Things I've been watching and eating

Culinary Class Wars, The Traitors, salty vanilla sugar

Celebrated 4 years with Sesame this month!

Hey long time no talk. How’s everyone feeling out there? Cold and scared about the future? Sounds about right! I let the cobwebs collect around here because I just didn’t have it in me to write anything the past few months. But it’s a new year, I freshly turned 30, and like everyone else I’m increasingly unsettled by the ownership of my social media platforms, so here I am, back at it again at Krispy Kreme. You may recall reading about my never-ending quest to find a job and the update is that I still don’t have a full-time job, although I do have a couple months worth of freelance work lined up so that’s something.

Now I’m just going to write a loose list of things I’ve been watching, eating, cooking, etc. because this blog has no theme or purpose except that basically!

Culinary Class Wars

I’ve watched so many hours of cooking competition television, but somehow I’ve never dabbled in international cooking shows, aside from the Great British Bake Off. But the other day I randomly turned on Culinary Class Wars, a Korean cooking show on Netflix, and I became instantly obsessed. The show begins with 100 contestants, 80 of whom are intermediate to advanced level chefs, and 20 of whom are elite level chefs. The first elimination round involves whittling the 80 chefs down to 20. There are 40 chefs cooking in the warehouse-sized kitchen at a time. There are a ton of chefs specializing in Korean cuisine, but also a bunch specializing in Chinese and Japanese food. There’s randomly an Italian chef name Fabrizio Ferrari. With all of these contestants, there are only two judges, and one thing I’m obsessed with about this show is how much the judges eat. On the shows I’m used to like Chopped or Top Chef, the judges take pretty small bites because they know they’ll have to eat a lot. But not here! These two judges absolutely house the dishes. They take huge bites and so many of them. I’m in awe.

Love Island All-Stars

This season is fascinating to watch. It’s pretty bad and painful much of the time. Because they’re all alumni, everyone has already had their 15 minutes of fame, some as long as 10 years ago. There’s one guy who is a 39-year-old dad in the middle of a divorce. People have gray hair. And yet they still sleep 10 to a room and chat on bean bags. Like I said, fascinating.

The Traitors

Perfect show. Almost no notes except that there are too many big burly boys. A few of them need to be sifted out. I’m rooting for Gabby Windey because I love her even though I only know her from TikTok (though I am obsessed with the fact that a few years ago she was an NFL cheerleader and nurse before joining The Bachelor and now she’s a lesbian on The Traitors). I also think Carolyn has the power to make it to the end. I’m rooting against Bob Harper because The Biggest Loser was a demonic creation. If you are loving The Traitors and crave more, I recommend the Australian version; both seasons of the show feature brutal, incredible finales.

A Different Man

I think this is the year when people who previously never had a strong opinion about Sebastian Stan — which is most people — form one. For example, never previously had strong thoughts besides “hot” but now I think he’s quite a good actor. A Different Man is about a man (Stan) who thinks that an experimental procedure to heal his severe facial deformities will improve his life, but actually it turns out his personality was the problem the whole time. He’s especially taunted when he meets another man with facial deformities who has more swag than he’ll ever have, surgery or not. It’s about disability but it’s also about identity, art, writing, and, New York apartment buildings.

Snacking Cakes and Snacking Bakes

Last year, I checked Yossy Arefi’s cookbook Snacking Cakes for four months. It wasn’t intentional but the library just auto-renews stuff now if it’s not on hold, seemingly indefinitely. And I kept not having a job so I kept making snacking cakes, which is a term for a type of cake that is quick and easy, usually using one bowl, and can just be eaten as a little treat over the course of two days. I made a cranberry and cream cheese cake recipe for Thanksgiving. I made a gingerbread cake, a chocolate yogurt cake, a grapefruit olive oil cake. Then I returned the book to the library and checked out its sequel, Snacking Bakes, which includes cookies, bars, etc. Then I got a gift card to a local bookstore for my birthday, so I bought Snacking Cakes. Shawn told me to keep the receipt because he thought someone may have gotten me the book as a gift, but they didn’t; they got me Snacking Bakes! Anyway now I own both books and the library has both of its books back.

A snacking bake! Easy grapefruit cookies (pink due to hibiscus I added)

Salty vanilla sugar

A few weeks ago, I made brown butter lemon bars from Sohla El-Waylly’s cookbook Start Here, which is easily my most used cookbook. The recipe calls for using an optional “spent vanilla bean,” which I happened to have because I have some homemade vanilla and just leave the beans soaking in there. I pulled one out to use for the recipe, but on the page after the recipe, there are a bunch of tips on how to get the most out of your vanilla beans because they’re the fruit of an orchid that blooms once a year and only grows in three areas! Anyway she suggests rinsing the vanilla bean after use, drying it out, and blitzing it up to mix together with sugar. I mixed it with sugar and also salt and now I just have a little fun jar of special seasoning. Very good on whipped cream on top of hot cocoa.