Nutritional yeast confection ...

 Greetings from Duluth, Minn., where we are in the middle of a blizznado. Thought about shooting some video of that wicked lake and setting it to "Wind Beneath My Wings" and then changed my mind. Pushing buttons is hard.

In other news: Here is what I made, ate, read and watched in recent history. There's some good shit here, yo.

FOODS MADE IN OUR KITCHEN

Mexican Polenta:  I can see the future and in the future this will become something we make the shit out of. Polenta baked until it is crispy and then topped with tomatoes and beans and seasonings and other stuff. Gah. So good.

Also: I'm not sure why it has taken 35 years to learn about Queso Fresco, but no joke. This is one of my favorite foods right now. This cheese is like moz, but different. Also a little like feta, but different. It's almost impossible to find a hunk of it that isn't expired at our grocery store, which makes obtaining it a lot like hunting and gathering.

Cheesy Bean Enchiladas: As much as I love real-live cheese, I love the science of making a fake cheese sauce -- delicious in its own right. This one mixes Nutritional Yeast, Flour and Mustard and I even licked the spoon.

Meanwhile, I totally loved these vegan enchiladas in which I used real butter so they weren't vegan. Although I didn't really notice the cheese once it got mixed in with the rest of the beans.

SUPER GOOD FOODS MADE IN PROFESSIONAL KITCHENS

Baked Salmon Mac and Cheese: I ordered this last week at Chester Creek Cafe and whoasy-whoa-whoa. So good. My favorite part is the topping, which is like paprika breadcrumbs or something. Uncheesing salmon-y treasures is also a nice treat. My mouth almost exploded.

MOVIES
CRAZY LOVE: Whoa, dude. This documentary is crazy. Mind blown at the 38 minute mark and then gets repeatedly blown every 15 minutes or so for the rest of the movie. The gist: It's a love story that brings new meaning to the status "It's complicated." It's best to not know too much going into it. Then the stages of entertainment are like this:"Okay. I'm watching this. Why is she wearing those sunglasses. Wait. Who are these people? Why are we hearing about this relationship? Gah. He kind of seems like a jerk. Oh. OH! OH MY GOD!"

Seriously, this is so good. And streaming on Netflix.

Buried While in theory I think it's super amazing that Ryan Reynolds is the only character in this movie and he spends the entire time in a box, it gets a little bit boring that Ryan Reynolds is the only character in this movie and that he is stuck in a box. And when they do throw in an extra visual, in the form of a snake, I pretty much lost feeling in my extremities. So.

BOOKS
We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (P.S.) by Lionel Shriver:
Consider a scab. Picture the raw pink steak-ish part beneath it. Now go down another couple of layers. This is where Lionel Shriver went to write the super-gripping, super honest novel We Need to Talk About Kevin.

This is set in the aftermath of a teen massacre. Eva Khatchadourian is an entrepreneur, a world-ophile, deeply in love with her husband Franklin, independently wealthy, and the mother of a Kevin Khatchadourian, the barely-not legal who took out seven of his classmates in a well-executed execution.

Full review here.

The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffeneger: Audrey Niffenegger has a good thing going on with her lobes. In her graphic novel The Night Bookmobile — which walks like a children’s book, but certainly doesn’t talk like one, Alexandra goes out for a stroll in the streets of Chicago in the middle of the night. She has recently fought with her boyfriend Richard, a ponytailed lover with no time for make believe. She finds a bookmobile blasting Bob Marley and gives the driver a little peek as she walks past.

Robert Openshaw greets her, invites her inside. So many books and she’s read all of them. Paul Auster and Betty Crocker and, gasp, her own diary from childhood. Openshaw hustles her out the door when the sun comes up.

Full review here. 

Another City, Not My Own: A Novel by Dominick Dunne:
Dominick, Dominick, Dominick. (Shakes head and sighs). What a piece of work.
Here is the precise formula my new bestie used to write his late-1990s Anti-Ode to OJ Simpson, the novel-ish memoir Another City Not My Own:

• Excerpt from Vanity Fair editorial on the trial.
• Scene in which Dominick Dunne, wearing the name of journalist Gus Bailey for the purposes of this piece, is conversing with someone along the lines of Nancy Reagan or Heidi Fleiss at a fancy schmancy Los Angeles eatery.
• Said famous person will ply him for details about the trial, which he is watching from Goldman-family/Brown family-side seats in the downtown L.A. courtroom.
• He dishes on jurors’ expressions, who OJ makes eye contact with, and some juicy nugget someone told him wherein, for instance, AC Cowlings gets coked to the gills and dishes the real deets to Keith Richards.
• He returns to his hotel room at Chateau Marmont and receives a telephone call from another source who wants to dish goodies on the key players.
• If the nugget is a reliable bit of info, he puts it under his tongue for use in his Vanity Fair posts or those moments when he is called upon to perform at dinner parties; If it is whack job hypothesis or hearsay, he tells the source: “I’ll use it in the novel I’m writing about the case.”

Full review here.

Right now I'm crying about reading A Widow's Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates and listening to The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain.