehow missed. Well, ugh. I’m sorry, but DID NOT LIKE. It should’ve been right in my wheelhouse because it’s kind of a love letter to fans of The New Yorker (me!), but what can I say. It felt disjointed and not interesting. Sorry.

Freakier Friday: A bazillion years ago, Steph, Julie, and I went to see Freaky Friday, so it seemed only fitting that we all go together to see the sequel. It did not disappoint! Frankly, I could watch Jamie Lee Curtis wait for her nail polish to dry and be happy; she was excellent, and so was Lindsay Lohan. And there were many little treats and “Easter eggs” for those of us who had seen the original. It’s exactly what you think it’s going to be, and that’s a good thing.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: I don’t know why it took me so long to get to this one because Frances McDormand is one of my favorite actresses of all time, and she is a major badass in this! She plays a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered 6 months earlier. She is dissatisfied with the way the local police chief (Woody Harrelson) has handled the case—or not handled it, more precisely, so she buys space on three billboards to complain about him. Although the subject matter makes this the polar opposite of a feel-good movie, there’s quite a bit of quirky, small-town humor, and I found myself laughing quite a bit (and getting weepy, too). I liked this one a lot.

Hold on to your hats, but Andy and I went on a REAL vacation—like, on a plane with passports, just like in the old days! (We’ve taken only short driving trips since covid…) We went to the Azores! And if you are feeling like you recently heard of the Azores in the news, that’s because Hurricane Gabrielle showed up there just a few hours before we were supposed to fly back home yesterday morning. Luckily our flight was delayed only 3½ hours, and then we were on our way.

Before I tell you about the trip, I wanted to mention something I’d never heard of but learned about on TikTok (!): If you are a USian traveling overseas, you should download the MPC (Mobile Passport Control) phone app for your flight home. It lets you bypass even the people waiting in the Global Entry line! It takes less than a minute to set up, and then you whiz through US customs—we waited maybe 30 seconds in all! (The woman on TikTok said she has even told people waiting in the Global Entry line to download it right then and there and then switch to the MPC line!) Go to your phone’s app store and look for the MPC app from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It’s free.

Well, we had the most wonderful week! I was surprised to learn that the largest of the Azores islands, São Miguel, has an international airport—it’s about a 5-hour direct flight from Boston! That made more sense when I saw on the map that the Azores are much farther out in the Atlantic than I had imagined—something like a 2½-hour flight from Lisbon. Anyhow, even though it is the largest, it’s still quite small—40 miles by 9 miles—and so very doable. We rented a car and easily explored most of the island.

The scenery/landscape/terrain/whatever you want to call it is just breathtaking—mountains, valleys, gorges, volcano craters, lakes, and lagoons, plus ocean all around. There are miradouros (scenic viewpoints) everywhere. Some have lots of signage and even a little parking lot, while others you just happen to come across, but all of them are just unbelievably beautiful. And the lushness can’t be adequately described—GREEN GREEN GREEN everywhere, and lots of trees and flowers that I couldn’t identify. Many smaller roads are wall-to-wall hydrangeas, although we were just past peak blooming season. Here are just a few photos, although they barely do justice to the real thing.

This is in the northwest, where the Miradouro da Vista do Rei offers a panoramic view of the volcanic crater that is now home to the Blue Lake and the Green Lake (see?!):

And a little farther down, from the Miradouro do Cerrado das Freiras:

And all the way down:

I think this is the Miradouro Lagoa de Santiago:

In the middle of the island is Furnas, home to lots more active volcanic stuff, including numerous steaming geothermal swimming pools (we went in one!), and also geysers:

The drive out to the northeast corner, Nordeste, was absolutely spectacular. I kept making Andy stop the car so I could get a photo:

This is the Miradouro de Santa Iria:

And that day we also visited Ribeira dos Caldeirões, a gorgeous botanical park with waterfalls:

We also soaked for an hour in 100°F mineral hot springs, and I dug my toes into the black volcanic sand at a few (ocean) beaches, where we watched surfers. And everyone we met was soooo nice! I remembered that from our trip to Lisbon some years ago—they’re friendly and knowledgeable and helpful, with no “attitude.” But once again, I found the Portuguese language positively confounding to understand! I have pretty good French, Italian, and Spanish, so I could identify lots of words on signs, menus, etc., but I could understand nothing that I heard. It just sounds so different from the other Romance languages! But no fear, because everyone speaks English there, even in the tiniest villages—including seemingly all the European tourists we met. It always impresses me when, say, a Portuguese waiter and a French tourist can communicate in English, or a Portuguese hotel clerk and a German tourist, or whatever.

