Holiday Detritus

Food and movies mostly, also my kids already left but I won't mention that again.

Hello, loveliest ones! I am just popping up from my hibernation hole to recommend a few things for this last week of eating and lazing, assuming you have such a week planned.

I made these Peppermint Brownie Cookies, which are fudgy and delicious and festively use up any stray candy canes you may have ended up with. I made them much smaller than the recipe suggests—12 to a cookie sheet versus six—and also made them gluten-free by simply swapping in a basic gf blend, which was probably King Arthur. Fun fact: you can tap the candy canes lightly with a hammer while they’re still in their wrappers! Or skip the candy canes.

I am making this spinach-artichoke dip (I always add caramelized onions) and these soy-pickled eggs for New Year’s Eve.

I recommend making and sending thank-you cards as an antidote to the feeling that if someone poked a hole in your side eggnog and candy and plastic and cookies would pour out. We used watercolors and then cut out little paintings, which we mounted on blank cards.

I was so pleased with myself that I had to make everyone come over and admire my paintings, like, five different times.

Movie-theater movies I recommend:

• Wake Up Dead Man: Fresh and funny and goes down easy (full disclosure: we streamed it).

• Hamnet: I went because I was in love with Maggie O’Farrell’s book and also with Paul Mescal; by the time I left, I was gloomy and crying and in love with Jessie Buckley.

• Housemaid: We mostly wanted to look at Sydney Sweeney for a couple hours, which was not at all disappointing. Also she makes us all laugh SO MUCH, maybe on purpose, maybe not.

• Marty Supreme: This movie fails to Bechdel Test so outrageously, and still I loved it, which is crazy given how disinterested I tend to be in men and what they are saying to each other. It’s very chaotic like Uncut Gems crossed with After Hours, if you remember that movie from the 1980s, but it was still watchable and a ton of fun.

Streaming stuff I recommend:

• This fantastic and utterly surprising birding documentary.

• This very funny stand-up special.

• This documentary about the Lilith Fair, which filled me with Sapphic nostalgia. Also, spoiler alert, all of those women got SO RICH!
  
  (This is the next thing we’re watching, as per multiple recommendations.)

If you are at all tempted by a polar plunge on New Year’s Day, just do it. It’s the best.

Next up today: annual charitable giving. We try to give away enough money that it makes us a little bit nervous. (Another antidote to the chocolatey-lead-balloon feeling.)

Happy everything, even if everything is weird and you’re a little sad. We’ll get through it together.

xo