August 13 2023

August 13, 2023
# 1619

© Howard Dinin, 2023. All rights reserved.
Home-grown by Melissa

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Cover Story
Marinara Sauce

Two recipes that, together, form the cornerstone of the kitchen of a young American transitioning into adulthood, the latter defined as feeding oneself, are Marinara Sauce and Roast Chicken. This week we will focus on Marinara Sauce.

Here is the quintessential recipe for Marinara Sauce.

MARINARA SAUCE from existentialautotrip

Heat 7oz Italian olive oil in 18-cup saucepan
Add aromatics to the hot oil

AROMATICS, finely chopped
1.0oz onions
1.0oz bell peppers
1.0oz carrots
1.0oz celery
1.0oz garlic
½  oz jalapeño
1 cup chopped fresh herbs: parsley, mint, oregano, or basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Infuse the oil by softening the finely chopped aromatics at an active simmer for 7 or 8 minutes.
After 5 minutes the aromas should be compelling.
Now that's Italian.

Put 2 (28oz) cans of San Marzano tomatoes into food chopper and
pour the ground tomatoes into the aromatics now softened in the oil in the saucepan.
Use ½ cup of red wine to rinse the tomato cans and the food chopper.
Add the wine and tomato residue to the saucepan.

Simmer for 30 minutes.

Marinara Sauce is the gateway to numberless recipes, from vegan, (just use it out of the saucepan) to fish sauces like Lobster Diavolo, (basically just adding more hot pepper and a whole lobster)  to meat sauces like Steak Pizzaiolo, (using the Marinara Sauce to scrape the meat fond and meat-imbued oil from the frying pan into the sauce and tossing in some olives).

Destroy all other how-to references: Marinara Sauce: from existentialautotrip is the GOAT.

© Howard Dinin, 2023. All rights reserved.
Simple: you grow tomatoes (my wife grew these, on the deck).
You skin the tomatoes, add the other ingredients of a really good recipe (I did that).
Serve

Marinara Sauce and Perfume
In the recipe for Marinara Sauce you’ll notice a reference to infusing the olive oil with aromatics.
In cooking, that concept is key for thousands of recipes. And is critical to making many fine perfumes through a process called enfleurage.
Enfleurage: This traditional method is often used for delicate flowers that are not suitable for other extraction techniques. It involves spreading a layer of odorless fat (such as animal fat or vegetable oil) on glass or metal plates. The fresh flowers are then placed on the fat and left to infuse their fragrance into the medium. After a period, the flowers are replaced with fresh ones until the fat becomes saturated with the flower's aroma. The saturated fat is then mixed with alcohol to extract the fragrance, creating an absolute or essential oil.

Enfleurage is an old technique used for extracting essential oils from the most delicate flowers

Ravioli Marinara (Eat Trattoria)

Kim Scarborough - Wikipedia, the free https://www.flickr.com/photos/kim_scarborough/1417666815/

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Commentary
The forces resulting in a tug of war between remote and in-office work have made it perfectly clear that the days of the five-day, in-office workweek clogging up highways, causing child care issues, tiring staff with degenerative commuting, and contributing to deleterious climate change, must be addressed.
One immediate fix should be the universal acceptance of the concept that five-day in-office week is over; four days in office is plenty.
Anyone who says that three days in office is enough would not hear any objections from this quarter. But at least four.
At least four. 

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner   

Autobiographies

Best Autobiographies I've Read This Summer

I've been on an (auto)biography kick this summer, which is new to me, and I'm loving it. 

Ram Dass has really pushed the boundaries of my spiritual thought. In recent weeks, I've taken refuge in his old lectures and stories, and I am almost done whipping through his autobiography. I'm proud that I could understand a lot of the philosophical and religious content that he references, but many will find it too woo woo. At the recommendation of my brother Mino, I've spent considerable time following Jack Kornfield, whose guru was Ram Dass. Ram Dass might be the most influential of these modern Western spiritual practitioners and also the most far out. If you're just starting meditation and a spiritual practice, start with Jack.

What a badass. I've worshipped Anna Wintour since I was nine years old and lusted over the dream of taking over Vogue and being the definitive voice of the fashion industry. My interests have since shifted more political, but I nonetheless had a blast reading the most recent and most comprehensive biography of the fashion titan. It treads the line of honesty, credit, and critique very well. 

This was a delightful read that, again thanks to Mino's recommendation, helped turned me onto the Anna biography. It was such a treat to dive into the luxurious world of Andre Leon Talley. His voice and style are a lot of fun, and it was also very interesting to compare his depiction of his career to the one portrayed in Anna's biography. Fashion is a wild world. 

