Heart Eyes, Vol. 52: Lincoln in the Bardo, The Head and the Hair, and Smothered Cabbage Soup
Well, it finally happened: I just ate the last peach of 2018. (It was a good one.) I also bought the first cabbage of the season this week, and shredded it up and cooked it with bratwurst and apples, and I don't know what could be more October than that. You already know I mark the passage of the seasons largely through food, but today it's really sinking in that fall is here.
Today, I'm trying to engage with things that are beautiful and good for the world and within my reach—shielding myself a bit from the news, honestly—and I hope you're able to do a bit of the same. Here are a few things are bringing joy and loveliness into my life this week:
What To Read: Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
This might be one of my longest games of Library Chicken ever: this book came out in 2014, and I've been meaning to read it ever since, stalking it on the library holds list while so many people around me read it and fell in love with it. And rightly so: I feel confident saying I've never reading anything like this, and you haven't either, and it's absolutely lovely. And also sort of terrifying, in an existential kind of way? Set around the 1862 death of Abraham Lincoln's ten-year-old son, Willie, this poetic novel is narrated by the spirits lingering in Oak Hill Cemetery, where Willie is buried—the bardo being the Tibetan Buddhist term for the state between death and rebirth. According to news reports of the time, a heartbroken Lincoln visited his son's body several times in the days after his interment; this story views those events, and their deep universal repercussions, from the other side. The best descriptor I can come up with is "a strange, postmodern Spoon River Anthology," which might only be helpful for me—just know that it's sad and funny and very human, and so, so readable. I think you'd like it.
What To Watch: 30 Rock, "The Head and the Hair"
As we've discussed, I'm down the TV rabbit hole with Younger at the moment, and it's got me in a real Peter Hermannplace, and so today I'm going to recommend the reason I'll love his handsome self forever: my all-time favorite episode of 30 Rock, "The Head and the Hair." I've seen this episode more times than I can count—I just watched it again, just now!—and it never gets any less funny and relatable to me; it's the one that made me say to my college roommate, "did you want me to watch this show because it's about me?" (Her response: "Oh, I'm so glad you said it—I was hoping I wouldn't have to." LOVE YOU, AL!) Anyway, 30 Rock is the best, and this is even more the best, and you should absolutely watch it a time or seven. I have, and I will! "The Head and the Hair" is episode 11 of Season 1 of 30 Rock, and you can find it on Hulu.
(Also, if you have things to say about seasons 1–4 of Younger, please do write; I am overflowing with feelings and definitely want to talk to you about them. And Season 5 comes to Hulu next Friday! It's a mid-October miracle!)
What To Cook: Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup
OK, I realize it's only the beginning of October and we have many months of cabbage weather yet to come, but I'm jumping right into it this year. Basically, I have trouble balancing the cabbage equation in my life, in the sense that I always have half of one sitting in my crisper, and I want it to feed me for more than a meal or two, so I buy more cabbage to fill out some recipe, and then I end up with half of it left over, and the cycle begins again. This recipe probably won't help that—paging Cabbage with Hot Sauce, the great user-upper of quarter-cabbages—but it's a winner anyway, a classic from the late, great Marcella Hazan by way of my personal cabbage guru, Molly Wizenberg. Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup claims, obviously, to be soup, but it's really somewhere in the middle of the soup-risotto spectrum. And it's perfect. It's simple and warm and savory and takes a long time to cook, as most good cabbage recipes do, but it's very easy and won't take up much of your attention—just pick a time when you're going to be home for a couple of hours, and let it sloooowly soften and collapse while you do something else. It's one of my favorite rainy-weekend foods, especially with a soft egg on top (surprise!) and this weekend it's one of my favorite sunny fall weekend foods. Maybe it'll be one of yours, too.