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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
I couldn’t remember the name of the 90s popsicle that reminded me of dot cakes and finally realize it’s sprinklers.
Ridgeway cantaloupe festival hiatus by historical society: Brian said he didn’t think flying helicopters over cantaloupe fields was very historical. Ridgeway is a German community. I went to a small old school restaurant near there and there were German speakers there. They could’ve been from the community, but they also could’ve been tourists although I don’t know why German tourists would be there. Although I guess technically German tourists could be anywhere.
Brooklyn Beckham’s hot sauce line recently graduated from a “last chance” clearance item at whole foods to a “new” item. The new item is 2oz smaller than the previous. The more I taste it the more I realize the OG formula is salty and bitter. You really need to taste things twice. Also it’s kind of insane for a British person to launch a hot sauce line.
There is a cookbook and recipe in oral history collection that is coming to the UNC Southern Folklife Collection this month and I was really excited to go check it out and do some research but unfortunately the building that is housed in is closed because the fire alarms won’t stop going off. I don’t think there’s an active fire, although the building is so old they have to have six-seven people in the building around the clock called fire watchers watching to make sure that the building doesn’t catch on fire at any moment. Six firewatchers during the day and only one at night because fires are less likely to start at night because they are usually sleeping. My former supervisor told me that at one point the buildings elevator went out of control and went up and down all night, long until it bursted into the flames. So I don’t think I will be doing research in the building anytime soon.
Towel updates: I have 2 nice white guest towels and one has gone missing so I ordered new towels from Lands’ End. I don’t really like any towels within the price range that I am willing to spend on towels so this was the best I could do. The colors were a little trendy and “off”. The colors felt very IG 2022 or whenever checkerboard pattern took over instagram products. Strips were too thin. The color scheme sort of reminded me of a striped cotton tee collection at J Crew around summer 2005 that had thick white stripes with neon spring / baby colors and I had them in light hot pink, blue, and green. Brian said they look like zebra stripe gum. Got blue, green, and lilac striped towels. When I was and dried then (my dryer works again) the lint was baby blue. Reminded me of the spring oreos with the blue filling. I regret not getting gold or yellow towels. I’m always buying blue things.
Home Depot garden - native plant garden spectrum
SCENTS
Don’t wear Le Labo Patchouli unless you want to reek of a permanent marker or a Mr. Sketch cherry scented marker from the 90s that they would give you on the first day of 1st grade
On Friday night Brian smelled like getting picked up from the airport
I ordered more scents via scent split because they emailed me a 20% off coupon but it expired within seven days so then by the time I filled out a cart with the stuff I just bought it which is probably exactly what they’re hoping is gonna happen.
I bought a couple cents from a house. I’ve been wanting to try and then more Le Labo city exclusives which are way too expensive in my opinion but rare so I get it. I bought a number of cents from a few French houses that I’m not familiar with, but I really like the very clean and simple design of their bottles and I thought this might be for me.
I’m a little torn about the gender of scents. In some ways it’s useful but in some ways it’s really not and I don’t think you should restrict what people wear by describing a sentence as masculine but at the same time it is helpful to know when I’m shopping, but it maybe it leans more masculine.
I saw these girls on TikTok. Use the Portlandia gender sound in reference to perfume gender and I thought it was perfect. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8ssEmkv/
“Church service in a barn”
https://www.scentsplit.com/products/anatole-lebreton-brioche-sample-decants
Speaking of spending money on frivolous things I don’t need like perfume samples I find that ever since I started working an office job again I spend more on frivolous things comparison to when I worked on a farm or when I did contract work that was really interesting to me and where I felt free and untethered from an employer. I have spreadsheets of all my spending and there’s a huge difference even though my office job is Service oriented and nonprofit in nature. I don’t feel like it’s aligned with who I am and I don’t feel like I can be myself at work and I think that my abandoning of SELF makes me want physical objects and commodities that make me feel more like myself if that makes sense. Because I have abandoned myself and don’t feel like I can be myself for most of the day. I feel like I have to purchase things that are aligned with who I really am because that’s the only way to reconnect or attempt to reach back out to my SELF. I’ve been making these videos of 90s stickers on TikTok and while they are fun and nostalgic, and I love that these companies hired real artists to make these stickers at one time it also makes me think wow what the hell is the point of these? We’re just generating trash and teaching kids to become consumers via sticker collections. Anyway.