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Tucker’s Corner

I’m going to cede my column this week to my best friend Scout Tafoya. William Friedkin was a huge force in both of our lives as filmlovers and Scout wrote a lovely obituary for him. Most know Friedkin for his biggest successes The French Connection and The Exorcist but there’s so much more. An entire career of interesting work. I’ll let Scout tell the rest. It begins…

Friedkin directs Linda Blair in The Exorcist

Everybody who has seen horror movies remembers the image that most frightened them, that put the hook in them, that alerted them to the idea that a movie could contain more than its fair share of the malevolence of the universe in its images. How could this thing fit into a single frame? How did someone dream this up? I remember what mine was. I opened Entertainment Weekly in 1999 because of a dare of front cover offering up the scariest movies of all time. I flipped to the centerfold and saw Linda Blair, her face scarred and craggy, her eyes staring into your soul and finding nothing they could not destroy, her head turned around as her legs sat like a doll’s uselessly the other way in a room whose disheveled arrangement offered a short story of its own. I couldn’t look at it squarely. I couldn’t get it out of my head. This was “The Exorcist.” This was horror. This was William Friedkin. And he was just getting started.

He Did It All: William Friedkin

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Brayden’s Gen Z Corner  

Ideas from Dreams

Fiction writers like myself are always searching for ideas anywhere we can get them. I recently found myself searching through notebooks to find some inspiration. I came across a dream journal from late 2021. It’s very rare that I have dreams I can remember, but this was a period of time where I had them frequently enough and actually remembered to write them down as soon as I woke up from them.

Although I don’t foresee any of these dreams being particularly useable for my next theatrical work, it is an interesting concept to access your subconscious for ideas via dream journaling. The craziest part is - many of these I don’t remember at all. Some I don’t even remember writing down. If I don’t write my dreams down as soon as I wake up, I’ll very quickly forget every single detail.

Enjoy the following excerpts from my dream journal, and see if you can find meaning in any of them. And if you’re feeling lacking in inspiration, start a dream journal of your own. You may look back on it later and be utterly surprised about the crazy things going on in your subconscious.

I’ve also included AI Generated images from DALL-E 2 based on a few of the prompts.

october 9th, 2021
i was on an airplane, and they gave me a menu that featured a variety of celebrities and historical figures. i could choose one from the menu and partake in a romantic date with them during my flight.

october 14th, 2021
i was driving an RV on the freeway, but i switched it onto autopilot so i could go talk to my friend in the back. i woke them up, but they were mad at me for using the dangerous autopilot feature. i went back to the drivers seat and realized the car had gone out of control and was transporting me through several fictional universes.

october 29th, 2021
a dog was licking me. then it transformed into a grizzly bear. then the grizzly bear started licking me. i was scared but then i let it happen. turns out the bear was my girlfriend. then a little bear cub ran up to me. apparently this was our child.

november 19th, 2021
i found myself in a pirate frat house. i tried to hide. then they found me and made me help them fish. except you had to use a long tube and suck up the fish as if through a straw. i accidentally wrapped the tube around another pirate and pulled him into the water. the captain said “don’t worry, he won’t sue! he’s my cousin.”

december 13th, 2021
i was at the beach with my family, playing in the ocean. my sister pointed out that the Jolly Green Giant was in the sky. i looked up, and he was up there alright. but he was blue. he was squatting, and let out a massive fart cloud. i snapped a video and sent it in the family group chat. then to friends, and posted on social media. nobody could see the giant in the video, everyone told me i was crazy.

january 21st, 2022

my mom and i are walking over the bridge at the boston public garden, and we see two baby panthers wearing collars. we were about to call 911 to report it, but then we saw a whale stick its head out of the pond. others saw it and gathered on the bridge to look. then the whale jumped out of the water and knocked the bridge down.

-Brayden Martino

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Tucker’s Corner 

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Dylan’s Gen Z Corner 

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Writing
One day during the second week of August the book will go into its second test run. If the sample book passes our inspections, it will be made available for sale the following week.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
I think it's the duty of the comedian
to find out where the line is drawn and
cross it deliberately.
-George Carlin

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Six Word Stories
She danced, he watched, hearts connected.
 

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Social Life
Every day from August 9th to August 13th I have special events. Fortunately, I only have to cook for two of them. I have to be careful to leave a little time for packing and planning for my trip to Tuscany, beginning August 31. 
Exciting times.

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