This is Treat Motivated
I am unusually treat motivated. Maybe you are too?
Hello and welcome, hi. All my life I’ve been this way; I don't consume the treats so much as they consume me. My best friend Becca and I used to spend our childhood playdates brainstorming ice cream flavors and mailing them to Ben and Jerry’s with little diagrams of where the swirls and chunks should go. I distinctly remember the day we had the thought, “What if peanut butter and jelly… but ice cream??” and feeling certain Ben and Jerry would be like holy shit, who are these girls, we’re going to have to change our child labor laws so we can employ them immediately.
Needless to say we never heard back, but that didn’t deter us from sending them many, many more letters over the years. We also wrote helpful menu suggestions for the cooking staff at our summer sleepaway camp in hopes it might improve the dining hall fare. 100% brat behavior I’m only admitting to show you that I’ve had food on the brain since forever and have always been drawn to people who also care (perhaps an inordinate amount) about the next delicious thing they’re going to eat.
Of course, the best thing you can do with something tasty is share it with people you like to talk to or look at. I do a lot of cooking at home, and cooking for others is the best, because compliments. But many days I make multiple meals just for myself. That’s a time privilege I know I am lucky to have, because I work late and thus reap the reward of lazy mornings. This fall my favorite thing to do for breakfast is cook some old-fashioned oats topped with sautéed plums, toasted walnuts, a dollop of Greek yogurt (always 2%, fat-free yogurt gives me the creeps) and a sprinkle of Maldon salt, which I put on everything. Oof it’s so good, better than most pies (but not great pies).
Lunch is usually leftovers zhuzhed up with vegetables. Zhuzh has a disturbing spelling but we’re not going to dwell on that. Yesterday there was literally like 3 bites of fried rice in the fridge but I crisped it up in the cast iron, added some tofu for protein, lots of green stuff, some kimchi, bam. I’m not a scientist but I’m pretty sure that plate was nutritionally perfect.
If you’re thinking I have a lot of super foods in my diet, don’t worry, things get nasty at night. As a food writer and producer in NYC I’m invited to a lot of cool media events at restaurants I might not otherwise be able to afford or even get a reservation at. These events sound insane to people when I try to describe them; “You were at the Polo Bar? For National Vodka Day? Which is… a thing? And there was a fashion illustrator drawing each writer while everyone ate their burgers? And the martinis come with, let me see if I got this right, a ‘sidecar’ of a caviar-topped oyster?” Have I been doing this too long or does that not make total sense?
Anyway, my pursuit of treats takes me lots of interesting places. What a massive privilege it is to eat my way around town and call it research. I don’t ever mean to sound like I’m bragging, just marveling at my luck and sometimes the strangeness of it all when things tip over into the wackadoodle. On a recent rainy evening Laphroig whisky whisked us to Governor’s Island to celebrate its 30th anniversary. There were bag pipers playing (piping?) in front of a misty view of the Statue of Liberty while members of the media were given green plaid socks and Hunter wellies to stomp around in the (thematically appropriate, very Scottish) mud. My favorite part was the real-time reviews being displayed on a livestream as people reacted to their first taste of Laphroig. Honest (read: negative) tweets were encouraged which meant there were many comparisons to sweaty gym clothes and stinky bogs. Man, that stuff is not for me at all. I would never want to yuck someone’s yum so that’s what I say instead of “It’s poo”: maybe that is not for me. You know what was for me? The campfires they lit as night fell so we could make s’mores with whisky-infused chocolate. I’ll sláinte to that, for sure.
And I’ll sláinte to you for reading my rambling intro. I’m trying not to overthink it because I’ve been “meaning to” start a Substack for years and they say perfect is the enemy of good, or done, or whatever. I think going forward I’m going to organize this so that each newsletter has recommendations of things I’ve enjoyed cooking, eating, reading, and watching that week. Not all treats are edible, obviously. The perfect zeitgesity article on The Cut is a treat, getting to share it with you with my little #take will be a treat. Hopefully you’ll get some cooking or menu inspo or at least a diverting way to spend a few minutes waiting for your subway to arrive. Thank you for reading, I love you!
