It’s the in between holiday week — the low stress, all the good food, sleep in, lose track of time, tackle weird projects, and play-yourself-silly week — so I thought I’d share some of the movies and shows I’ve enjoyed recently. If you’ve got some good ones, please share in the comments!

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Last night I finished Maestro, about Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre.

I watched it in two sittings, but I did not want to stop watching it that first night; it felt like a really, really good book that I just didn’t want to put down. The whole way through, I kept marveling at the acting and wondering how in the heck they got the actors to age 50 years so seamlessly: were they actually a series of actors and my eyes were deceiving me? As soon as I finished, I did some research and was stunned, absolutely stunned, to learn that Bradley Cooper played Bernstein! I had no idea!! According to an article I found, it took him upwards of five hours to get ready — some days he was in the makeup chair at 1 am just so he could be ready for a 7 am shoot. 

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The Robbie Williams documentary is slow-paced but intense, so my husband and I took our time getting through it.

I didn’t even know who Robbie was until I watched the documentary, but I was impressed by his introspection and vulnerability, a vulnerability which was underscored by the fact that he did the whole documentary from his bed and dressed in his undies. I found the part about his emotional breakdown to be fascinating: his description was the closest thing I’ve found to my own theater breakdown. And yes, I realize it’s preposterous to even compare myself to a performer like Robbie, but still: listening to him talk about the terror and self-doubt, I got it. A person can be hobbled in front of an audience of twenty or an audience of fifty thousand. Brains are weird. 

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We finished watching the most recent season of the British Baking show.

It was lovely, as always, and I was particularly smitten by Tasha.

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The other night my husband and I watched Trevor Noah’s latest special, “Where Was I.”

Some friends of ours recently got to see him live and they said it was the best — such good fun — but my favorite Noah creation is still this.

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And a couple weeks ago, my husband and I were both kinda blue and worn out, and as I opened Netflix I said, “I just wanna see something funny, like 20 minutes of stand-up,” and, wouldn’t you know, this popped up.

We watched the whole thing in one go. Mike Birbiglia has such a gift for spinning a story: he appears to jump from one thought to another, but in the end he pulls it all togethes and ties it with a bow. (My favorite Birbiglia production of all time is this one.)

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I gobbled up the most recent (and final) episode of The Crown.

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And finally: the second season of High On The Hog is out now.

I watch it in bits and pieces, slowly making my way through. It’s a history lesson told through the lens of food, which makes for the best sort of history lesson, I think.

This same time, years previous: wedding weekend: the celebration, right now, balsamic-glazed roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts, 2016 garden stats and notes, dancing mice and other Christmas tales.

The part of gardening that I enjoy is the processing, not the growing, and since there are plenty of local farms that will happily sell me produce in bulk, this year I decided I could just purchase from them and save myself the trouble. Besides, I figured we’re already doing plenty by producing our own pork and beef, dairy, and eggs, so if I’d rather spend my time making cheese instead of pulling weeds, then why not. I don’t need to do everything, right? I’m aiming for community sufficiency here, not self sufficiency. 

CSA treasures

So we nixed the garden for this year, and it was a huge relief (and saved us much marital strife), so we’ll probably nix it for the next year, too.

mint tea, eggs, yogurt

eggs, eggs, eggs

strawberry freezer jam

CSA leftovers

buttah

I still canned and froze a few things, though, as you’ll see… 

Stats

• Mint Tea Concentrate: a bunch, made by my younger son
• Strawberries from Woods Edge, 18 pounds: 14½ quarts, frozen; 2-3 gallons whole berries, frozen
• Strawberries from our garden: 2 batches berry sauce, 12 pints freezer jam
• Sour Cherries: 12 1-cup bags frozen; 5 quarts sweetened juice; 7 quarts bounce, 3½ pints jam, 5 gallons mead
• Wild Wineberries: 2½ quarts
• Cauliflower and Broccoli from Season’s Bounty: 5 pints, frozen
• Peaches, Glohaven (2 bushels): I didn’t make notes! 20 quarts? 30? I have no idea!
• Red Raspberries: 21 quarts, frozen
• Corn from Clover Hill (processed with family): 40 pints for us
• Tomatoes: 8 quarts and 6 pints salsa, 6 quarts chopped tomatoes, 22 pints roasted pizza sauce
• Grapes: 8 pints jelly, 12 quarts juice, 5 gallons mead, 1 gallon wine
• Applesauce: 28 quarts
• Lard: 5 quarts and 7 pints
• Broth (pork, chicken, turkey): 25+ quarts
• 2 pigs: bacon, Canadian bacon, ground pork, hams, roasts, sausages (classic, breakfast, Italian)
• Cheeses: 40 hard cheeses, plus ricottas, yogurt and yogurt cheese, mozzarella, etc.

sour cherry bounce

family corn day

applesauce

Gruyère

meads and wines

broth

The Notes
*My younger son continued his summer CSA gig so we had fresh produce all summer. 

