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What I ate last week. Ranked #182 in food podcasts in Mexico according to an email I just got.
NEWS / UPDATES
Slightly food related story of the week: https://www.pennlive.com/crime/2026/03/pro-cornhole-player-with-no-arms-or-legs-accused-of-killing-man-dumping-body.html?outputType=amp
I know that the movie Hamnet is about Hamlet but I think it would have won the Oscar for best picture if it had been about someone who sets out net traps to try and catch hams. It’s a ham net. Which could also be referring to the plastic netting that they put around hams in the grocery store. Reminds me of the time my coworker told me that the movie the Revenant was about Leo renovating his house and it looked really good and I thought it was true
I’ve been bamboozled by my county’s garden club, which used to only allow men to join, but they’ve since allowed women to join A GARDENING CLUB. My county’s garden club’s annual plant sale buys all of their herb plants from the same distributor as Whole Foods; I was feeling bad about getting some of my herbs from Whole Foods, and some from the garden expo, but I just feel scammed now. I thought the garden club members were growing and doting over these herbs plants. Many of the plants are grown by the gardeners themselves. There’s a guy who is obsessed with figs and I’ve bought all my big trees from him. Sometimes we email each other. I guess the question is, would I rather have Jeff Bezos or the elderly garden club members make a $1-2 profit? I guess I’d rather give a dollar to the gender inclusive garden club. I’ve met many of the members of the gardening club because I go to the sale every year, but also because there is a lot of crossover with the beekeeping club (which I quit) and it’s mostly elderly women who have completed their master gardener certification but are still showing up to town events with clippings of extremely invasive plants from their garden trying to convince people to take them home and destroy their yards too.
Me being bamboozled by my local gardening club feels similar to when we go to the beachside Friendly Market with Brian’s mother and she marvels over the 400 flavors of jelly that they are clearly sourcing from a factory but Brian’s mother is like “oh my god they make all this jelly” and Brian gets so mad. It makes sense that she believes it though because literally every house around us is producing some flavor of jelly that you don’t want. Even I’m making jelly that I don’t even want. I’ve got strawberry and lemon jam in the freezer from three years ago.
I saw a tree in someone’s yard, surrounded by caution tape, which made it look like someone died in their yard. Beautiful and reminds me of the time one of my friends passed out after a wedding in his suit in his front yard in St. Louis and someone called the police cause they thought it was a dead body.
I glossed over the fact that there was finally cake in the cake room again last week, and chocolate cake of all things, the exact thing I’ve been wanting for weeks now. However, when I got into the cake room, there was one skinny slice left. My coworker saw me eyeing it and asked if I wanted to split it with him. I said no, go ahead and have it; that’s my people pleasing past coming out combined with my not wanting to eat a piece of cake made by a stranger. Another coworker came into the cake room looking for a slice of cake so he ended up splitting it with the original cake-wanter. It was leftover cake from a St. Patrick’s Day party made by someone with diabetes so they couldn’t eat the cake themselves. At first I was like, what a risky thing to make for a party when you can’t try it yourself first, but then I realized that that’s how cakes work. You make it and then you just bring it to a party and hope for the best. You can’t really cut out a piece for yourself. I mean, I guess you could.
Oh and for anyone who didn’t understand the title of last week’s episode when I dogsit this fourteen year old dog I have to “dress” his food with shredded cheese and/or kraft singles and/or pepperoni to get him to eat it. It’s incredible that he’s made it to fourteen, but maybe it’s all the preservatives that he’s consuming that are keeping him alive. Also he has a pickle wearing a santa hat that he got for christmas and is enjoying, and just last week got a squeaky plush bottle of sparkling rose. Feels like a Lisa Vanderpump creation. She should do a dog toy collaboration in the style of when Bret Michaels had a line of pet toys at PetSmart and my sisters got me something for christmas for my cat: https://amagicalmess.com/bret-michaels-pets-rock/
If I had to name an episode after my cats, particularly my deaf cat named Weeble Wobble or Noodle, or rather if I had to title a biopic for them, I’d probably call it “While You Were Sleeping” after the Sandra Bullock movie because they’re always asleep and it would just be footage of my life with them sleeping in the background. He’s a monster who is responsible for producing some of the worst smells ever created. And Daddy’s breath typically smells like he’s been drinking piss.
