Where Shelf Stable and Emotionally Stable Overlap
April 2021
Hello my friend!
You might not know this about me, but I love reading food blogs. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the girl who practically memorized the blurbs on the back of the cereal box and went to sleep with the tome “Uncommon Uses for Common Household Products” delights in those long pre-recipe cooking blog tales. Yes, Cindy’s Kitchen Korner, tell me about your shrimp-hating husband’s 52nd birthday dinner and why he always requests chocolate cake with butterscotch frosting and nothing else!
I’ve grown into some kind of foodie, and I think I’ve hit my peak. This week I planned to make snazzy sheet pan nachos and then realized I could just microwave a bowl of canned beans and queso for the same effect. This month, I’m sharing more of my hard-earned kitchen genius, plus the home decor update you didn’t know you needed.
Hope your days are warm and your fridge stays cold,
Tenley Schwartz,
Deputy Features Director
In This Issue:
Low Power Hour: A fridge on the fritz
Please Be Seated: A story of internet seduction
Enthused: 3 Things I’m Into Right Now
Low Power Hour
How cold is regular milk supposed to be when it’s straight from the fridge?
Is my fridge terribly off, or—in a bout of post-move stupor—have I just forgotten how cold things actually are?
I lived in this denial until all my cheese went moldy. Yes, even the hardy wedge of parmesan. I’ve sliced a fair amount of fuzz off a block of cheddar, but if the lasts-for-months parmesan is a goner, something’s clearly wrong.
And that wrong something is my whole entire refrigerator. My fridge is on the fritz. You might say it’s EXPIRED. And as I shop for a new one, I’m turning to shelf stable(ish) meals:
Start some rice cooking in salted water.
Cover the bottom of a (different) hot pan with sesame oil. Cook up some canned tuna with a squirt of soy sauce. The key here is to not drain all the liquid from the tin, so that it doesn’t dry out as you heat it. After the tuna’s hot & sizzling, transfer to serving bowl.
Pour sesame seeds in the still-hot pan to toast. I don’t know the sign for them to be done. Just stir till you’re sick of it, then dump into the bowl of tuna.
Then, slice your veggie (I like beet greens) into ribbons and put those into the still hot pan. Add another squirt of soy sauce and a drizzle of honey. Stir till greens catch a little flavor but aren’t totally disintegrated.
Combine greens with tuna and rice.
Eat for every meal until you are thoroughly sick of it, continue telling other people to try it.
This recipe is brought to you by the fact that tomatoes are best unrefrigerated, and better when combined with butter. Also, this Marcella Hazan recipe which remembers to add stuff I forgot.
Please Be Seated
But wait! There’s more! With the help of my interior-designer cousin, I found a new couch to love (with South Dakota shipping!) buuuuuut due to a NATIONWIDE FURNITURE FOAM SHORTAGE it will not arrive until October. So if you need me, I’ll be sitting in my lone accent chair in my living room. But when it arrives…
Enthused
Monet via Twitter: First, a friend retweeted this poem. Best when read out loud to yourself. (Yes, yes, it’s fictional. Lovely and evocative). Second, Did you know Monet had a stint as a caricaturist?! (View examples via Danielle Corsetto).
Pens with refillable ink: A mundane delight. Not throwing an entire plastic pen casing into the trash? Buying a cheap 2 pack of refills instead of a whole new pen? Genius. I also feel ridiculously clever every time I reassemble a pen.
Cooking for One: I know. You’ve seen the tacky Microwave Cooking for One making the internet joke rounds. This is not that book.
Have you ever made a delicious pot of soup and then eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it and eaten it until you hate it so much but there are still 2 servings left?
This cookbook is for you. Small batch cooking, time saving tips, ZERO sad-sack tales of singleness. And no cheesy recipes that insist that a finicky hours-long cooking project is all about romancing yourself. I just want to eat quick and then go draw, okay??
Thanks for checking in this month! What are you cooking these days?
💜, Ten