10 Things: Beans & Badness
My recommendations of what to watch, read, look at, ponder, grow, and imagine this week.
Hello my friends, and happy Friday. As always, the first three are free, and the paid subscribers get seven more. This week, the paid subscribers get to learn about my secret guilty pleasures, which I think are worth paying for, since I have deep shame. (Also, an egg.)
A few weeks ago, Kat said that she’d heard on a podcast she likes that “Under The Tuscan Sun,” the 2003 movie that I remember as being billed as very much “for women,” had sort of a gay ending, and that we should maybe watch it together. Kat and I almost never get through a movie together, because we have to stop and gossip and talk about feelings and everything, but we gave it a shot, and WOW. First of all, if you happen to be an early “Grey’s Anatomy” fan, get ready: Christina Yang and Addison Montgomery are in this, AND THEY ARE LESBIAN LOVERS. So rarely do dreams come so true. And that’s only the beginning of a magical movie in which Diane Lane goes on a gay tour of Tuscany (really), follows a woman in a black hat who is rubbing live ducklings on her face in a farmer’s market (really), happens upon a decrepit villa that’s for sale in the countryside and decides to buy it (but the old woman who owns it isn’t so sure about Diane Lane, but then a pigeon shits on Diane’s head and then the woman blesses the purchase [really]). There’s an owl. There’s a snake. There’s a kitten named Piccolo and a female orgasm. And yes, besides, a superfluous and unnecessary end-of-movie cameo by Christopher from “Gilmore Girls,” the ending is quite gay. Is it my favorite movie now? I think YES.
A peanut sauce hack, and the salad of the week
Well, hold on to your boots, because I have found out a new way to make peanut sauce, and it is ROCKING. MY. WORLD. I’ve always used the same peanut sauce recipe (or a variation), but I saw this one somewhere (the internet? A magazine? Things run together when you have a baby), and it’s amazing. It’s creamier than normal peanut sauce, it makes a bigger batch, it has WAY more protein, and a little peanut butter goes a long way here. It’s idea for salad roll dipping. The key is white beans, like Great Northern. I would never have come up with that on my own, so I’m really happy to live in the age of the Internet.
In a blender, combine a can of drained and rinsed white beans, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 3 cloves of garlic, 3 tablespoons tamari, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, a thumb of ginger, the juice from a lime, a squidge of chili sauce of choice, and ¼ cup or more warm water. Blend.
I used this with the salad of last week, below. Let me know if you need any details about this salad. If you are asking yourself where I found shelled edamame seeds, the answer is that they’re in the FRESH section of Trader Joe’s, like by all the fresh soups and pre-made salads and stuff. I had no idea.
Not Great: The new season of “Ted Lasso”; But I DO Secretly Love: Rewatching “The Mindy Project”
We want “Ted Lasso” to give us the things it has already given us, but it cannot. It’s amazing that it was as successful as it was, given its premise. And now that we’ve all lived through “Don’t-Worry-Darling”-gate, from which Jason Sudeikis did not emerge remotely unscathed, his whole deal is no longer inherently charming. The first episodes of the third season have weird, limp stakes, and narry-a-LOL to be found. But it’s OK. I don’t feel angry, I don’t feel surprised; I feel that this is what happens with television. It’s outrun its engine.
However, I somewhat shamefully admit that, since “The Mindy Project” has been added to the Netflix roster (I’m not sure why this was what it took, I absolutely am a Hulu subscriber, but whatever), Luke and I have been rewatching it. It hasn’t aged great — there’s a truly troubling number of fat jokes (like, EVERY EPISODE, MULTIPLE TIMES! WTF, “Mindy Project”?!), and other offensive material (the episode where they all go to the women’s prison is… problematic), but man, is that show ever funny. It’s very funny, and there are TONS of LOLs. I’m having a great time re-watching it; and I’m feeling happy that in the ten years since it came out, we’ve come a long way in terms of body positivity. Such an easy thing to forget.
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