It’s been a busy, busy week at work, so I’m really looking forward to the weekend when we’ll have a bit of down time with Charlotte (and my parents are coming, too, which means there are two extra sets of eyes on that toddler). It’s been a good week food-wise, and I have some fun ideas planned for the 4th of July holiday next week.
Here’s what I’m eating and reading this week:
Weekly Menu and Meal Plan
(In case you need inspiration for what to make for dinner tonight):
Sunday: Chickpea tika masala from Cookie & Kate’s Love Real Food
Monday: Pan-seared pork chops with green beans and garlic bread
Tuesday: Stove-top fusilli from Melissa Clark’s Dinner: Changing The Game
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Thai lettuce wraps (also from Dinner: Changing the Game)
Friday: BLT pasta with arugula and cherry tomatoes
Saturday: Leftovers
The stove-top fusilli was such a disappointment – I haven’t made homemade mac & cheese in a long time, so I was really excited, but this turned out to be a gloopy mess where the cheese and spinach balled together in a thick clump, leaving the fusilli unadorned and flavorless. A few tweaks and this might turn into a workable weeknight recipe, but as written, I was underwhelmed.
Also, I missed last week’s post, so this week I have twice the meals to browse:
Sunday: Grilled peach & prosciutto salad from Food52’s Mighty Salads, chorizo burgers from Dinner: Changing the Game
Monday: Salmon nicose salad and parsley & dill potatoes
Tuesday: White bean, chicken, and veggie summer bowls
Wednesday: Chicken cappellini al fresco (with garlic, cherry tomatoes, and basil)
Thursday: Farro & mozzarella salad with pan-seared pork chops (another one from Melissa Clark)
Friday: a potluck spread with my dietitian friends, including melon & prosciutto with mint, a cheese and salami plate, and cheesecake
Saturday:Lobster & cod cakes from Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey
Here’s what I’m reading and loving this week:
There’s actually two things I’m watching and excited about on Netflix: first, Moana is now available for streaming, which has been a welcome break from Charlotte’s current favorite, Zootopia. And, big news, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is going to be available on Netflix in mid-July. My sisters and I tried to see this one in the theater back in December, but it was sold out (at 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning during the middle of a regular work week). So, this will be new to me, and I’m excited for it.
Books I might add to my to-read list (in addition to everything else I already want to read this summer).
Also, Pottermore has a read-along book club revisiting the Harry Potter series in honor of the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Books I Read:
All The Lives I Want: Essays About My Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
By: Alana Massey
I have no idea where I heard about this book, but I checked it out of the library and read it over the course of a weekend. Once I picked it up, it was absorbing and enjoyable. The book is a collection of essays written about famous women, and Massey weaves observations from her own life into those she’s making about cultural icons.
A theme that came up throughout the essays (for example, on Amber Rose, Lana Del Ray, and Sylvia Plath, and the author herself) is that men either resent or are confused by women telling their own stories because it detracts from women’s imagined job of listening to men’s stories, absorbing them, and reflecting back an image that boosts the male ego. In Massey’s essays, men are repeatedly frustrated and angered when women (either in real life or in the cultural examples she explores) fail to function appropriately as this mirror.
There’s a lot of entertainment and anger here. A few of my favorite examples include:
“They [men] ask that you answer their questions and that you love them for no reason other than the fascinating beat of their own unremarkable hearts.”
On Sylvia Plath: “Her cautionary tale is not about lives poorly lived but about feelings too earnestly expressed. Nearly half a century after her death, we remain more interested in girls’ being kept palatable than being kept alive.”
On The Virgin Suicides: “[the sisters] are blank canvases onto which they [the boys] can project their own stories of perfect love and trust and see it reflected back at them.”
On Joan Didion’s character Maria Wyeth: “The story is littered with men attempting to police her emotions while forgiving their own undeveloped ones. She finds them tiresome.”
