Syllabus #240

I drew this for Andy.  The inside, as you might infer, says "You Picked Me"

I saw a post on the Nashville subreddit asking for recommendations on where to go for a first date on Valentine's Day.  

Let that sink in for a sec.  A first date.  On Valentine's Day.  That's a real masochist move right there.  Why set yourself up for that kind of pressure?  I think the sweet spot for VD (heh) is people who have been exclusive with their partner (any level of commitment from dating through marriage) for more than 6 months and less than 5 years.  

Too early in a relationship, and it's like, y'all probably don't love each other, so what are we doing here? (Says the woman who moved in with her now-husband of nearly 14 years after a scant month of dating, like a couple of hetero lesbians, and I mean that with all the love and respect in my heart for actual lesbians.). And beyond the 5-year mark, it's like, we know what we're doing here, no need to go out for an overpriced meal at the precise time of year when restaurants are slammed, and service/quality is guaranteed to be at its absolute worst.  Just stay at home and do something nice for each other.

Enter our Saturday night.  Actual Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday, and for some reason when I was planning out meals for the week, I took no heed of that.  Didn't even consider that maybe I'd cook something halfway decent we could both enjoy.  I was just like, I tutored today and got home from work late, Andy, heat you up a hamsteak and microwave some broccoli, I'm off the clock, big dawg.

And then I felt kinda bad about that, probably because I always feel kinda bad about something, and I surely have a lot of internalized misogyny about what women are supposed to do.  But I also like to putz around in the kitchen when I have the time.  So I made the time.  And it capitulated with this:

Two-tiered chocolate pavlova looks like it belongs on a Garbage Pail Kids trading card, tastes like it descended from the heavens on the silky wings of an angel

---

For Saturday's dessert, I made Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova Stack.  Of course I had to put my own spin on it, and by that I mean I am lazy and don't like to follow directions.  In the interest of time and because we are just two people who don't normally eat something this decadent, I skipped the raspberry curd and cut the recipe in half.  I made two slightly smaller meringue discs, and just used whipped cream and the chocolate drizzle on top of each layer.

But we all know, if you don't eat your meat, you don't get a treat, so first there was dinner.  I made sure to harden our arteries real good with the rest of the pint of heavy cream I had to buy for the pavlova, and whipped up Joy the Baker's Marry Me Chicken.  I served it over some butter and herb rice pilaf.  Chef's kiss.  For my plate, I skipped the chicken (duh) and had the sauce, tomatoes, and olives over the rice, and I kind of just wanted to make a big bathtub full of the stuff and climb on in.  I considered throwing in some tempeh strips for me, but I got lazy (seems to be a theme around here).  In the end, it wasn't necessary.  The creamy sauce, the savory tomatoes, the briny olives, plus the texture of the rice, ugh, damn, it was perfect.  If Andy says it's good, and offers no notes, you know it's good.

I'm reading this article on Slate about a new Peanuts special featuring Franklin, and I can just picture Charles Schulz poking a gnarled middle finger up out of his grave and his ghost swooping around over the headstone intoning "goooood grieeeeeeef."  Sounds like they really screwed the pooch with this one, and I ain't talking about Snoopy.  How did they manage to go backwards and tokenize Franklin more than ever?

I learned more about the craft of comedy from this NYTimes interactive piece about Taylor Tomlinson shaping her closing joke than I have from probably anything else I've ever read.  

Analog Reading:

I have about 20 pages left of The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis.  It's v good.  I like the pacing and the various perspectives.  The perspective of the main protagonist, an 11-year-old boy, is particularly moving, because he's wise for his age given all that he's seen and experienced, but there's still so much he doesn't know about what the adults in his life are really doing.  Seeing through his eyes as an adult reader, it's clear that he's being buffeted by the whims of people who are either mentally ill, on drugs, or blinded by magical thinking, but he doesn't have the context for that yet.

Up next, I'm going to switch gears entirely and read Die with Zero.  It promises to be more financial philosophy than specific financial advice, but I'm curious about the concept of spending down your money in meaningful ways before you die, or get too old to enjoy it.  I took a life expectancy quiz and based on my lifestyle and demographic info, I might live to 96, which sounds horrendous and I honestly don't expect the world as we know it to exist by then, so we might as well fiddle while Rome burns make hay while the sun is shining carpe the diem, I guess.