Emchap’s Shit from the Internet 10/10/18 🍠
As of Sunday night, I am returned from my two weeks of travel to Atlanta and New York. Despite the fact that the trip was objectively full of many people I love and some exceptional food, traveling for more than a few days wears me down. I spent much of the trip exhausted in a bone-deep sort of "is something wrong with me???? (maybe I should eat a plant)" way that doesn't happen when I am at home and can structure more of my own life.
But! I did have a wonderful time on the trip. The highlight was a Saturday I spent in New York, where I was crashing in my sister's apartment. (It's very nice, though it suffers from the roommate apartment issue of "we have two couches because no one wants to get rid of theirs" issue, which was funny to see in action.) My sister works in theater and is amazing at getting cheap Broadway tickets, so whenever I'm in town I let her pick what we're doing and we go see a show.
After striking out on rush tickets at Come From Away, we stuck our heads in at the Lion King to see if they had anything; the counter worker said that they could give us a substantial discount on some center orchestra seats, and feeling flush, we went for it. They were hands down the best theater seats I've ever had in my LIFE, which was cool, and I have wanted to see the Lion King costumes ever since reading (I think) this book at my grandparents' house when I was a kid. My sister was excited. It was great.
What I was not anticipating was bursting entirely into tears during "Circle of Life." But I did! I super did! The elephant puppet started walking down the aisle to my left and I lost it!
I have seen Hamlet With Lions in animated form a million times, but there was something so cool about seeing some really, really good puppeteers and actors doing their thing, and there was something about that that was just deeply emotionally resonant. I was glad I went.
After the show was done and my sister had bought me expensive cheesecake next door, I headed up to the Met to see the final weekend of Heavenly Bodies (their "fashion but make it Catholic" exhibit). The first part of the show—focused on Catholic designers riffing on church garments—was interesting, but by far my favorite part was the Vatican collection downstairs. It included a bunch of examples of this bananas-fine embroidery of bible scenes, and one particular set of garments noted that it took a team of 15 women working 16 years to complete a sit of six shirts, which is kind of unimaginable! The stitches were so delicate and the color gradation was so fine that the embroidery looked like painted velvet.
It's very rare that I am emotionally bowled over in art museums, but to see such fantastic examples of a craft I know how to do (badly) made the art very human. It was amazing to see.
Shit to read
We fixed an echidna's ant allergy!
I love Captain Awkward columns that leave me going "what the fuck?" about peoples' choices like 800 times.
The Good Place is so good, Eleanor is the horny weirdo we need, and the actor who plays Chidi is so attractive that I once ran into him on the street and literally walked into a tree.
I loved loved loved this Molly Crabapple piece on the Bund and her great grandfather, and the emotional resonance of socialism.
Love some Mountain Goats content.
Helen Rosner called this out as a great backdoor restaurant review, and it is, but it is also a charming piece about Daniel Radcliffe and the nature of facts.
It is good to talk about loneliness.
Shit to eat
Decide, upon returning home from a time away, that you want to make babka.
(Will this be related to the fact that you didn't get to eat any while traveling? Yes.)
At night, before leaving for a film screening (#LA), prep the dough.
I'm not even going to bother doing a cute translation of the steps, it's dough, you should go use the real recipe so you don't fuck it up. It's nice, it's a brioche sort of thing and if like me you don't own a microplane (I am a goblin), you can take a vegetable peeler to the outside of an orange and sort of gently remove outer peel and chop it up real fine. It's fine.
Also you can make the whole thing in a food processor with a dough hook, and it doesn't seem to harm things.
Put the dough in to chill.
The next day, on your lunch break, melt the remainder of a bag of chocolate chips and a stick of butter together. Add half a cup of powdered sugar and a third a cup of cocoa powder. Use dark cocoa powder because it makes everything slightly terrifying looking.
Take half the dough out of the fridge, flour your counter, and go to town making a big rectangle out of it. It's cold and the dough is mostly butter, so it'll take effort.
Spread out half the chocolate goop, roll the thing up, and pop it in the freezer. Do the same with the other half of the dough and sauce.
After fifteen minutes, take a roll out, trim the ends off, and cut it down the middle. Twist it together in a fancy little braid and plop it in an oiled loaf pan.
If you own a second loaf pan like an adult, do the same. If you don't, cut the second log into slices and stack them together in an 8x8 pan like chocolate cinnamon rolls.
Leave everything out under a towel for an hour.
Heat your oven to 375 if it's normal or 395 if it's mine (it's so off) and pop everything in there. Take the rolls out after 25 minutes and the loaf out after 30.
Cover everything in simple syrup.
After your last client call, eat two of the rolls, compensating for having not actually eaten lunch. They will be delicious.
(Adapted completely from Smitten Kitchen's better babka recipe)
Shit to listen to
Very pro this cover of "No Children" mentioned in the article linked above. (I am horrified any time anyone mentions playing this song in their wedding, what is wrong with folks, it is a fundamentally depressing/great song!)
Shit to buy
I went down a weird rabbit hole of looking at punch bowls on Etsy today, and this one is great. So is this set of Too Much Glassware.
Very into this milk glass punch bowl.