Summer is the high season, and we were very glad not to be there when it’s overrun with tourists (and hot); even so there were occasionally 10 or even 20 people at some of the miradouros we went to, and we were told that it’s almost unmanageably crowded in August. So I think September/October is ideal, or else May/June, which is when my chiropractor and his wife went (that’s how I got the idea!). The temperatures were in the high sixties and low seventies every day. It does tend to rain at some point almost every day, so you’ll want to take along your raincoat as well as sunglasses no matter what the weather looks like in the morning when you set out! On our way to Furnas, the Miradouro Pico do Ferro was 100% fogged in when we visited, but on our way back at the end of the day it had started to clear up up, so we stopped again and were rewarded with this splendid rainbow!

We stayed in Ponta Delgada, the main town near the airport, but our hotel was at the marina, about a 15-minute walk to the restaurants downtown. That allowed us to have this lovely view from our balcony of the ocean and boats and also be out of the hubbub and nightlife of the main downtown area:

How about the food, you ask? Absolutely wonderful. The Azoreans really pride themselves on taking advantage of their local foods, like amazing cheese (there are cows everywhere on the island!), wine, pineapple, tea, and of course fish. They are very serious about responsible stewardship of the seas. We ate fish every night, and these were not the varieties we have in Boston. We ate bluemouth rockfish and triggerfish and forkbeard and ray and amberjack and blackspot seabream and, my favorite (to say and to eat), cuckoo wrasse! One restaurant in the marina was exceptionally good—we ate there twice, on our first and last nights. The lengthy catch-of-the-day menu on the blackboard was so overwhelming that the waiter took us out back to the kitchen to show us all the actual fishes and describe each one in great detail!

Our hotel had a lavish breakfast buffet every morning, with fresh cheese, butter, fruit, beautiful pastries, natural yogurt and granola and smoothies etc., and the “Samurai” preparing all types of eggs to order. I fell in love with the presunto (Portuguese smoked ham—think Spanish jamón or Italian prosciutto) wrapped around wedges of perfect cantaloupe. We did not need lunch on any day! While I’m talking about our hotel, it was far more luxe than I had expected—the kind of place where the valet fetches towels and water bottles for you on your way out for the day. We even took advantage of the spa—on the day before we left, after fretting all morning about the impending hurricane, I had this 90-minute treatment: “Body scrub with green tea, sea salt, fresh mint, and lemon, followed by invigorating massage with Azorean laurel.” Reader, I had not a care in the world after that…

And here I am relaxing at the hotel’s rooftop bar, which we visited every day around 5pm for a cocktail and to recap our adventures.

We saw and did a lot in 5 days (more than I’ve mentioned here), and most of it I’d happily do again anytime, but there is also plenty more that we didn’t get to. I would be thrilled to go back to São Miguel.

In nervous anticipation of Typepad ending service on September 30, I’ve decided to park my blog here on WordPress—and wouldn’t you know it, the name Verbatim was available! If your’e reading this, I’m very excited! Please let me know in the comments or email me at wisekaren@gmail.com. I think my 21+ years’ worth of Typepad posts successfully migrated here as well, which has me positively giddy. (I was particularly despondent at the thought of losing all my recipes…)

I have a few bugs to work out—namely, my username. A million years ago a few other editors and I started a very short-lived WordPress blog about editing and words and whatnot. My oh-so-clever username was Lili Von Stet. And apparently that will forever be my name here at WordPress, at least until I figure out how to change it to the usual WiseKaren as I am used to being known. And I haven’t figured out how to add photos yet. All in good time, I hope…

Gah, I just got an email from Typepad, this blog's host, that they are shutting down at the end of September! There are instructions for exporting all my posts since March 2004 (!!!!!), but I'm nervous about it. Hopefully I can figure out somewhere else to park this thing, for the 8 or 10 of you who still read it… Stay tuned.