Ffern Winter 26
Official description: https://ffern.co/seasons/winter-26
My blind review: Mouthwash and related oral hygiene products marketed towards men, my dad’s bathroom closet, thick green grass, Suave shampoo, opening a window in a steamy bathroom on a cold day while visiting your parents on winter break and a gush of refreshing, icy air comes through, opening up boxes of Christmas decorations and finding the spiced, preserved salt cookie ornament that you made in fourth grade, spearmint gum. Made me feel sick.
INTERNET
My Internet section this week is pretty bleak, which might suggest that I didn’t spend much time on the Internet this week, but I couldn’t be further from the truth. Probably a thing because the podcast way too long. Mostly just watching Kathleen meisenger videos. If you ask a question she’ll probably answer you. I’m going to watch her pie playlist to see if I can get some tips on preventing shrinkage.
I’ve also been watching a fair amount of Mr. global (which sounds like a bootleg tagline for the rapper Pitbull) who comments on oil and gas prices and he has a deep deep knowledge and he is a very reliable source of information in my opinion? My favorite thing that I’ve learned from him so far is that when people would reference oil prices, whether it be Brent crude or WTI people would often refer to the future‘s price which was very reflective of the physical price or the on the ground price of physical barrels of oil being traded. But ever since the war in Iran, those two prices have split in the future‘s price, which is the price. You probably see when you Google price of oil on the Internet. He’s no longer reflective of reality in the physical price of oil, so kinda have to take oil prices with a grain of salt because sometimes you don’t know which price people are actually Referencing. This is food related because everything we consume is to oil.
The Valley
Brittney is in recovery from having surgery after hosting a crab boil and is eating chili and a giant zip lock bag of spaghetti. Something haunting about spaghetti in a zip lock bag. I have a spooky flash photo of my sister holding up a giant freezer bag partially filled with spaghetti at a party.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DY8Sn6ciZbK/?igsh=MTR0NzVuYzM0cXh5cg==
Rocket pop flavored baked beans. Brian: noooah
Local Hero Deli and Catering
Pawtucket, RI; 4.9 stars: https://share.google/xYh8EAFk8GThz0gx2
The owner shared his deceased mother’s macaroni salad recipe on TikTok
Half a red onion, 1 green bell pepper, half a leek, pulsed in food processor
1lb elbow macaroni
½ cup of mayonnaise, ½ cup parmesan peppercorn dressing
1tb Onion powder, 1tb garlic powder, 1tb kosher salt, white pepper
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8ssboxS/
90 day update: Boring restaurant https://maps.app.goo.gl/s4Yi4tWpJjmx9LB1A?g_st=ic
Mt dewmisu https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8sthce4/
Kardashian salad pasta salad https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8sn13Xy/
Bidding on old cookbooks all weekend and lost out on “Food to Die For: a Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/1dm6l6l/favorite_recipes_of_the_lower_cape_fear_1980/
Crumbl dirty soda; people ordering it multiple times a day while the CEO lives in a huge house from the profit of their products that will cause the loss of countless feet
https://www.thetakeout.com/2191359/crumbl-new-dirty-sodas-amount-sugar/
June 15, 2026 (Monday)
9am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: Macaroni salad with a hardboiled egg, made at home.
1pm: Dot’s pretzels.
3pm: Better Sour mango gummy shells.
6:30pm: Cheese pizza with purple basil, made at home.
7:30pm: Mocha malt tiramisu, made at home.
Mocha Malt Tiramisu
100g or 3.5oz lady fingers
Cocoa powder for dusting
Tried malted milk but it needed to be ground finer
Soak
2TB Hamilton Jamaican pot still black rum
1TB Dave’s coffee syrup
1/2c leftover coffee
Filling (Wendy’s frosty chocolate flavor level)
1c heavy cream
4oz Crave Brothers chocolate mascarpone
4TB Dietsch’s malted milk powder
5TB powdered sugar
Pinch of diamond crystal kosher salt
½ tsp of vanilla (should skip if not a forward flavor like in a shortbread or vanilla ice cream per Kathleen Meisinger – too expensive otherwise)
2 egg yoks
Tiramisu was weird and bad. Rum was too spiced for tiramisu. Need to get a Marsala wine or cognac. Oversalted the filling. Brian thought it was great.
Made a batch of Roberta’s pizza dough on Saturday and a batch of simple tomato sauce to use up the fresh basil growing in the garden. Putting the sauce in 1C containers in the freezer for easy portioning and defrosting. Froze one dough, refrigerated the other.
