Our Epic California Road Trip! 🚗
Hey everyone,
You’ll never guess what we did since my last newsletter? Well if you follow me on Instagram, you probably already know, but in case you don’t: we spontaneously drove from Los Angeles to Sonoma with stops in Carmel, Monterey, and Berkeley on an epic farewell-to-California road trip.
There were stops in Santa Barbara for lunch and in Berkeley we had dinner at Chez Panisse (!). There were wine tastings and pastries and reunions with old friends. There was even an octopus.
I bet you want to read about the whole thing, don’t you?
CLICK HERE and come along with us! I already miss it.
Because I put everything that happened to me food-and-wine-wise over the past five days into that post, there’s not much else to share in this newsletter.
Except this: I wrote an article for Food52 about alternatives to white flour pasta. If you could head over there and read it and leave a comment saying how much you like it, that’d be swell!
Here are some links to tickle your fancy:
Ice cream is good for you? Hooray! (The Atlantic);
This Barbara Lynch exposé is deeply disturbing, especially since I loved her memoir so much (NYT);
Chicken and spring greens pie (The Guardian).
That’s all for today, folks!
See you back here on Thursday,
Adam
wow, the road trip looked and sounded beyond perfect. highlights for me included: the first ever scone i've seen that i actually wanted to eat, a single spear of asparagus i wouldn't mind paying big bucks for, and some great looking aquatic friends. i absolutely love aquariums.
about twenty years ago (holy shit why did i do the math) i flew to CA for the first and only time for my cousin's wedding in ojai. my family and i stayed for a week or two and saw other CA stuff and i was most excited to go to that very monterey aquarium. but on that day we woke up to what sounded like the town having been invaded by an apocalyptic swarm of bees. it turns out there was some big car? racing? thing? happening and there was no good way to get to the aquarium so we never got to go and obviously i'm still Very Upset.
in other news, thanks for linking your not-exactly-pasta pasta review! i was waiting for that. do you think you'll do a part two? i just really appreciate you taking one for the team in the first half, you know. seems to be quite a lot of suggestions in the comments already.
the barbara lynch article, hoo boy. the "apology" alone is so typical as to be laughable - the classic trifecta of "it's not even true" but "sorry if you felt that way" and "i'm not perfect" with a dash of "it's the industry." and to an extent that last part is true - i think, especially for women, still, to rise through the ranks you end up having to blend in and in the process absorb some not-so-nice qualities (to put it mildly) and then you convince yourself not only is it fine, it makes you a unique Strong Woman who is also One Of The Boys. ingrained misogyny is real and so terrible and also frankly annoying - as someone who in the last several years worked to disentangle "the real me" from the me i didn't realize i was creating, that felt authentic because certain things are so societally ingrained as to feel innate.
also, the fentanyl epidemic is real. to anyone reading, please, please, PLEASE be as safe as you can. carry narcan and know how to use it. know the laws in your state - many have allowances so you can call 911 for overdoses without any fear of drug charges. test your supply if you can. and remember, fentanyl is not simply a heroin problem anymore. it's in pressed pills, molly/mdma, cocaine, and meth. because it takes so little to cause effects, it has become a more affordable and accessible additive in basically any drug. you also don't have to be an addict - you can OD or die at a party doing the same things you've always done safely in the past. sorry to be grim, but people need to get and stay educated on this. ms. lynch, everything else aside, with all her money could have paid for education and therapy at that fateful meeting instead of acting abhorrently.
apologies for another Extremely Long Comment but for a short newsletter it was jam packed! thank you for all the goods this week!
My son works at Berkeley Bowl. It’s the best!