*Our strawberries have gotten increasingly smaller so after this year’s piddly harvest, my husband tilled up the patch.

*We got a lot of our apples from an orchard in Pennsylvania (close to my grandparents’ house), and we got about 16 gallons of cider from a local orchard here — to freeze for winter popcorn suppers and then an extra 5 gallons for a batch of cyser.

*Along with the grape, apple, and sour cherry meads, I also started 5-gallon batches of spiced cranberry mead and red raspberry and rhubarb mead. 

*Even though we were out of pickles, I didn’t make any. We found some decent dills at a discount grocery (99 cents a jar) and bought a flat of them. We’re missing our 7-day sweets something fierce, though, so they’re top of the list for next year’s canning projects.

*We didn’t do any green beans because I thought frozen Costco green beans would be tasty enough, but nope, no one here likes them. I guess we’re left with no recourse but to grow our own!

*We’re out of pesto, too. Next year… (This no growing anything plan doesn’t appear to be shaping up too well.)

*The sweet corn this year has been incredibly delicious. We’ve been eating a lot of corn.

*We’re still eating our beef from several years ago, and now we have the pork from Fern and Petunia. Along with the cuts I listed above, we have about 8 more boxes of fat that need to be rendered into lard. (The lard I listed above came from just one of those boxes.) We’ve currently got two more piggies fattening up; they should be ready to butcher spring of 2025.

lard

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (12.26.22), wedding weekend: the officiation, chocolate bourbon pie, a Christmas spectacle, 2018 book list, sex for all creation, 2015 book list, hot buttered rolls.

How about a game of good news bad news?

First, the bad: A COVID recap, in pictures.

another one bites the dust

the sickly trio

cough-cough

But now for some good: I have energy and an appetite, whoo-hoo!

I totally lost my appetite for the majority of the week I was sick and it was the weirdest thing because I never lose my appetite. Even when I’m nauseated and can’t stand the thought of food, I’m still bothered by the fact that I can’t stand the thought of food, you know? But this time I didn’t even care. Like, zero interest. I’d get raging hungry but the thought of eating was just . . . pfft, why bother? I DID NOT KNOW MYSELF. I’m still not that excited to cook but I’m getting the most glorious hankerings for peanut butter captain crunch, potato chips, coffee, mandarines, chef salads, pizza, wine.

Also good: I went for a walk yesterday — my first walk since COVID — with a girlfriend, and then I went for a run today and only had to stop once to blow my nose!

Aaaaand. . . now we’re back to the bad: Yesterday when I was leaving my friend’s house I backed into her trashcan and busted my taillight.

Which was more funny than upsetting because it was such a silly-stupid mistake and not too much of a problem (for me) since my husband can — and does — fix anything. So I just giggled.

But then last night I dribbled candle wax all over my brand new wireless keyboard (my husband cleaned it up — are we sensing a pattern here?) and then today I dropped the stapler when I was getting it out of the cupboard and smashed my computer screen. 

The break was so startling and tragically definitive that I didn’t even bother to get upset. I just snapped another photo and sent it to my husband.

He called right away. “So does this mean you’re getting a new computer now?”

This is the part that could be interpretted as good news, if you’re feeling desparate (and I am). See, I’ve been planning to get a new laptop (the busted one is from 2017 and and struggles to keep up with my mad video editing skills) so I’ve already done lots of research and pretty much know eactly what sort of fancy machine I want to get, which helps to take some of the stress out of this computer crisis.

FURTHERMORE, I just bought a monitor for video editing which means I can now hook up my busted computer to the monitor and still get stuff done, but — bad news — the new monitor is crap.

However! I figured out the extent of its monitor-y crapiness the same day I bought it and yesterday I ordered a new monitor which will be coming tomorrow. So again, good news.

In conclusion, the stapler is moving to a new location, far far away from any computer screens. The End.

P.S. I discovered that the gas station on the way out of town sells doughnuts and now I can get trashy gas station doughnuts whenever I want, which is very good news indeed.

This same time, years previous: wedding weekend: the pinning, the coronavirus diaries: week forty-two, rock on, Mama!, 2016 book list, old-fashioned sour cream cake doughnuts, the quotidian (12.22.14), Christmas pretty.