Cooked off a dough Monday evening: Let it temp for 4 hours, stretched onto parchment on a peel, topped with sauce, parm and too much mozzarella and some salt, cooked at 525 on a preheated metal pizza pan that lives in my oven for about 10 minutes; turned the oven off and let ride for another 5 minutes. Topped with parm and purple basil. My oven max is low.
Accidentally made an oval. The cheese spilled over onto the sides so it looked like a long face with ears. Brian came home and said it looked like a maxi pad. Perfect cheese pizza where you sink your teeth into a thick, warm but firm layer of cheese. I also think my yeast is old. Doesn’t expire until 2027 and it’s been in the freezer but it seems slow.
June 16, 2026 (Tuesday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
9am: Two hard boiled eggs, made at home.
10:30am: Leftover macaroni salad.
12:30pm: A bowl of bran flakes with milk.
2:30pm: Back to Nature Hot & Spicy Cheezy crackers.
5pm: A small pour of Domaine Maurice Schoech Sylvaner Kaysersberg.
6pm: Grilled shrimp and gigante beans in a white wine, garlic, and butter sauce with parsley, meyer lemon, and La Tourangelle olive oil toasted Mt. Athos Fire sourdough, made at home.
7pm: Part of a mixed berry frangipane tart from Whole Foods.
Opened my final box of organic bran flakes today. Whole Foods is bringing back their store brand cereals in short boxes.
These Back to Nature crackers are ok. Good spice level if you eat a lot of them. Kind of sweet-tasting but they don’t have a lot of sugar in them. They’re ok. Kind of like eating cheese nips instead of Cheez-its. Not as satisfying.
Wine tasted like a cooking wine or almost like a sake. Opposite of dynamic. Flat. I guess that’s what happens when you buy wine at a book store in small town North Carolina.
https://www.wineenthusiast.com/buying-guide/maurice-schoech-fils-2021-kaysersberg-sylvaner-alsace/?srsltid=AfmBOooAAYa2YQz3uYHqPnYwai3LkfklNoAJMnkT65shDloswaJr_WB4
Separated shrimp scampi
4TB butter, half of a white onion (diced), 4 cloves garlic (minced), chili flakes, Domaine Maurice Schoech Sylvaner Kaysersberg, gigante beans, grilled shrimp, parsley, meyer lemon, black pepper, parmesan
This was good; maybe I let it reduce a little too far; a tomato and butter sauce would have been nice and saucier
Brian got a small fruit tart for our anniversary from Whole Foods which was covered in glossy, perfectly tart berries. The tart shell was normal enough but the tart itself was dry as hell. Not a custard or a pastry cream filling but rather a frangipane filling that baked into some sort of in between a very dry cookie or quick bread.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/grocery/product/whole-foods-market-whole-foods-market-berry-frangipane-tart-4in-b0g8hr9s84?ref_=US_OTR_ALL_UFG_WFM_OTHER_0542341
June 17, 2026 (Wednesday)
7am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
11am: A hard boiled egg and mac salad at the office.
Cake room: A $2 off coupon to Yogurt Pump in Chapel Hill and NYT Cooking Page-a-Day recipes for Chorizo Taquitos, No-Bake Melon Cheesecake Bars, Gingery Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, Dumpling Tomato Salad with Chile Crisp Vinaigrette, Charleston Red Rice, and Green Strata With Goat Cheese and Herbs.
4pm: A bottle of Health-Ade blood orange, carrot, and ginger kombucha and Back to Nature Hot & Spicy Cheezy crackers.
6pm: Chuck roast and mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, frozen Cheesecake Factory wheat baguette with salted butter, iceberg salad with ranch dressing, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, walnuts, and dried cranberries, a small pour of red wine, and vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, Cool Whip, finely chopped walnuts, and a maraschino cherry, made by Brian’s mom.
NYT Cooking widgit: Bowen Yang’s Mapo Tofu. Ok but Mission Chinese makes the best version hands down. I’ve never had a better version.
Kombucha was good but I wish it had more carrot flavor. Ginger flavor was nice and spicy.
Brian’s great uncle was in town so we were supposed to go over for a roast. Then Brian’s mom left me a voicemail that the great uncle was going to go out to dinner with his friend Russel so no roast. So I got stuff to make a baked cauliflower macaroni and cheese and went home and started cooking. Brian got home early to pull the garlic out of the field and said his mom called and said Russel, the friend that the great uncle was going to have dinner with, fell in the shower, so the roast was back on. I stopped making dinner. Brian said he would go up there and tell them we had already started making dinner so I started making dinner again and then Brian called me from his parents’ house and told me to come up for dinner so I stopped making dinner.
