Cheese, Book, Restaurant, Thing #12
Goaty cheddar, missing hearts, crispy coconut rice, to-do list mania
Hello!
Cheese: It seems obvious, really, to marry a goat cheese with a cheddar cheese. So it’s no surprise that Montchevre’s Goat Milk Cheddar Cheese is the easiest kind of crowd-pleaser. It has a mellow sharpness, melts well, and still offers that lactic tanginess that goat cheese is known for. However, this is a quiet cheese—it doesn’t scream with cheddar-iness, or goat-iness. It’s a cheese you don’t crave desperately, but find yourself still wanting to stock in your cheese drawer regularly. Sort of like that couple you always really enjoy going out to dinner with, but you don’t harbor any sort of jealousy that their life is that much more fabulous than yours. So, I guess this cheese is like that solid couple friend of yours. Sure.
Book: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng is the kind of gut-punch novel that makes you stare at a wall, double checking that this is a book of dystopian fiction and not our actual society. And yes, it’s heavy reading a book about a 12-year-old boy’s search for his mother who disappeared three years ago, amongst a backdrop of other children getting “re-placed” in homes of parents that are not their own. But it’s also hopeful, and beautiful, and a biting critique about many distressing events that are in fact happening in our world. This is why fiction matters.
Restaurant: In my 20s and early 30s, I had a massive list of restaurants I wanted to try... and I usually did. While that list still exists in less massive form, there’s a new calculation now that I have two children and a limited amount of available evenings to go out: what’s the risk/reward ratio? With such few nights available, I don’t necessarily want to take the risk of forking over lots of money for a meal I might not love. The standby restaurant has become increasingly important. The one that always hits, with a menu that isn’t replicable elsewhere. For me, that place is Thip Khao, a popular Laotian restaurant in Columbia Heights, DC that makes me so dang happy every time I eat there. The must-order is the Naem Khao, a crispy coconut rice salad with peanut, lime, scallion, cilantro, shallot, chili, and lettuce wraps. It’s worth the extra $2 for the sour pork, which adds both a chewiness and a tanginess to a dish already full of crispy bits, brightness, and slight heat. Then, choose your own adventure—soups for cold nights, laab when you want spiciness—and the pumpkin sticky rice dessert for a not-too-sweet way to end the meal.
Thing: Yep, I have 5 different to-do apps and systems going on for different aspects of my life. A peek into my Type A soul:
Evernote: I use this only for work, where I have a constantly updating note that has my daily hit list, and then dozens of other saved notes from important meetings. I periodically archive or delete them when I have a lot, but it’s not that necessary thanks to the “Snippets” view option to keep track of multiple notes at once.
Apple Notes: This is where I keep personal to-do lists, divided into the following categories: Groceries, To Read, To Cook, To Eat, Things to Do in DC.
Any.do: A collection of long-term things I should eventually get around to, like signing my 3-year-old up for swim lessons and fixing the slow drain on our bathroom sink.
Google Keep: I use this for things I want to remember, with these categories: Mantras, Gifts to Buy People, Wines I Like, Recipe Winners, DC Restaurant List.
Pen & Paper: My notebook is full of my daily list of small tasks like “refill upstairs bathroom soap dispenser” and “take down Halloween decorations.” I love writing this with a heavy ballpoint pen so if you have any pen recs, would love to hear them.
Thanks for reading! See you again in December.
-c