Hitting Pan: July 2023
Last month's empties
Hello fellow processors! Welcome to another monthly installment of Things I Used Up and Look Forward to Purchasing Again. Last month was a sticky, humid one reflected in some indoor ventures: baking (!!!), a memoir, a juicy podcast, eyebrow grooming, and a very cold noodle soup.
On one of the many hot and sticky days in July, my dear friend Emily and I met up specifically to eat mul naengmyun, a cold, brothy, Korean noodle dish. I crave spicy food and very cold food in equal measure during heatwaves, and Emily hit gold when she picked out Rib No. 7 in NYC’s Koreatown for us. This bowl of green tea noodles served in an icy-cold broth with literal ice shavings in it made me forget, at least temporarily, about the sweat that was dripping down my back during the subway ride into the city. Emily got the bibim naengmyun, brothless but equally refreshing. I am looking forward to going back another time for the barbecue being served on either side of us, which looked incredible.
I heard Maggie Smith being interviewed about her new book on NPR, and made a mental note to pick up You Could Make This Place Beautiful. She’s a well-known poet, but I had never heard of her. I read it fast and loved it. As mentioned in previous Hitting Pans after reading Stay True and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, I’m going through a memoir phase.
Having boys has meant that I’ve never had to worry about my closet being raided, but they do love to run off with my tweezers, and that’s a problem. Rather than buying a new set for them, I re-purchased Anastasia Tweezers for myself, hands-down the best tweezers I’ve ever uses. Sorry to Tweezerman, but it’s true.
Five Shots in the Dark, the third season of the Suspect podcast series, tells the story of Leon Benson, who was sent to prison for murder based almost entirely on eyewitness testimony, and the current-day efforts to get his sentence overturned. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff about how faulty humans are when it comes to what we see (or think we saw) and how we construct memories, but the narrative is carried by intense interviews with Benson (from jail) and many of the players involved in his original conviction.
I have yet to make a single galette, fruit crisp, cobbler, or crumble this year (what actually is wrong with me???), but I’ve made the banana bread from
’s latest book three times already, and my mom made it once. Maybe banana’s ripen quicker when it’s warm out and that helps explain my overabundance of tropical fruit desserts? Anyway, the recipe is my new standard.Signing off while eating a peach,
xoCarla
If you need to give Tweezerman another chance, try their nail brush. As an avid gardener (both outside and in) and home cook, it's the best $4-5 bucks I've ever (yes, EVER) spent on Amazon.