Brian’s mom fed the dog a big bowl of vanilla ice cream and everyone screamed and she said what, it’s just plain ice cream. Feeding a dog cheese in bed; feeding a dog spaghetti in bed; eating bacon grease
Also I realized this was the 2nd time that day that Brian’s mom made ice cream sundaes for everyone when Brian’s great uncle asked for the same sundae that he had earlier
Brian!!!!!!’s great uncle was telling us about how he makes a custom cereal blend by buying different cranberry Kashi and mixing it with total and he said “It’s really hard to eat cereal without sugar in it” and Brian laughed so loudly because he thought that his great uncle was saying that it’s difficult to eat cereal if there isn’t any sugar in it but what he was saying is that it’s difficult to buy cereal without sugar in it. And I can identify this 85 year-old man as a brand flakes eater myself his favorite organic brown flakes were just discontinued by Whole Foods and now I don’t have any access to affordable organic brand flakes. Call the plumber cause I’m backed up.
Coworker taking me to Dunkin’ when my cat died because I’m from New England
Brian‘s great uncle‘s wife makes him Apple salad twice a week. He wanted us to know. I asked him what was in it and he said mayonnaise.
June 18, 2026 (Thursday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: A handful of Back to Nature Hot & Spicy Cheezy crackers.
12pm: A bottle of Health-Ade passionfruit tangerine kombucha and leftover mac salad.
3pm: Milton’s salt and pepper crackers.
7pm: Baked rigatoni and cheese with roasted cauliflower, made at home.
8pm: Blue Bell Cookie Two Step ice cream.
Another day of eating like a baby: crackers, twice, macaroni and cheese, and a beige vegetable
This kombucha was great and better than Brew Dr’s mango passionfruit flavor in my opinion
On the hunt for some sort of passionfruit flavored beverage for mixing with rum for passionfruit tiramisu
Rum mixed with raspberry jam and some water
Passionfruit tangerine kombucha
Ceres passionfruit juice
A mango lemonade
Cold pressed tropical juice blend with passionfruit in it
Macaroni and cheese with cauliflower
Roux, alsatian silvaner white wine (Domaine Maurice Schoech Sylvaner Kaysersberg), milk, cheddar cheese, swiss, Cloud 23 habanero hot sauce, garlic powder
1lb Rummo rigatoni, ½ a head of roasted cauliflower and ½ of a roasted white onion, parsley
Meant to add leftover cherry tomatoes but forgot.
June 19, 2026 (Friday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: A bowl of bran flakes with milk.
12pm: A latte at Cocoa Cinnamon in Durham, North Carolina.
1:30pm: An everything bagel with adjika cream cheese from Isaac’s Bagels in Durham, North Carolina, and a pour of Health-Ade raspberry lime kombucha.
6pm: Leftover macaroni and cheese.
7pm: Cherry plum upside-down cake with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, made at home.
I have crippling acid reflex and/or heartburn or something going on internally with my whole digestive track, intensifying after eating at Brian’s parents’ house. Might be increased coffee and alcohol consumption, plus kombucha. So of course I went to a coffee shop.
https://simonettitubacollection.com/
Skrrrt. Wanted to pull over but Isaac’s was about to close and then afterwards I didn’t want to leave a bunch of egg salad in my hot car.
Buy Evan’s stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajika
More minty than I would’ve expected and green
Isaac’s has proper chewy Bagels that are covered with whatever topping you order. they are the best around. I met Isaac at a party once and when I found out that he had spent time in New York I knew that he would know how to make a proper bagel. My only critique is that everything bagel is a touch too salty. Burnt my mouth on the salt.
Also got burnt, jalapeño cream cheese, my favorite, and a tub of eggs salad. I think it’s curry eggs salad rice said why didn’t you bring any bagels if you bought cream cheese? I realized I had made a mistake. Here’s what was going on my New York brain think of Peoples as day of products only you don’t buy them in bulk. You get them fresh and eat them that day and that’s it. Outside of NY people don’t really understand this because they’re buying bagels that are basically bread anyway so it doesn’t matter. But I realize now this is why buying bagels for the next day didn’t even occur to me. I was planning to use the cream cheese on bread.
NYT Cooking Peach Upside-Down Cake
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6355-peach-upside-down-cake
Substituted Watsonia Organics organic cherry plums (Jerrold A. Watson & Sons) in Monetta, SC; certified organic by Clemson University.