Bean research: I watched a lot of bean videos this week because in the past when i’ve cooked dried beans they tend to fall apart. I think that I cooked them at too high of a temperature and/or was usually using old beans. Overcook them a little because they will firm back up once they cool is one tip I heard somewhere. I watched a Helen Rennie video where she cooks giant or gigante beans from Rancho Gordo. WF has bulk organic dried gigante for $6.69/LB
https://www.ranchogordo.com/products/royal-corona-bean
https://www.ranchogordo.com/products/california-corona .
Sunday recap: made the original pork meatballs in a tart, thai red curry sauce that I wanted. Used my vegan pineapple fish sauce for the first time with apple cider vinegar, some soy sauce, and some sugar.
Hatch burritos in Durham: Austin breakfast taco aficionado friends said it was just ok. French fry friend.
Hyperfix passionfruit episode. Passionfruit tastes like raspberries to me. I want to recommend this podcast but I’m also not sure if I’ll keep listening. I liked reply all before they got cancelled. But listening to Alex from reply all felt different and performative. I saw this TikTok video about television audition styles changing over time from announcer / performative voice to conversational like on the office to now deadpan or distracted / on your phone. I was listening to straightiolab guys on las Culturistas and heard the difference in their tones and where they are on these scales and understood why I stopped listening to las Culturistas. Alex in hyper fixed falls more in the performative theatrical forced laugh conversation even when he was recording himself.
My dining alone in Baltimore episode is getting a lot of traction. Apparently people want to hear about veal agnolotti that honestly tasted like chef boyardee
SCENTS
Brian has been wearing a face lotion that smells so strongly that when he puts it on his face the cats disperse. It smells like he’s pointing a bottle of Febreze at his face and pulling the trigger.
I keep happening upon trendy boutique fragrance houses: Lore (who according to Reddit is just a marketing ploy and will be gone in a year), Clue (who actually launched via Tusk)
Daddy’s legs smelled like an airplane
INTERNET
90 Day: Before the 90 Days: This nightmare of a person from Miami who owns hundreds of bikinis named Elise goes to Australia to meet a man and they go out on a date get chicken schnitzels (which they call “snitties”) and the sandwich was even taller than Kate’s slider that had the dimensions of a peppergrinder from America’s Culinary Cup. Guys let’s remember to consider human anatomy when we’re creating food for human consumption.
Not food related but Joe Giudice (RHONJ) has infiltrated my TikTok algorithm. Apparently he was deported and lives in the Caribbean now and has the ability to find you a boat, van, or bus in the Bahamas, all you have to tell him is how many people you have and he will find you a van or bus that will hold that many people. I have no plans to charter a van or bus in the Bahamas but it is not stopping me from watching these videos. I need to finish RHONJ because the season I left off on, he definitely hadn’t been deported yet so I have a lot to catch up on.
Nightmare eating experience https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8bX58RH/
Better version of the jimmy dean nightmare casserole https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8b9NS5r/
Someone commented under a video of a hairdresser giving a horrendous haircut “where is your salon? I want to open a hat shop next door”
I’m watching Lisa Kudrow’s original season of The Comeback. Brian put it on and I immediately yelled 2004? He looked it up and it was released in 2005. Identifying media and music by year is one of my favorite hobbies. Got good at it when I had to date things in archives but also just from watching TV all the time.
Anyway the reason I’m bringing it up is that there’s a character on the show that is eating the 2004 version of oreos and they look so fat and divine compared to 2026 oreos. There’s plenty of coverage of how double stuffed oreos are just regular oreos from 2004. It’s amazing that Oreo Thins are still able to exist; pretty soon they’ll just be regular oreos.
I’m into this show. It’s shot in the style of The Office and Lisa said she was inspired by the office. Same era. She has a camera crew following her around for a reality show while she has a small role on a sitcom show. Feels improvised. They play a Destiny’s Child song at one point and it reminded me of the time in about the year 2001 when I reluctantly went over to a classmate’s house for the first time and she and her sister had a small room where they each had a computer and she only had one mp3 file on the computer: “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” by Destiny’s Child, so she hit play and every time it ended she hit play again for about four hours.
Top Chef Season 23 Episode 3
We open with a scene of one of the contestants, Jennifer, who is competing alongside her husband, telling us that her 11 year old nephew peer pressured her into jumping off a rope swing and she hurt her arm. Damn an 11-year-old on TV is nuts. She ends up leaving to get an x-ray.
Emeril Lagasse is the guest celebrity. Why does he talk like that? I had a high school teacher with the same way of speaking, like she was sucking on candy. Also, have you rewatched his old live cooking show? He’s a creep.