I updated you last time on books and movies, so now it’s time for food! (Although I realized I omitted a movie we saw: “Mickey 17,” which stars Robert Pattinson as a “disposable,” meaning he has agreed to allow his body to be modified so that every time he dies, he comes back regenerated. They test drugs on him, send him on dangerous missions, etc., and every time he dies an awful death and then wakes up in a new iteration of himself. Yes, it’s sci fi, but it’s also very dark comedy, and I do really like watching Pattinson. It also stars Mark Ruffalo as an over-the-top narcissistic idiot of a politician (merge our current prez with the Meryl Streep character in “Don’t Look Up” for a rough idea) and Toni Collette as his wife.

And so on to food! We were up in Ogunquit for the weekend and somehow managed to not get lobster rolls! But I did have some splendid fish tacos, and my favorite entree of all time, anywhere, which is the shellfish risotto at the Front Yard, and which I get every single time we go up there. I have never had anything like it anywhere that comes even close.

Oh, and then of course fried clams at Bob’s on the way home, because that’s the law. 

And before we get to the recipes, I wanted to share a tip I learned. I was making a recipe (it was meh, so I won’t bother sharing it here) that called for ⅓ cup rice flour. That’s not something I keep at home, and I wasn’t thrilled about buying a whole package for such a small amount. But then I learned that you can simply blitz raw white rice in a blender or food processor until it’s pulverized, then pass it through a fine-mesh sieve. Instant rice flour! It worked great. Too bad the recipe was a downer—but now I’m even more glad I didn’t spring for a whole bag of rice flour at the market!

OK, now I’ll share two recipes that are keepers. The first one I’ve already made more than once—it’s very quick and easy and tasty. I tried Trader Joe’s frozen Spanish-style rice for the first time, and it was a perfect accompaniment—4 minutes in the microwave, and Bob’s your uncle. I don’t have a photo of this dish, but you can use your imagination.

Easy Chicken Tacos (although we did burritos instead)

3 garlic cloves, minced
Juice of 1 lime
1 tablespoon vinegar-based hot sauce (I like Cholula)
1 teaspoon onion powder
4 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 1½ pounds)
For serving: warm tortillas or taco shells, guacamole or sliced avocado, pico de gallo or salsa, pickled red onions, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, more lime juice, more hot sauce, etc.—whatever floats your boat

In a large bowl, combine, the garlic, lime juice, hot sauce, onion powder, 2 tablespoons of the oil, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and ½ teaspoon ground black pepper and mix well. Add the chicken and toss to coat on all sides.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken in a single layer and cook until browned and the edges begin to crisp, 6 to 8 minutes per side. Transfer to a cutting board. Turn the heat down to medium-low, carefully add ½ cup water, and scrape up all the browned bits with a wooden spatula.

Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and return them to the skillet, still over medium-low heat. Toss to coat in the pan sauce and cook, stirring frequently, for 3 more minutes. Serve on tortillas or in taco shells with all your favorite toppings.

 ******      

And here’s something very different that came out swell! Leftovers were excellent too.

Muffaletta Roll-Ups

½ cup pitted green olives (Don’t be like me and accidentally buy unpitted—what an annoying task pitting is!)
½ cup Italian giardiniera mix, drained (This comes in a jar near the pickles and whatnot. It usually has carrots, cauliflower, celery, peppers, etc.)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs
1 (1-pound) ball pizza dough
¼ to ⅓ pound thinly sliced provolone cheese
¼ to ⅓ pound thinly sliced salami 
¼ to ⅓ pound thinly sliced ham, capicola, etc.
¼ to ⅓ pound thinly sliced mozzarella cheese
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Combine the olives, giardiniera, garlic, and Italian herbs in a food processor and pulse until chunky and small.

Spread out a large piece of parchment paper and flour it. (I could’ve used more flour, as I ended up with a very sticky situation when it came time to roll the whole thing up.) On the parchment, roll out the pizza dough into a rectangle about 1o x 14 inches. (There are some nice process shots at the link above.)

Top the dough with a layer of provolone, leaving a 1-inch border on three sides and 2 or 3 inches on one short side. Lay the salami on top of the cheese, then the ham. Using a slotted spoon, spoon the olive-vegetable mixture evenly on top. Top with the mozzarella.

Carefully roll up the dough, starting from the short side with the 1-inch border and tucking in anything that falls out. Seal the dough when you get to the end and leave it seam side down.

Brush the beaten egg all over the roll. Cut 3 slits in the top of the roll to help release steam so it doesn’t explode too much. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds.

Transfer the parchment and roll to a rimmed baking sheet and bake until nicely browned on top, 20 to 25 minutes. Let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes, then slice into 2-inch portions.