PicoBlog

MY FIRST ICE CREAM MEMORIES were sitting on an ice cream maker packed with rock salt in the backyard and taking turns hand-cranking it with my sisters. It was hot, but all we needed was the sweet reward of our mother’s peppermint ice cream. And in spite of owning two electric ice cream makers, one that’s still in the box and the other a smaller counter-top model with an insert that must be stored in the freezer, but is never in the freezer, and who knows where it is, I think I love the idea of making homemade ice cream more than making it.

Amongst cocktail enthusiasts, the Espresso Martini can be a somewhat divisive drink.  The case against it tends to go something like this:  It’s made with vodka! This just adds booze. It doesn’t really taste like anything.  It’s not even a Martini! It’s just an artifact of a time when lots of cocktails that had nothing to do with Martinis were given a ‘tini/Martini moniker because some bartender or bar owner thought it would sell better.

There’s absolutely nothing I love more than fall. Sweaters and apple orchards, hot cider and fire pits, pumpkins and skeletons and ~ COSTUMES ~ COSTUMES ~ COSTUMES!!!!! I had no idea I was a theater kid until I was in my mid-thirties. I think it took having my own kid for me to connect to the joy of low-stakes creativity and play. I was in my MFA then and everything creative felt fraught and intense and shitty.

Normally, the main weekly edition of this newsletter goes out to paid subscribers only. But I plan to make some exceptions for holidays and special occasions. Speaking of which, happy Valentine’s Day.  To celebrate, we’re going to make a Jack Rose, a pinkish-red brandy sour that’ll look great on a counter with a bouquet of roses. And then, because sometimes our lives are marked by heartbreak and regret, we’re going to make a bitter variant.

I’m aware that the Cold War was more dangerous then most know, and that American aggression nearly caused a nuclear war (specifically during the Cuban middle crisis, when the decision of a single soviet officer who opposed the decision of the other two officers to fire a nuclear torpedo saved the world). I think there are a lot of parallels. The bay of pigs and positioning of missiles in turkey prompted a response by the soviets, just like western involvement in ukraine prompted a response by Russia.

NEW HARTFORD  -- This town is bouncing back one step at a time – or, perhaps more correctly, one scoop at a time. In multiple flavors -- including strawberry cheesecake, which is to die for. The New Hartford Creamery opened up at the start of June to droves of customers. “I’ve gained four pounds since you opened!” one patron, Bob Dickson, joked to Mike Lane, who owns the shop with wife Amy.

From the editors: this is a post from Evy, who lives in the Village, a multigenerational co-living home in San Francisco. Making decisions on how a community works - from what collective money is spent on to who moves in and beyond - can be one of the harder things to get right in a coliving situation. We’ve explored this a bit in Phil’s post on Group Decision Making. In this post Evy shares another creative way to make decisions inclusive and efficient.

Twenty years on, Mean Girls remains as vital as ever. Not a day goes by where I don’t see the classic teen comedy referenced online, and whenever the internet serves up unsolicited images of Kris Jenner with her Kardashlings, I always hear Amy Poehler bragging “I’m not like a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.” Mean Girls is big business. A buzzy, TikTok-fueled reboot hit theaters over the weekend and claimed the No.

This project is pretty simple. As a complement to each race weekend, I’ll be cooking the national dish of that race’s host country and sharing information about the process and that dish’s history along the way in an effort to grow more deeply immersed in the local culture from my own home. Growing up in rural Michigan, my experience with Mexican food for a long time was strictly limited to whatever you could find at Taco Bell or from Old El Paso — and it was never my favorite.