Livermush is the secret quickfire ingredient. There is a livermush festival in NC that I keep on my calendar but never go to. Everyone is losing their minds. Scrapple is good, so is liverwurst. We know a Microsoft employee who bought land near us and raises a few pigs every year to process the meat and we would feed his pigs watermelons in exchange for sausage, pulled pork, and scrapple. My parents have started eating liverwurst again after the Boar’s Head fiasco. The worst of the factories were actually super close to me. They’re like “we cleaned it” but I’m good.
Someone made a bahn mi which was super smart. Livermush benedict was cool. Nana made french toast and it flopped. Anthony won for pairing livermush with tomatoes which I thought was the most boring dish. Very much a “restaurant” dish.
Elimination challenge is to feature two items that have been dyed with natural dyes to represent the textile industry’s history in NC. Tricolor pasta is an option, Brian’s favorite. He’s always buying the cheapest, shittiest tricolor rotini pasta possible and hoarding them in the cabinet. It’s the only grocery item that he buys besides Coke Zero. Sherry is making a tricolor spaetzle. Brian kept falling asleep and jolting awake any time someone said tricolor pasta.
The music feels a little more fun, a little more club, a little more gay, a little more Bravo. Kristin was complaining that none of the other Bravolebrities on Traitors remembered that she was also on Bravo and I have to admit that I’ve seen every season of Top Chef and constantly forget that it’s a Bravo show so maybe they’re trying to remind us through the music.
Emeril is trying to comprehend the concept of deconstructed lasagna.
Nana is making raw chicken and losing her shit again. She only plated one component of her dish.
Everyone is in the bottom except for three people. Lawrence, who cooks Turkish food, made bao and won the challenge. Everyone else blew it. Especially Nana, who is sent home. Nana is also the name of the dog from Peter Pan. One of the first scenes from the Disney animated Peter Pan is one of the adults putting water in a little white bowl and cupping their hand around it to carry it to Nana and I have a very similar bowl that I like to put water in for my cats and cup my hand around it like I’m a drawing and set it on the floor for them. It’s such a satisfying visual for me.
America’s Culinary Cup Season 1 Episode 4
We’re back in the penthouse that could not be more hideous; looks like we consulted with lisa vanderpump’s furniture company that is somehow still in business; this episode’s commandment is sauce.
1st round must feature a mother sauce: hollandaise, béchamel, velouté, espagnole, or tomate. Diana wins for her squash blossom sauce thickened with masa instead of flour.
America’s Culinary Cup is the straight version of Top Chef. They were like let’s make another food network style competition show for straight audiences based on Top Chef.
There is a reddit thread that is keeping track of mistakes and confessionals per contestant which might be the most interesting aspect of this show
Round 2 is making a mother sauce based on a comfort food from childhood
They make the contestants wash their dishes with Dawn Powerwash and talk about how much they love using the Dawn Powerwash spray bottle at home.
Round 3: Buddha, Malyna, Keith, and Emily are in the bottom and have to make a “motherfucking” sauce with ingredients chosen by the other contestants: white miso, coriander seed, preserved lemons, grapes, vanilla beans, pasilla chiles
Keith is making mole which is smart except he also makes raw chicken which everyone is addicted to doing on 2026 competition cooking shows; that’s the only network cooking show; cooking instruction is over besides Megan Markel who is famously not a cook and then every single account on TikTok which is people doing cooking series; but then he turned it around and everything was fabulous
Malyna goes home for making dry pork and an unbalanced sauce that didn’t showcase all of the ingredients
If Buddha had gone home I would have also
March 23, 2026 (Monday)
8:30am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
9:30am: Friendly Market chicken salad with Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheat crackers.
1:30pm: A bowl of bran flakes with milk and Andy Capp’s Hot Fries.
6:30pm: Leftover pork meatballs in Thai red curry with potatoes and kale over basmati rice and black lentils.
7:30pm: Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
Brian came home with a 12 pack of Diet Coke (he’s a Coke Zero drinker, like a serious one. I remember we met up for dinner with someone once (maggie) and she had a coke zero in her bag and she was like omg i know it’s so crazy, i drink one almost every day and brian and stood there in silence because he drinks 6-8 cans a day). He said he stopped at Dollar General and there was a crowd of people standing around the empty space on the shelf where the Coke Zero usually is making phone calls to their loved ones. This is the new opioid crisis. Sipping Diet Coke after being conditioned to like Coke Zero - Diet Coke tastes like a lime seltzer. It tastes like water. In case I haven’t mentioned it, the main drawback to dating me is the first sip tax, where I get the first sip of every fresh can of Coke Zero that Brian opens, but only if they are ice cold. I think this podcast could be a little more interesting if I stalked Brian and recorded everything he ate and broadcasted it without him knowing. And disguised my voice so he wouldn’t know it was me. I basically already broadcast what he eats daily because I cook for him everyday and he eats our leftovers at work although I’m certain he’s getting secret gas station snacks that I don’t know about. I’d have to collect and sift through the trash in his car and his credit card receipts. I’d also have to hire an accountant to keep track of all the Coke Zeros he drinks in a day. Guys who work in libraries are time travelers from 2005.
