Friday, January 9 , 2025
Jeremy Miranda We’re going to fill our feeds with things that inspire us, yes? Here’s another recommendation: I’ve been following Jeremy Miranda forever, and there’s not a single painting of his I wouldn’t want to stare at for the rest of my life. I’m especially fond of his holiday paintings (you can see many on his Instagram over the last month) and anytime he bends light through everyday spaces, such as the hopeful-feeling paintings above.
My favorite host: My friend Irene hosts a cookie swap every December and in total transparency, I heard about the party at least a year before I achieved snagging an invitation. [”You must put in a good word for me!” I told the person who introduced us.] If you’re picturing a sprinkle frenzy and leaving a mild sugar coma, you’ve definitely never met Irene, because she is in it for the whole experience. We start with a bowl of kale caesar salad with dressing she’s made from scratch over the day before — she will individually clean the salted anchovies, grate the aged parmesan. Two days before, she begins prepping the bolognese sauce she will use for her lasagna bolognese. Irene makes three hotel pans (a deep 12x20-inch pan restaurants love) of lasagna which she asks other friends in the building to help bake off in their ovens (apartment life!) and they all walk them through the front door right before dinner is served, the aroma of toasted cheesy edges and long-cooked sauce following in its wake. You can follow this year’s process over here. Do you know what a bowl of salad and a perfectly delicate yet hearty slice of lasagna leave you clamoring for? Three glasses of red wine, uh, if you’re me, but also: cookies. No bite of butter and sugar tastes as good as the one you have after a fully savory meal. Do you have a favorite host? What is it they do that inspires you?
Snowflaking Hobbies? Interest? No, mostly my favorite thing to do over the December holidays (usually in those 10-minute intervals while waiting for trays of cookies to bake) is this. I use basic printer paper, squared off and folded into one-sixths, basic office scissors, and just notch away until there’s barely tethered skeleton of paper left. A couple weeks into covering every surface of our apartment in snowflakes, Elf-style, we found a pack of white origami paper and it’s even cooler because it’s already square, making it easier to round off, and a little thinner, so it’s easier for little hands to cut through. I hear paper coffee filters work well too, but don’t keep them around. Truly, you need no special equipment to make them, which is why it’s a perfect-for-us craft. On Christmas Eve we had friends over until late and they asked for snowflake tutorials and we somehow had the most Hallmark Movie-level earnest scene going on around the table as everyone got into crafting over wine and brownies.
When Harry Met Sally is a New Years movie. I cannot get animated about whether Die Hard is a Christmas Movie (sure?) but there is no debate about this. We know I’m right. Have you watched it yet this year? A cold, lazy weekend is the perfect way to fix this. [P.S. Our home wifi network is babyfishmouth.]
The Plum You’re Going to Eat Next Summer is a perfect New Year’s poem.
The Coney Island Polar Bear New Years Day Plunge. When I first moved to NYC, I read about this and thought “wait, that sounds fun.” I asked my roommate if he wanted to go and he said “absolutely not.” Over the years, this has been a consistent theme among friends, spouses, and family members I’ve asked. “Are you out of your mind, Deb?” “No, I don’t have hypothermia on my to-do list” and 25 years later I realized if I wanted to do it, I was just going to have to do it solo, which is what led me to running across a thin layer of icy snow (of course it had to snow) into the Atlantic Ocean at 11:05 am on New Years Day. “What is wrong with you, Deb?” has been a common question lobbed in my direction in the days since, and for this, I think I finally have an answer, which is that the overlap in the Venn diagram of “widely understood to be a bad idea” and “but how can I be absolutely sure if I haven’t personally verified this” is, unfortunately, quite large for me. It’s also where most of my ridiculous choices live, such as making friends celebrate my birthday at the Times Square Margaritaville two years ago, dragging my husband on a Kukoo Kunuku bus tour in Aruba a decade or so ago, and, well, this. Except for the part where I regret any of them, which I do not. I just laugh and check it off the Life List.
Today year’s old: Ablaut. One of my favorite topics is words I absolutely hadn’t known could possibly exist (see The Word List in the last Yap) and this one shook me, not just as a word but a concept. Did we all know this? Was I sick that day in school?
Do you allow notifications on on your phone? A friend — fine, it was my sister, please don’t kill me A! — told me this week she turned off all the notifications on her phone from apps and social media and she’s much happier now. You could say I was triggered. “I cannot believe you even let them speak to you in the first place!” I screeched into the text screen. “Your attention is a privilege! They have not earned it!” If any of you have notifications on from any non-essential apps let me know and I can yell sense into you too. I provide this service for free. Feel free to place a bet on how long it will be until I’m texting her something urgent and for her to cooly respond, “My attention is a privilege, Deb.”
Weekly/Schmeekly, okay? I may routinely fail at the “Weekly” part of the “Weekly Yap” promise (not the yapping part, clearly), my interest in continuing this newsletter is undiminished. I love having a space to share little bits of things I’ve enjoyed that you might too, and chatting about it all in the comments. What isn’t working for me is trying to keep a schedule about it. Trust me, you didn’t need me dispatching last week from the land of stomach bugs. So, this newsletter will soon be renamed The Occasional Yap, or perhaps just The Yap. I’ll aim for Friday mornings, but my preference is to feel tethered not to a schedule, but to a sufficient enough pile of amassed snippets worth sharing.
Snow! It snowed three times in NYC in December, which is honestly unprecedented. I’m ecstatic. P.S. This is the first book I ever learned how to read.
A few things I’ve cooked lately:
A roasted broccoli salad that’s almost but not quite right yet. Let this tide you over.
Roast Chicken with Dijon Sauce
Can you guess!? I bet you can.
Your attention is a privilege and I hope I haven’t abused it today,
xo Deb
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Attention IS a privilege! ✊ And it's a delight to share attention with your world, inspirations, and recipes. How lovely to find your favorite foodsmith is also a wordsmith with good taste! Thank you for the time to craft these newsletters, however frequently they come.
I have never been so delighted to learn I share the same WiFi network name with someone! My fiance and my’s first dance this fall will be to It Had To Be You.