Really, I was a master of the mixtape.
I would spend hours not only curating the vibes but getting the logistics just right. I had a double-tape-deck boom box, essential for starting and stopping your recordings with both hands in synchronized movement. I realize some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. Just know that blank tapes had a fixed amount of room on them, measured in minutes. And so, I would write down and then add up the length of the songs, adding about 3 seconds per break between them, to make sure I maximized the time and didn’t leave an awkward amount of blank space at the end of either side. You’d have to listen to silence if you didn’t want to get up and fast forward through it. I know, young ones, it’s hard to imagine the suffering.
This issue of Small Affairs is the equivalent of a personal mixtape, a collection of the best things spinning in my life at the moment. If I keep doing “mixtape” issues, which I probably will, know that each of the things I share have significantly impacted me in some way. They are my emotional support books, my favorite artists, provoking essays or quotes, delicious songs, and more. I’ll also include a new monthly feature, called Nate Feeds Himself, written by my eighteen-year-old kid, because he has become quite the Little Chef (yes, a Ratatouille reference, and also, he is not little; he is 6’ 1”) and he is funny.
One of the first lessons we teach our children is how to feed themselves. We teach them first by hand and then by spoon and fork, helping them raise each bite to the lips. The self-feeding lessons grow more advanced until we tell them not to pry a stubborn slice of toast out with a metal knife and not to leave the milk on the counter. But at some point, the casual kitchen courses trail off, usually crowded out by swim team and geometry and by the sheer fact that more bodies in the kitchen means dinner will not be ready as quickly.
When I was married, my husband and I would reflect on the fact that neither of us were taught to cook as kids. Any proficiency we did have, we scrapped together through cookbooks and videos, until food became a passion for both of us, separately and in different seasons, though early enough that we agreed to a goal just in time, perhaps the only lasting goal we ever shared: to teach our kids to cook before they left our home. Even after the divorce, he and I continued to teach and challenge our kids in the kitchen. It more than worked. Both of my kids can hold their own now and love to create dishes with and for their friends while away at college. Nate has taken his interest a step further, and with a friend, has opened a pop-up restaurant on campus, sometimes serving 40 kids a to-go bowl of gnocchi or Japanese hotdogs with kimchi. They have access to only a dorm kitchen, and so Nate Feeds Himself is an experiment in scarcity and a story of how to create good food with a shortage of space, time, and money. It’s a relatable, useful story for all of us who are charged with preparing food.
Okay, let’s get this mixtape rolling.
please, if you like music, read this one.
I am stingy with my stars, and I give They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us all five of them, easily. It will probably be my favorite read of 2024.
recommended it a while back, and I didn’t know anything about it when I added it to my TBR. Now I’m going to try to tell you what it’s about, and I’m going to do a poor job. It’s one of those books where I count it more as prophetic art than reading material, more absolutely intoxicating prose than essay. I cried several times, and I usually couldn’t pinpoint why. Author Abdurraqib makes a comment on society or culture or simply the human condition through the lens of music and the story of a different band for each of its 40 short chapters. A former writer for MTV News, he has a deep passion for music, how it can introduce us to our own stories, and how it can explain things to us. He weaves themes of race, gender, violence, relationships, love, loneliness, loss, youth, and grief with personal narratives and stories about the bands that left me frequently pausing the audio to drop into Spotify to play the Future song he’s referencing, or into YouTube to watch that My Chemical Romance video he’s describing. Let me be plain: I have no right to critique or assign importance to this work, though my feeling is that it was very, very important for me, and I will tell everyone I know about it. If you are passionate about music and love all genres, please read it, or better yet, listen to the audiobook because his voice reciting his own prose at a cadence that often fueled my swelling of emotion is simply part of the gift.I was going to leave an excerpt here but I’m finding no handful of sentences can capture what I want to share with you about this book. There is something alive and intangible between the lines, and I’m still sitting with that.
speaking of songs.
On Valentine’s Day, on my Instagram, I threw up a playlist called Loving Love & Heartache. I invited followers to drop their favorite love songs, either the ones that feel good or the ones that feel bad (but in a good way, you know what I mean), and they did. Now, it’s an almost 3-hour long eclectic and fun mix that picks up a wide range of genres, decades, and voices. If you need some new tunes to shuffle, try it here. Feel free to add some songs, if you want to share your jam with the rest of us heartbroken lovers.
if you’re feeling stuck, something to try.
