The 📖📺🎧🔪🛍️ List

So much TV, so many recipes, so little everything else.

The skin under my nose is peeling like a bad sunburn, I have a slight dry cough, and I’ve snorted more nasal spray over the last few days than a cokehead in the 80s, but I’m happy to report I’ve turned a corner after being super sick all weekend and am here, sitting upright, writing a delayed Weekly List on a Sunday. YAY!

I have a super random thought I wanted to share up top.

I love Amanda Hirsch of Not Skinny But Not Fat for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that she is so incredibly UNpretentious for how successful and celebrity-adjacent she is. She has a huge following, an incredibly popular podcast, interviews mega superstars, but lives a very typical New York life. We have to assume she makes very good money doing what she does, but you’d never know because she doesn’t flaunt it. She isn’t decked out in designer, and her New York apartment is just that — a New York apartment.

It really hit me when she brought her new baby home this past weekend (we love Lenny), and we got a quick glimpse of their home. It’s… normal. Boxes stacked by the door, shoes in a pile, no special entryway moments, a sat-on couch in a standard living room, etc etc. It’s lived in. It’s not just-so or white-washed or any of the showy rich-people things we’re all used to seeing via social media nowadays, and I just super duper appreciate it so much. She’s always been highly relatable in my eyes and very down to Earth (pretty sure she has responded to every DM I’ve ever sent her), and that quick glimpse into her home solidified that.

That’s all. Told you it was random as hell.

Okay, let’s get into what I consumed as a consumer this past week.

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READING 📖

I haven’t read this yet, but I saved it so I can.

Freya India

writes a Substack called Girls and was featured on

Substack

Reads this past week where she chose a handful of letters she loves and recommends. Some of the titles intrigued me right away like “What will life really be like after the internet gets incinerated?”, “Getting along with kids,” and “Clutching a severely depressed person’s body against yours in bed.” Read them all here.

WATCHING 📺

One thing about being down for the count is all there is to do is sleep and watch TV, so I have a lot to share with you here today.

American Fiction

Holy fucking shit. This movie? EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH THIS MOVIE. I haven’t seen a film this good in a long time. It won best adapted screenplay at this year’s Oscars and, after watching it, I’m like… it should’ve swept. It’s so smart, so funny, so… I don’t even have the words, really. Jeffrey Wright is phenomenal as is everyone else, and it honestly may be one of all-time favorite movies moving forward in life. Cord Jefferson (writer and director) brilliantly adapted the novel Erasure by Percival Everett to create American Fiction, and it’s just absolutely brilliant. Watch it on Prime.

Dinnertime Live with David Chang

Speaking of Cord Jefferson, both him and Aziz Ansari were on an episode of David Chang’s live Netflix cooking show called Dinnertime Live, and it was completely chaotic. We’ve never watched this show before but Zac’s friend told us to start with this episode, so we did. I’m not sure we’ll revisit it… maybe? If we’re bored? I feel like this episode was exceptionally disorganized, but it was still entertaining and watching Cord in this environment made me love him even more. Watch it on Netflix.

Next Baking Master: Paris

To know me is to know that I will give almost any cooking/baking competition show a chance, so obviously I started watching this. It’s good?! It’s no GBBO, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. It’s funny to me how American cooking competition shows seem to love throwing competitors into a living situation to create drama and edit villains; you don’t see that shit across the pond. But that’s America for ya! Anyway, it’s an easy watch if you’re interested. Watch it on MAX.

Old Dads

This is a newer comedy starring Bill Burr, and I thought it’d be fun to watch because Zac is an older first-time dad at almost 42, but it was just okay. There were a small handful of LOLs, but the plot sort of lacked and I felt it could’ve been funnier. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Watch it on Netflix.

Top Chef

I binged season 15 in roughly 36 hours this weekend. It was the first time I’ve ever watched this show even though I love cooking shows and it’s been on since 2006??? No idea where I’ve been… Anyhow, I’m obsessed and can’t wait to make it my cooking competition comfort show since I have my pick of 21 seasons to watch. Tom is a hardass, Padma seems very cold but is so fun to look at, and I actually do love the drama of all the chefs living together. Some of you may have caught that I fell in love with Fatima Ali in season 15, only to discover she passed away from cancer in 2018. She wrote a memoir that I will absolutely be ordering soon. Watch Top Chef on Peacock.

Hit Man

This is a new movie starring the man of the moment, Glen Powell. It was written by him and Richard Linklater (who is one of Zac’s favorite writers and directors) and has gotten incredibly high praise from critics, so we dabbled. It’s very entertaining and funny, and looking at Glen Powell for two hours is a wonderful way to spend two hours. It’s also just as fun looking at his female counterpart, Adria Arjona. These are two extremely beautiful people and, at one point, my pregnant-ass self turned to Zac and said “I feel very jealous of how gorgeous this woman is.” Zac retorted, “Well how do you think I feel? I wish I had Glen’s body. So.” I feel like Glen may be our generation’s Brad Pitt, and I have no idea where Adria came from but she is a perfect specimen. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a light-hearted, funny romantic comedy with a twisted twist and some solid sex scenes, Hit Man is good. Watch it on Netflix.

MAKING 🔪

If you aren’t following Jessie Bernhardt on Instagram, may I ask what are you doing? She is stunning, smart, cool, and just put herself through culinary school not because she wants to be a chef but because she just loves cooking and food and wanted to gain some skills (literally exactly what I wanna do). She also has a Substack called

Dinner & A Drink

you should definitely subscribe to. Anyway, she developed this recipe for Creamy Parmesan Asparagus Pasta, I made it last week, and we DEVOURED IT. It was literally incredible, and I am just so blown away that it came from her mind.

I love a crockpot recipe, so I made Defined Dish’s Slow Cooker Beef and Broccoli Bowls this past week and they were a hit! The meat was super tender, very flavorful, and the broccoli was cooked just enough. This is a really easy weeknight meal the whole family can enjoy.

Before I got sick Thursday night, I had prepared Samin Nosrat’s famous Roasted Buttermilk Chicken recipe. This is how I make our Thanksgiving turkey, so I already knew it was amazing. It’s an incredibly simple recipe and never isn’t absolutely divine. If you want to WOW guests, keep this in your back pocket.

Lastly, I remembered this really simple, delicious pasta sauce recipe Zac and I made during our Big Bend trip three years ago and had a hankering for it last night (Saturday). Happy to report it’s still absolutely delicious and easy to make!

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If you can believe it, I don’t…

have…

anything…

for the shopping section?

All I’m buying is maternity clothes and pregnancy shit, y’all. And I don’t know if that’s interesting to the masses or not? Is it? You tell me.

That’s all for this edition! I hope you’ve had a nice weekend and are ready for a new week. I know I am.

See you later,

EGM