Welcome to the friendly skies. I mean, welcome to the 3rd edition of In The Kitchen. A newsletter to friends and family who never formally opted-in but are generous enough to support me in whatever this is. This is written by me, inspired by you and is always done with lots of love. I ask questions and share random bits of brain waves throughout. Your perspective is always appreciated.
This may be my last edition over email. Plz don’t panic. It’s just that gmail hasn’t figured out the newsletter game and these often end up in peoples’ junk mail, looks wonky on androids (that’s a you problem though) and is hard to read due to formatting blips. I love writing these and plan to keep ‘em coming. I'll email separately if I decide to sell out to substack. The good news is that I have a logo now!
Things are getting weird.
I’m on my 4th cross country flight in 2 weeks, which means that I have not been cooking enough and my internet rabbit holes have turned a bit obscure. Apologies in advance. I also tried to weasel this edition in before Thanksgiving. This is close enough.
Edition 3 has been the hardest to write yet. Mostly because I didn’t believe I’d make it to 3 editions in 3 weeks. There are greater accomplishments in life of course, but recently, this one is chillin’ in the #1 spot. To be fair, the only hater in the building was me all along. Damn you past self. Damn you future self. The one we can trust is the present self. We’re still getting to know each other.
This week I was obsessing over how large turkey’s are. As someone who is 5’2 and is frequently confused for a child bride, the sheer size of a Turkey leg is intimidating. Why u so big? While I can appreciate tradition, we all know this holiday is laced with some not so celebratory history and is the hardest meal to nail from a cooking perspective.
For those who are wondering, I’ll be cooking fajitas this year. Kenji style (duh). If your no-so turkey day is a little non-traditional, send me what you make! I’ll share a compilation of photos next week if I have enough content to make it fun, not sad.
Turkey Legs are between 9-12 in. long.
I was serious when I said I was obsessing over turkey legs. My first two searches yielded a ton of Turkey recipes. Not what I’m looking for, Google. So I got more specific. TBH, I just wanted to put a drumstick next to my face in a meme and make it true to size. But then I got distracted.
What I found was both highly educational and very weird. This is probably my favorite intersection of the internet. Reuben says I’m, “good at the internet.” I’ve come to learn (through multiple experiments), that if you wiki-raced as a middle schooler, used StumbleUpon as a high schooler, and frequent Reddit as an adult, you are good at the internet.
This search yielded a lot more taxidermy content than I was ready for. But hey, why not? A quick search through McKenzie’s Taxidermy supply and the Taxidermy.net forum informed me that turkey legs are between 9-12in. Easy enough.
But now I’m invested (and have several hours of flight time left). What else is there to know about taxidermy? Thankfully the poor gentleman next to me is fast asleep and Reuben has learned how to tune me out when I go into rabbit holes. This happened very early in our relationship.
Welcome to a new segment, where I share internet bread crumbs (inspired Lots of Links) found along my voyages through the world wide web. This week, the topic is taxidermy:
You can taxidermy a hippo penis. Click here for a great AMA on reddit.
The market size of Taxidermy is almost $800M. Click here for a market report.
Often, the backsides of animals are not wanted. People have transformed deer butts into aliens, aka, “assquatch” or “redneck art”. You really can’t make this up. Click here and here for more on that (plus the meme below)
There’s a subreddit dedicated to bad taxidermy. If you’re looking for a belly chuckle with a slight undertone of disgust, click here.
Non-taxidermy, but made the cut due to being obsure-enough: You can determine the sex of a turkey based on their poop. Male poop is J shaped and female poop is spiral shaped. Click here for more.
Ok, enough about Taxidermy.
Is it too late to go back to the feel good stuff? Sorry Beccah and Karen. I feel you getting squeemish.
The only way to move past this is to quickly change topics. How about…. spices?
It’s fascinating to me how tightly tied spices are to culture. In my home, cumin and paprika are front and center. I would love to see an episode of room raiders, but in the kitchen. Oh, they cook with THAT salt? Nahhh. That's a deal breaker. They’re a McCormick family? Idk, man.
Moving forward, whenever I go to a stranger's home (idk how often this happens), I’ll be jetting towards the spice cabinet for a little inspo and a real take on their entire identity. But in writing this, I’ve also considered a more metaphysical interpretation of spices.
The class of spices that flavor us, nourish us, and bring us to life. We each have a distinct cabinet, just dedicated to that. I’m coming to find out that my “fulfillment spice rack” is much bigger than expected, but it’s weirdly comforting to have labeled them and neatly organized them into this digital library of sorts. Now, Reuben can refer to this whenever I’m down and pass me the, “cat snuggles”! Or better yet, I can turn it and pick out what I need and how much of it to add in.
This is my current fulfillment spice rack. There is a 100% chance I will add more to this after sending the email.
What’s in yours?
Over the past week, I’ve been reflecting on abundance.
There’s a lot of stuff in this world. Way too much. I’d like to honor the duality of abundance: Abundance facilitates exploration, but can quickly become overwhelming and poor quality. It also reminds us of the importance of curation, quality and being content with having enough.
So this next segment is about both. The Quantity (thru Curation) and Quality Segment. Where I compile tidbits to remind us that there’s beauty in both. Listen, it’s lonely out there. I need an outlet for my many links and musings. Taxidermy wasn't enough this week.
A reminder that some things age beautifully:
^This is from 1914 and was published by the US Food Administration. Thank you Fike!
A reminder to dance, especially alone:
You may not have 10-1000 minutes to get some solo time over the holidays. But I bet you can carve out 3 minutes. Bring in those headphones to the bathroom and pick one of these tunes to get you moving. Next Turkey leg is on me if you’re not vibing:
Djadja - Aya Nakamura - thank you Natalie
Purple Hat- Sofi Tukker - that drop tho.
Time of our lives - Pitbull, Ne-Yo - Mr. worldwide baabaayy
A reminder that animals are the best, and worst:
Thanksgiving brings out the weird in all of us.
A reminder that smells and labels can be deceiving. At the end, it’s on us to uncover the truth.
Case study: Truffles.
TLDR: Truffle oils are synthetic. Our taste buds have adapted to chemically created truffle, which is in fact, not truffle at all. Truffle taste is delicate and rare (of course), much like ______? What's delicate and rare? Incan tapestry, maybe?
Lastly, and as always, I’ll end with: What I’m Cooking
This week, I was going to film the process of pan frying salmon. Our king, Kenji, had a perfect how-to and then I decided it would be even cooler to videotape me cooking it. I got some feedback that Flava flav was entertaining, but a video would be even more helpful. This could have been a cool hybrid of a Knowledge Drop + What I’m Cooking. Instead, it was a very awkward 20 minutes of footage.
This looks as sad as it was, lol.
So, here are the 5 steps to nailing salmon, as told by screenshots of my video:
This was incredibly tasty, I gotta tell you. I topped mine off w/ homemade teriyaki sauce.
Thank you all for making it through edition 3. I hope you still love me despite the taxidermy and will join my eventual next software thing I choose to send out these emails. For now, here's my new logo!