It’s cold in NYC so I’m heating up, plus an evergreen party recipe for you, and a shoutout to the Transportation Security Agency. This is our first official dispatch (our? It’s just me here). If you want a more formal introduction, read here. Welcome to Eat With Your Eyes.
READ: I Love Hot Yoga And All Its Sounds
I recently started doing hot yoga, for the first time in my life. This came at the suggestion of a friend who swore it cured his aching back and as a current back acher I was willing to try anything with an $80/month unlimited class deal.
I have enjoyed as it’s truly supportive. All skill levels, friendly people. And it offers a nap. At the end of class they offer you the option to stay a while, a few minutes, on your back to let your thoughts pass. After a collective namasté, 3/4 of the class quietly leaves, 1/2 of that 1/4 hangs for 3 more minutes, and usually 2 people really hang out a while, wet and hot. Today was different. During today’s class I leaned in on lying there after. And I kept laying. I listened for the early ejectors and they were not there. After what was I can only assume a few minutes I opened one eye. Everyone was there. The whole class! We ALL hung in. I closed my eyes and hung in longer. I opened them. We’re all still going. ALL OF US. Like a sit in of sweaty protestors who look like wet dead bodies. After a few more minutes I heard stirring so I opened my eyes and saw some people walking - NOT my fellow hot friends but the staff coming to straighten the room. We did it. We reached nirvana. As a team. I spoke to the instructor after and she said “You all must’ve really needed this”. I bowed and let out a 45 second ohm. She felt my rhythm and knew I’d be back next week.
FOOTNOTES: On my second session, someone actually farted. Everyone is an adult and no one reacted.
EAT: Mountain Dewmplings
You are reading this after Thanksgiving Day so this will not help you for Thanksgiving, but this is a recipe I often use for Thanksgiving. I am sorry. This is not your standard recipe food newsletter, ya know, the kind that gives you recipes on time to actually help your life. However! Use this recipe for many other things not Thanksgiving. It is an uncanny hit, as long as you can endure a bit of doubt and ridicule from everyone around you when you announce the secret ingredient, Mountain Dew. I first heard of this recipe from my mother. It’s also seeping around the corners of the internet. It is a recipe that may deserve the ridicule because it is finished with 12 oz. of The Dew.
HOWEVER, the best way to think of this is like a McDonald’s fried apple pie, the classic ones of the 80’s and 90’s, that was saltier, sweeter, and more caramelized than the current offering at McDonald’s.
Mountain Dewmplings aka Mountain Dew Apple Dumplings
Ingredients
2 apples, sliced into 1/8ths (Granny Smith work great, as do something sweeter like Jazz Apple, Gala, etc. Mix em up)
2 tubes refrigerated crescent roll dough (keep cold for easier handling)
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 12 oz. can Mountain Dew
Note: These dewds are pretty rich, a half batch works just as well. To achieve, cut all the ingredients in half, and chug the rest of the Mountain Dew.
Heat oven to 350. Grese a 9 x 13 pan with butter.
Microwave apple slices in a bowl for 1 - 2 minutes until softer. This helps to cook them more completely. Save whatever juices the apples realease from microwaving.
Pop! open crescent roll dough, and use the perforated triangle of dough to wrap the apple slices, covering each slice fully. Line slices in pan up in rows. Pour the reserved apple liquid in as well.
Melt butter and combine brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. It will be a delicious slurry. Pour over and around apple slices to cover them.
Pour Mountain Dew around the edges of pan. Do not pour over top of apple dumplings.
Bake at 350 for 35-45 mins, until done. Depending on your liking, dumplings will be doughier when cooked less. Serve with ice cream. Lay down.
SEE: Bon Voyage
Vacation photography is different now. It went from boring friends by projecting your meaningful photos of Hawaii or Yuma on a wall (before my time), to getting prints made and building scrapbook albums to show off (my time), to using your camera / phone to broadcast photos in real time to the entire world at large (also my time). I suppose this section is kind of all three - gathering you all here to see a curated processed image now broadcasted publicly to the world. Technology really is fascinating isn’t it?
Years ago I went on a particularly monumental trip. Friends had a deal of lifetime at a cottage in the south of France, with a private chef (currently for hire, to teach!), I was at a job and life rut in dire need of an escape. The trip proved to be great; I enjoyed time with friends, took a long French bath in a deep French tub, dropped in on an impromptu pasta making class in a 13th century chateau, swam in the Bay of Biscay, and drove solo across France to experience the most creative and inspiring meal of my life. I even left my laptop in France, a surprising apéritif to an amazing trip (I got it back).
T.S. Eliot says between the idea and the reality falls the shadow (among other things), actors preparing for a scene talk about the moment before, and monumental experiences all start with some inhale. Here’s me in a moment after washing my hands, after a panicked phone call to a friend about the state of my life before this trip, before the trip, a shot to document that moment. The discretion to shoot in public restrooms went down the toilet, but all in all, we survived and I’m glad it was captured.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I gave you 302. Plus something to eat, and an exercise / entertainment recommendation.
See you next week.
cory