March 24, 2026 (Tuesday)
8am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
9am: Leftover pork meatballs in curry over basmati rice and black lentils.
12pm: A bowl of bran flakes with milk.
2:30pm: Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheat crackers.
6:30pm: Shrimp and Alubia Blanca beans with aleppo pepper, chives, and lemon, and olive oil toasted Ideal’s focaccia, made at home.
7:30pm: Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
At this point in the week I don’t really have a ton of groceries; only have spent $300 in groceries, and that includes my Rancho Gordo order, and it’s almost the end of the month. I did eat out a lot more this month though with work travel and friends in town, so my restaurant bill was about three times what I usually spend, mostly because Brian pays for restaurants. Only vegetables I have are some small collards from the NCSU student farm, arugula, carrots, and lemons; some frozen peas and peppers. Frozen shrimp.
Alubia Blanca Beans https://www.ranchogordo.com/products/alubia-blanca-de-san-jose-iturbide
4 hour soak
Cook on medium with 8C soaking liquid for 1 hour; skim and add salt, a halved sprouted red onion, smashed garlic clove, continue cooking for about 3 hours until soft for a total of four hours of cooking time. I take back what I said about 1LB of beans not being enough. It’s plenty.
Lemony Shrimp and Bean Stew by Sue Li
You already knew this was a NYT recipe by the title
Lemony Garlicky Herby Shrimp
5 stars, over 21k ratings
1 tsp fresh lemon zest, 2 TB juice
1 tsp paprika
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
4 TB unsalted butter
2 large leeks or one onion
1 15oz can cannellini beans or other white beans
2C chicken or vegetable stock
2 TB parsley (optional)
Toasted bread for serving (optional)
I basically doubled everything except onion, butter, and stock, subbed chinese chili flakes and aleppo pepper instead of paprika, sub chives for parsley. Do you sub something for something else? How do you say this? Also why do we not salt shrimp in shrimp cocktail? These shrimp were underseasoned.
March 25, 2026 (Wednesday)
7am: Leftover coffee with half & half and a bowl of bran flakes with milk.
11am: Leftover shrimp and beans and a cup of coffee with half & half at the office.
Cake room: NYT Cooking Page-a-Day calendar recipes for Pineapple Ham Pizza, Pan-Fried Tofu with Red Curry Paste, and Vanilla Creme Brulee.
4pm: Two small bags of Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles potato chips.
7pm: Frozen Screamin’ Sicilian pepperoni pizza and romaine lettuce with roasted pepitas, Ideal’s focaccia croutons, parmesan, black pepper, and Brianna’s creamy ceasar dressing, made at home.
7:30pm: Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
I ate my lunch cold because I didn’t want to overcook the shrimp.
Great day for sales at Whole Foods on things I would have bought anyway or have wanted to buy:
Organic garlic and herb flavored water crackers were on “Last Chance” at whole foods so I grabbed four boxes.
Guittard cocoa powder ( Guittard center)
Brianna’s avocado oil creamy caesar dressing
Kalona milk
Food Lion did not have fried chicken tenders which are really cutlets.
March 26, 2026 (Thursday)
8am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
9:30am: A bowl of bran flakes with milk.
10:30am: Leftover frozen pizza.
12:30pm: An olive oil toasted slice of La Farm sourdough with Good Culture chive cream cheese.
6pm: Orrechiette with pancetta, arugula, Alubia Blanca beans, ricotta, lemon, and parmesan, made at home.
7pm: Blue Bell Moollennium Crunch ice cream.
Can’t stay away from chives. This cream cheese was on sale. Almost tasted like chip dip at first but then got very lemony.
Wrestling between what to do with pancetta and ricotta: a tomato-based pasta bake, or a beans and greens with pancetta? The beans and greens might not yield enough for two work lunches for Friday. Combine the two into a white pasta: pasta, ricotta, beans, arugula, lemon
Most of the NYT ricotta pasta recipes say to use 8oz for 1LB pasta
16oz ricotta
1 grated garlic clove
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Garlic powder
Salt & pepper
March 27, 2026 (Friday)
7am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
Cake room: Nothing.
