French fries for dinner
This week, Five Things I Ate bought her first scented candle* and has officially graduated to a new level of adulthood. If you’re new, check out past posts here, and follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Duncan Hines classic yellow cake mix with chocolate frosting at my apartment
Your corner bodega
Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent, and often manufactured to get us to buy things. And it works pretty damn well. The artificial-vanilla perfume of yellow cake mix baking in the oven injects joy into my heart faster than Pavlov’s dog can drool. I don’t think I even grew up with that much cake mix around; and perhaps that’s why it’s even more powerful to me. Yellow cake from a box tastes like the PTA mom I yearned to have, the Brownies vest I never owned.* It tastes like classroom birthdays, in the days when the only known allergy was peanut. It tastes like begging your parents to stay up late at your cousin’s house after hot pot dinner, so you can make cupcakes. It also tastes a little bit like a stomach ache before bed, because you ate too much sugar, and also, because you are now an adult with declining digestive powers. And anything that can make us feel bad and oh-so-good at the same time is powerful stuff, indeed.
*A thought that I only had for a few ungrateful years as a child, as my mother is the single most interesting person I know.
Sautéed spinach with fried Aleppo pepper and garlic at my apartment
My kitchen, by why not yours, too?
Most days I wax poetic about living in New York, but some days, I dream of living anywhere but here, where the roaches emerge out of pipes like a cursed Super Mario World, and your greatest emotional relationship is your career. As I made dinner last night, throwing a big pinch of Aleppo pepper and crushed garlic into some sizzling hot olive oil to brown, I reminisced about the old Armenian neighborhood I used to live in, which was full of little grocery stores with all the spices you could ever want. I don’t have that life anymore, nor the apartment with the lovely giant windows and a porch that was hugged on all sides by trees, but I do still have my pepper, which is my secret weapon to making the best sautéed spinach. To finish off the spinach, throw in several handfuls of baby spinach into the spicy oil, a sprinkle of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper, and stir to wilt. Serve warm with daydreams of cheaper rent and backyards.
Sumac fries at Souk and Sandwich
117 6th Ave, New York, NY 10013
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. But then there are times where you get to have exactly what your heart desires for dinner, which is a bright pink raspberry mint Collins and a huge pile of warm french fries. And you eat those fries (warm and crackly and covered with bits of parsley and sumac) as you walk down the streets of Soho, skipping over trash bags and swerving between tourists, and it feels wonderful that absolutely no one is waiting for you to come home. At this very moment, a man will lean out of his car, shouting “Hello, sweetheart!” And high on exactly one drink, and endless salty fries, you flip him off before running down the street to the subway.
Dark-Hazelnut biscuits by Loacker at my apartment
You can obtain these cookies through secondhand heartache, and maybe at a bodega
I looked up the other day and realized that I have a shelf in my pantry that’s full of snack foods that my friends have brought to my apartment in the name of heartache. Some was purchased to honor mine, some theirs, some for just general emotional anguish and workplace frustration. Crammed between my half dozen boxes of herbal tea are Oreos, Haribo bears, and these dark chocolate hazelnut biscuits made by an Italian brand named Loacker. Despite the clunky name, these little wafers are wonderful with a cup of tea (and sympathy); they’re like the tiny cookie form of Ferrero Rocher, which bears a strong emotional significance to me. I think what the heartache shelf tells me is not that being a human is an emotionally messy task, but rather that I have very empathetic and sensitive friends (that I love dearly).
Everything bagel with scallion cream cheese from Baz Bagel
181 Grand St, New York, NY 10013
Before it is born, each bagel is a blank canvas — capable of doing great (food) good and great (food) evil. At its worst, mealy and white like Wonder Bread, and filled with a thick cold layer of congealed cream cheese, a bagel is a sad and damp carb bomb that even toasting can’t save. At even less than its best, (freshly made, chewy, room temp cream cheese that’s all nice and soft and melty), a bagel is a sublime breakfast treat, I think to myself, picking up everything bagel crumbs off my desk. It’s even better when you get to assemble it yourself, so you can give it a last-minute warm-up in the oven, and get that perfect ratio of scallion cream-cheese schmear to dough so that it’s just a little melty when you bite in. Happy weekend, friends.
Wishing you a weekend full of fries and free of unwanted comments,
Soph
* The candle is this one from Madewell, and I’m in love. The scent is “rosewood cassis” and it’s a near perfect dupe for super fancy French brand Diptyque’s Baies candle (if ya know, ya know — and you’re welcome).