This week, in a SoulCare session with a client of mine, we were talking about being in that nervous system state of shut down, the emotional and sometimes physical feeling of paralysis when we have experienced triggers that bring up old trauma. It’s a step past the fight or flight response, when your body tells you it’s no use to try to flee; it’s the cornered animal who plays dead. What I’ve learned from my friend Sarah Jackson is that taking in neutral, non-painful data can help move us out of shutdown. And the way we take in this data is through the five senses. As we had both experienced shut-down this past week, my client and I committed to seeking out neutral data through the five senses, and here’s what I’ve done so far:
I bought a new chapstick (touch)
I attended a free jazz show in town (hear)
I went to a fancy grocery store and smelled all the tester bottles of oil blends and natural room sprays. (smell)
Next to the grocery store, I got an ice cream. (taste)
I am going to take myself to a light-hearted movie I’ve been wanting to see, one that looks visually stunning. (see)
In case you need to move your body “up the ladder” from shutdown, try engaging your senses in simple, neutral ways. Observe how your senses want and love to take in pleasure and beauty. Feed it well!
an introduction and two recipes.
Hello readers. As any of you could guess, this is Nate. I’m a freshman in college, and I’m a big fan of eating and cooking. For the first go of things as I attempt to disclose some important secrets of cooking that I’ve learned, I have one disclaimer: although everything I write will be a bucket of informational gold, it must be understood that I am but a young man with a passion for eating things that I enjoy, and I believe that everyone should be doing the same. If I (or any other chef or cookbook) use something you don’t like, or something you’ve seen replaced in another variant of a dish, then go ahead and replace it! I won’t be mad if you don’t tell me. My philosophy is that cooking should be about food that makes you smile, just smelling the steam, hearing the sizzle, or taking the first delicious bite, and not following the directions (guidelines) given to you by those in the high tower of “food theory”. Yummy = correct, and that settles that. Cooking is an intimidating mountain to summit, and not one that is conquered without the occasional takeout dinner after a recipe flops. All this in mind, I now encourage you to be off on your adventure — to cook, to eat, to learn, to keep your knives sharp and your pans hot, and sometimes to turn off the smoke alarm.
The recipes: Tomato Sauce and Eggplant Parm
This tomato sauce recipe is one I personally make at least once a month. I believe that tomato sauce should always be had on hand, in the fridge or freezer, and should never be bought from the store. It’ll be yummier and cheaper if you learn to make it, and you’ll never go back. I will put a most simplified recipe below (which is still very good as-is), but I’m also adding a number of optional items to put into the sauce that can turn your sauce into your own.
Tomato sauce
(Makes 5-7 servings of sauce)
1 28oz can of whole peeled or crushed tomatoes
1 stick of butter
1 clove garlic, minced
One half of a white onion (I’ll double the recipe to use the whole onion)
Salt, to taste (just add salt at the end and mix it in until it’s salty enough)
Optionals:
Calabrian chilis (no fewer than 2)
Capers, chopped
Anchovies
Take all of your sauce ingredients (the onion simply cut in half, not chopped in any other way), place them in a pot, bring to simmer, then cover and let cook for 45-90 minutes. After this time has expired, fish out the onion (its layers may have slightly fallen apart) and smush the larger bits of tomato onto the side of the pot (they will have mostly broken down over the cooking time, but you may need to do a little manual smushing). Enjoy right away, or put into jars or containers for later use. Can be frozen for long-term or refrigerated for short-term storage, let’s say one week.
Eggplant Parm
(Makes however many servings is 2 eggplants of people)
2 eggplants (sliced either long or short ways, into slices about 1 cm thick)
2 eggs, broken and beaten in a flattish bowl or plate
Panko breadcrumbs
Flour
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Parmesan and mozzarella
Some tomato sauce
Sprinkle the eggplant slices with salt, wait 5-10 minutes for the water to come out, and pat them dry (for both sides of eggplants). Prepare one bowl/plate with the flour, another with the eggs, and another with a breadcrumb/salt/pepper mixture. First cover the eggplants with flour, then drop into the egg, and then cover with breadcrumbs before frying. Fill a pan or pot with ½-1 cm of olive oil and heat to a medium-high heat on the stove. Test the oil’s temperature with a breadcrumb or two. It’ll be ready when the breadcrumb immediately starts sizzling. Lay the eggplants flat into the oil. (It will sputter and spat- do not fret). Using TONGS, watch the bottoms of the slices as they brown, and once they are to your desired color of cooked-ness (a darkish golden-brown is my choice), flip them over. Remove the eggplants when finished cooking. After that, take your newly made eggplant cutlets in an oven-proof vessel, slather them generously in tomato sauce, put on a slice of mozzarella and parmesan, and then into the oven on broil until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Enjoy!
If I were you, and if I knew a high school or college student who had even an inkling of interest in cooking, I’d send them this issue and challenge them to try the recipes. Can you feel how much self-confidence is brimming from this kid’s cooking successes that end up happily feeding himself and usually whomever happens to be lingering in the dorm’s common area at the time? His dormmates smell the smells and are lured not only into mealtime, but into connection, and connection is the one ingredient we are most hungry for.
Thanks for getting this far.
You are the beloved.
Leslie