12pm: Food Lion spicy chicken tenders with Cook Out ranch.
6pm: Leftover Alubia Blanca beans with onions, harissa, tomato paste, chives, La Tourangelle olive oil, and parmesan and olive oil toasted La Farm sourdough, made at home.
7pm: Blue Bell Moollennium Crunch ice cream.
It’s 5 dollars for four large chicken tenders, or a very plain chicken sandwich at Food Lion. These tenders are SPICY.
Some good deals on premade ravioli at Food Lion today but after eating lipstick soup I am afraid of purchasing something that might make my dinner taste like a byproduct of the whaling industry
No kombucha so I’m thirsty and want a Mash grapefruit soda which reminds me of walking around New York in the heat https://www.foodservicedirect.com/mash-grapefruit-citrus-zing--16-fluid-ounce----12-per-case-364738.html
March 28, 2026 (Saturday)
8am: Little Waves Coffee with half & half, made at home.
12pm: Jasmine tea, pork dumplings in chili oil, egg drop soup, basil tofu, Chinese greens with garlic, chongqing chicken, and white rice at Taipei 101 in Cary, North Carolina.
5pm: Back to Nature Whole Wheat Harvest crackers with Good Culture chive cream cheese.
7pm: Blue Bell Moollennial Crunch ice cream.
Went thrifting and bought a painting of a basketball. There was a matching painting of a soccer ball and Brian said he was sad to separate them but my ideas needed editing.
This family of women was also at the same thrift stores we were at yelling at each other the entire time and at one point one of them found a book about Tiger Woods and was yelling across the store trying to get her family members to come see the Tiger Woods book but she was ignored
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWbyCjykUd4/?igsh=YTEybDJneGN4OG1t
March 29, 2026 (Sunday)
9am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: Two sunny eggs poached in butter over olive oil toasted La Farm sourdough and Texas Pete garlic hot sauce, made at home.
3pm: Cape Cod sour cream and onion potato chips with dip, hot chicken salad, broccoli salad, white rice, two glasses of La Marca prosecco rose, banana cream pie, and a cup of coffee with half & half at Brian’s parents’ house.
7:30pm: A small pour of Guiness.
Brian’s brother put on a playlist that should have been called “do you want to feel like you’re in an episode of arrested development”
Cape Cod batch had a lot of super layered and folded up chips. Broccoli salad tasted exactly like the broccoli salad from the Whole Foods salad bar. Hot Chicken Salad is also referred to as Ma Ann’s chicken casserole or “Caroline Casserole” because I told Brian’s mom that I liked the casserole to be nice the first time I had dinner at their house and she thought I loved the casserole and makes it for my birthday every year.
Hot Chicken Salad (from Cokesbury United Methodist Church cookbook)
2 cups chopped cooked chicken
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1 can cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1 cup chopped celery
½ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Crumbled potato chips
Cartoon Cake
1(18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1(21 oz) can cherry pie filling
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1(8 oz) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. butter, softened
4 c. confectioners' sugar
1(21 oz) can light cherry pie filling
Preheat oven to 350° Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans
Ignore instructions on cake box. In a large bowl, beat eggs, add 1 can pie filling and combine. Add cake mix and beat until well mixed. The batter will be stiff.
Pour half of the batter into each pan and spread evenly. Bake at 350° for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of cake comes out clean. Cool a couple of minutes, then turn layers out onto cooling rack. Cool completely before icing.
For the icing: beat butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until smooth. Add confectioners sugar and continue beating until smooth.
Ice a layer, add the second layer, and finish icing the cake.
Refrigerate until time to serve. Just before serving, pour the cherry pie filling on top and spread it gently to the edges. A few of the cherries will roll down the sides. That's what you want.
You can also put this in a 9 x 13 pan if you don't want to use cake layers.
Georgia Hot Sausage Pie
1 Ib. pork sausage
2 Tbsp. bacon drippings
2 c. canned tomatoes
3 Tbsp. flour
2 c. whole kernel corn
1 tsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. minced onion
1 tsp. Salt
Cook sausage until done and crumbly. Add tomatoes and drain corn. Simmer 10 minutes. Saute' chopped onion in bacon fat. Mix flour,sugar and salt, blend with onion and fat. Add to sausage and vegetable mix. Heat to boiling. Spoon into baking dish; top with uncooked biscuits or butter bread triangles. Bake at 425° for 20 minutes or until brown. Serve hot. 6 to 8 servings. Good to reheat. I use mild sausage and uncooked biscuits on top.