PicoBlog

ALSO IN THIS POST… I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week thinking about basketball, and specifically about Caitlin Clark. Superlatives aren’t necessary. The statistics speak for themselves. Clark is the leading scorer in the history of U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball. She was taken as first pick in the Women’s National Basketball Association’s draft this month. She’s helped attract record-breaking TV audiences. Arenas have sold out around the country because of her.

Here at Chez Pick we spent many recent nights watching the first two seasons of the TV series The Bear. Funny story about that – we had tried a month or so back to watch the first episode after so many friends and TV critics had raved about the show. But, that episode is so neurotic, so full of quick edits, close-ups, screaming, anger, and confusion, we just couldn’t handle it.

Kayak Float Report: East Branch Reservoir, Headwaters Park, Geauga County Metroparks. April 12, 2021. Geauga County Metropark maintains a small multi-site primitive campground on the shore of East Branch Reservoir. This Kayak Float Report was previously posted on my Facebook Page. (Note: If this post is truncated in an email, readers can click on "View entire message" and they'll be able to view the entire post in their email app.)

Have you ever wondered how gamers talk about fighting game moves? They use something called “numpad notation”. It’s like a secret code but easy to learn! You will see it a lot in fighting game content, so it is essential to understand it. In this guide, you will learn about numpad notation, its importance, and how to read it in fighting games. Numpad notation is a way to write joystick movements and button presses in fighting games.

You’re going to be really over turkey & stuffing in about T-minus 5 days. Save this email for when this happens. I’ve got an easy weeknight dinner for you that is a complete 180 from Thanksgiving. Complete with a grocery list. It’s gluten free, dairy free and with it’s salty/sweet flavor profile you’ll be amazed at how many members of your family it can please. It’s Thai Basil Beef - full disclosure: Thai basil is hard to find.

The world outside is covered in snow and ice, and I’m sitting bundled in two sweatshirts and wool socks on cup of Earl Grey number five, so it feels like the right time to talk about the ingredient that was made for days like these. Butter. I’ve been subconsciously writing this piece in the back of my mind since the first week of Bite into this, when lots of friends asked if I’d started this newsletter so I could finally talk about butter without someone rolling their eyes.

The city of Mérida and the villages that surround it on the northern end of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula offer a sense of the region’s vibrant cuisine without the crowds of the Riviera Maya. The markets here are gritty and real, while a collective of small producers of salt, honey, corn and vegetables called Traspatio Maya has helped reconnect broken foodways and given new life to countless culinary projects. The food here is harder to box in than you might imagine.

Gastronomically speaking, perhaps no South American city has found as much order in the disorder through the pandemic, not to mention several years of a tumultuous political situation prior, as Santiago, Chile. While sangucherías and no frills picadas and sandwich shops still deserve your attention, as do now classics like Boragó, there is a new wave of neighborhood bistros, seafood temples and culinary projects in every part of the city. Rather than latching on to a single trend at a time, as it often seemed in years past, the offerings are more diverse.

Hello, everyone. I hope your summer is off to a great start. This week we are celebrating our dog Olive Oyl’s birthday. I can’t believe Livvie, as we call her, is four. It seems like yesterday that we brought her home, and I got it in my head that she should be named after a brain healthy food. After all, our pudelpointer Orzo (the Italian word for barley) was already named after a whole grain.