Best of ✨2019✨
A lil' sampler platter of my faves.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we reflect on the year. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Welcome to my germ-riddled flu den, where I have been holed up under three blankets for the past three days! It turns out that the flu is no joke, my friends, and for the sake of herd immunity for please please please everyone get vaccinated.*
In the meantime, please enjoy this sampler of five of my favorite entries from this newsletter that I wrote this year. See ya in 2020!
*For the record, I did get a flu shot this year; no, it's not a bulletproof guarantee, and yes you should still get it.
Mom’s cooking (Feb 22)
“If I was a magical anthropomorphic forest creature who lived in a tree, had a giant leaf for an umbrella, and collected small berries for a living, I would definitely tuck one of these lotus leaf parcels into my tiny backpack before I went out for the day, knowing it would sustain me for the whimsical adventures to come.”
SOS from Fashion Island (March 9)
“Ahh, California. Every morning I wake up to the chirping of birds, endless blue sky, and shout to myself: Another day in Paradise where I am Depressed as Hell!* And that’s how I know that New York is my one and only true home.”
French fries for dinner (April 6)
“There are times that being a human person in your twenties can feel like you’re floating untethered in an endless soup of ephemeral relationships, medical bills, apartment leases, and contract-to-contract jobs, while being under a lot of pressure to enjoy your life as an untethered floating young blob before you get old, which is happening soon, so they say.”
The Брайтон Бич chronicles (June 28)
“I spent the majority of my childhood and early teenage years under the rule of two strong, post-Soviet female figures: My mother, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, and my gymnastics coach, a petite, extremely toned and terrifying blonde woman in her fifties who hailed from the Russian city of Voronezh…”
Spend $250 to watch me cry (Oct. 25)
“There’s a half-second before I swallow the antibiotic pill on an empty stomach where it flashes through my mind that this all might be a grave mistake. But there’s no time to think of consequences.”
Until next year,
Soph
P.S. It’s been a whirlwind first year writing this newsletter! Give your moral support to help fuel another year of writing by making your friends and relatives sign up. If you’re feeling generous, you can Venmo me a couple of bucks to my personal tea-and-art-supplies fund @pikachews. See ya in 2020!