1 stick of butter, 3 large peaches, 250g sugar, 128g flour, 3/4tsp baking powder, 1/4tsp ground nutmeg, 3 eggs, 3/4c creme fraiche for topping
I added salt and cinnamon
Cooked the sugar syrup until amber and poured it over the plums and it seemed a bit loose but I figured that is what it was supposed be. This is why you should always read the comments before making the recipe. I guess it’s supposed to be a caramel so I put the plums and sugar syrup into the oven for a head start before putting cake batter on.
Flipped the cake out at 30 minutes and then flipped it back over into the cake pan to serve as a cobbler instead. The caramel was a bit too loose. Cake was lovely and fluffy, perfectly cooked. Fruit was nice and tart but didn’t caramelize; a touch runny.
Perfectly cooked cake but when I Warmed it back up in the oven the cake dried out a bit. The cake is kind of bland, even with salt and cinnamon. Maybe it would benefit from some sour cream. I meant to serve with the crème fraiche I’ve been hoping to use up but the fruit was so tart I thought ice cream would be better.
Makes me think of the time I made a blueberry crumble and thought I was adding ginger powder but I actually added cumin powder and didn’t realize it until I served it at someone’s house. It wasn’t terrible but it was kind of odd.
Great but because it’s butter-based it got super hard in the fridge and was unpleasant.
Arthur Schwartz talked about stone fruit this week and snocciolatore and he ended the episode by saying “ok I gotta go it’s hot as hell in here”
June 20, 2026 (Saturday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: Burnt jalapeno cream cheese and curried egg salad from Isaac’s on olive oil toasted Mt. Athos Fire sourdough, made at home.
12:30pm: A pour of Health-Ade raspberry lime kombucha.
1:30pm: A Loacker Tortina.
5pm: Cheese pizza with basil and romaine lettuce with Briannas creamy caesar dressing, parmesan, and black pepper, made at home.
7pm: Leftover cherry plum upside-down cake with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream and a glass of Kilogram ginger plum iced tea, made at home.
Burnt jalapeno cream cheese was not as flavorful as I remember
Curried egg salad was good but I didn’t love it. Tasted mysterious. Tasted like entering an old home with a fireplace, shag carpeting, and a lot of crocheted blankets.
To clarify I cut the bread in half and had one piece with cream cheese, one with egg salad
A Tortina original flavor is basically a round wafer sandwich with chocolate hazelnut cream filling, covered in chocolate. Pretty good. Maybe overroasted. Slightly off flavor like from a rancid or burnt nut. It’s like a less fun, chocolate covered happy hippo. They were individually wrapped which is exciting for summer consumption.
Robertas’s pizza
Made on Saturday, 6/13 and froze
Put in fridge on Tuesday
Baked on following Saturday, 6/20
Cast iron, 525 for 15.
Pretty good, crust didn’t really brown. I bought new yeast. I think the dough needs more strength. Tasted a little dense and gummy to me but in reality it was properly cooked with many tiny bubbles but pale crust overall and I like a well-done crust with browning.
June 21, 2026 (Sunday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
11am: Coffee with creamer, two over easy eggs and bacon with hash browns, buttered white toast, and part of a pancake with maple syrup at Timberland Restaurant in Roxboro, North Carolina.
4pm: A pour of Health-Ade mango lemonade kombucha, Milton’s salt and pepper crackers with Isaac’s burnt jalapeno cream cheese, and three Loacker Tortinas.
7pm: Sesame chicken, beef with broccoli, and a roast pork egg roll from Hong Kong Restaurant in Oxford, North Carolina.
Roxboro restaurants
Cole’s pharmacy closed
https://maps.app.goo.gl/3rDMDFuUF5bbDdve7?g_st=ic
That looks terrible. Tomato soup and hot dogs?? https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ptv97TnpazK4jFMMA?g_st=ic
Strut Daddy’s, Big Daddy’s
Timberland is what Sulimay’s wants to be. Hasn’t been renovated. 70s wood laminate walls and a foil leaf motif. Big screen tv playing two and a half men. No music just sizzles. One man struggling to cook everything.
Stopped at a McDonald’s bathroom and Brian said he heard a woman order BBQ juice.
Twin Meat Market. Man called his wife to tell her that they had one squished carrot cake with cream cheese
Got a hankering for a good egg roll with sweet red sauce and said it aloud and Brian jumped off the couch and we drove to whatever Chinese place was next to the closest food Lion. There’s a Chinese place next to every food Lion