It’s been a snowy weekend, and to celebrate, I made snowflake spritz cookies and took Charlotte out to romp around in the snow. I bought the cookie press this past December because they’re a favorite Christmas cookie with my family. The kit comes with several designs, so I was happy to pull it out again for a batch of snowflakes and snowmen. I used this recipe and dusted them with a quick layer of sugar for decoration.
Here’s what I’m reading and eating this week:
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
Let’s start this year off with a good one: A timely read, given Carrie Fisher’s death in the last days of 2016. My sister gave me this book for Christmas this year, and I spent the weekend’s snow day polishing it off. It was fantastic. Carrie Fisher’s writing about her time on the set of Star Wars is interesting in itself for her thoughts on the making of such an iconic character, but her journals, published sandwiched between a narrative of the 3-month filming, are beautiful and impressively poetic for a 19-year-old.
She talks fairly frequently about how she might be viewed after she dies and what the legacy of Leia will live on as. She also talks a lot about the death of Jabba the Hut, her “favorite moment in [her] own personal film history.” She inserts herself into the action, rebranding herself from “slave Leia” to slayer Leia, so mad at Jabba about the metal bikini and immobility that she killed him for it.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.”
On sleeping with Harrison Ford: “‘You wanna come up?’ I asked absurdly. He almost laughed. ‘Sure.’ I reached in my bag for my keys. Leia found them and led him into the building to her apartment, and Carrie spend the rest of the night making sequels with her future cinematic husband.”
Details are limited, she opts to not dole out “soft porn for hardened sci-fi fans.” But what she does share is imaginative: “So now we’d spoken together with our words, we’d bantered together using George’s words – now we were exploring the outer reaches of no speak, of memorizing the bottom of each other’s faces with our mouths.”
“I am the only one who can come to my rescue. I am the only one who can help me now… I can’t focus on the good things. There are good things going on all around me, but I don’t trust them. I can’t make use of them, don’t have the time for them; I’m too preoccupied with my precious panic.”
On her popularity as Leia: “I was something women and men could agree on. They didn’t like me in the same way, but they liked me with the same intensity, and were all fine with the other sex liking me, too. Isn’t that weird? Think about it. And then stop and ponder something actually important.”
Read it. She’s important, and we lost someone special.
What I’ve been cooking this week (if you need inspiration):
Sunday: Lentil soup + leftover chicken + kale salad
Monday: Grilled shrimp with citrus and leeks over greens (made by David)
Tuesday: Creamy pasta with peas and bacon
Wednesday: Ramen noodles with tofu, broccoli, and kale
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots
Saturday: Lentil soup (again) + garlic bread
