stuff i feel like eating these days

1. spicy cucumber salad, made w persian cucumbers cut up smallish and herbs (whatever you’ve got) and peanuts and garlic and ginger and a marinade loosely based on an nyt one my mom sent me back when i used to cook from nyt recipes as a matter of course. boycott the nyt for so many reasons, but also bc their recipes are almost never as good as food & wine ones to me? but anyway, a riff on this recipe still serves me well in hot weather, and i like knowing i’m serving roughly the same thing to rax and me that my mom is making for herself and my stepdad in the thick of any nyc summer.

2. heirloom tomatoes, most recently in a tomato goat cheese tart i semi-improvised with some of the puff pastry i keep in the freezer and three or four big heirlooms from the echo park farmer’s market. i served the tart with a pea salad with ponzu dressing right before we went out with sophie and ac this weekend and i didn’t eat much of it in the moment (which inevitably led to me purchasing a big-ass drunk hot dog outside akbar in the wee small hours), but it’s led to some solid leftovers.

3. FRIED SQUASH BLOSSOMS. i used this recipe with some really good peppercorn goat cheese i got in joshua tree last weekend and i was sort of prepared for it to flop bc what am i, a nonna in a flowing nightgown making lunch for 40 in a hot roman kitchen with her tits going every which way? i mean, yes, in many ways, not least bc the squash blossoms totally worked (at least partly bc i used seltzer in the batter, i think.)

4. popsicles. we have regular outshine ones in the freezer, but i want to get the pedialyte kind.

5. kiwi. i haven’t actually had kiwi in months but i NEED to buy some asap. new intrusive fruit thought just dropped.

6. i’d be really into filipino dinner soon, at either kuya lord or lasita. actually we might go to park’s finest tonight with miles and mads after rax’s reading at stories? but if not maybe i’ll get the point point joint longanisa plate for breakfast tomorrow, time will tell.

7. this isn’t actually something i will eat for another few weeks, but i’m plotting my birthday cake already: after much debate and cookbook scouring, i’ve landed on natasha pickowicz’s passion fruit, coconut and tequila layer cake from more than cake, and part of my day on the 16th after i pose for some pictures for my pilates studio in exchange for some free classes will hopefully involve taking a long-awaited and shamefully photo-oriented trip to the dtla flower mart to get some edible flowers for the top of the cake. im so curious about how chamomile flowers taste! can’t wait to find out.

8. chocolate-caramel budino. always. jon & vinny’s has a good one, although i’ve ordered it for delivery before and it hasn’t rocked that hard? idk. i need to make my own. and, for that matter, another bombe from more than cake.

9. lemon pasta the way my mom makes it, which i plan to demand when rax and i are in new york at the end of july.

currently watching: anthony bourdain parts unknown, the one in the bay area! also just tore thru queer ultimatum and my GOD i need to do a citizen’s arrest on joanna garcia swisher.

currently reading: frickin nothing, i need to get on it. i do have a bunch of books about dog training downloaded on libby that i guess i should open?

currently listening to: the new lorde, the new frankie cosmos, the sound of franklin whining softly as rax eats a raspberry popsicle bc i made the mistake of giving him a lick of my orange one and now he thinks he always deserves that.

xoxo,

emma