Thoughts for your Thoughts (Volume 5)
Thoughts for your Thoughts (Volume 5)
This newsletter contains a recipe for dairy-free mushroom stroganoff, podcast recommendations, and more!
Winters in Northern Minnesota can be hard, not because it’s cold and snowy, but because they seem to be never-ending. I am fine with negative temperatures in December and blizzards in January. When there are still feet of snow on the ground in April, when the heater is still kicking on at the end of May, and when I’m wearing a beanie & heavy jacket in June—I start to contemplate why I choose to live here.
But it’s July now and the days are warmer, the sun is out in full force, the sky is impossibly blue; and I am reminded that *this* is why I live here. It might be a miserable tundra at times, but nothing beats summer on the North Shore. My seasonal depression is lifting and I’m feeling more like myself again.
The past few weeks have been busy–I spent 6 days in my hometown, soaking up time with my family. My weekends have been booked with volunteer or work commitments, social events, and an endless ‘to do’ list of adulting stuff. Working on my newsletter has fallen on the back burner, and instead my free time has involved lots of trash reality television and afternoons sunbathing in the hammock with a good book. So while my personal writing projects may have been neglected, my list of recommendations have been steadily growing, so I guess in a sense I have been working on my newsletter all along :)
So without further ado, let’s get into it!
Books, books, books!
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade was *so* good!!! This book follows multiple members of a single family, and displays how decisions are never made in vacuums and how their effects ripple through generations. The characters are so imperfectly human, you can’t help but root for them even when some of their actions are morally-questionable. 10/10, would recommend! You can find my instagram post on this book here.
I haven’t read Jodi Picoult in YEARS, and last month I read two of her books back-to-back. It gave me nostalgia, made me feel like a teen again when I’d borrow copies of her books from my Grandma Joyce and get lost in the stories. Mad Honey was my favorite of the two, and it was co-written by Jennifer Finney Boylan. In the story, a single mom gets a phone call from her son telling her that he is being questioned by the police after finding his girlfriend dead. The story works backwards, trying to show the reader what events lead up to her death. In true Picoult fashion, the story contains a court case and a social justice issue and a little twist most won’t see coming. I enjoyed it. I followed it up with Wish You Were. The story starts in March 2020 and follows a woman questioning what she actually wants in life while being stranded on the Galapagos Island cuz I guess she thought it would be a good idea to travel during the start of a pandemic lol. I haven’t read any books yet depicting the early stages of the pandemic, and Picoult did a great job of capturing the fear and panic we were all collectively feeling during that time. Picoult is thorough and does her research. Some of the details she put in her book, like sanitizing groceries and stripping down immediately after a shift as a healthcare worker for fear you’d spread COVID to your loved ones and kill them, brought back personal memories I didn’t necessarily want to revisit. The surprise twist in the book made me roll my eyes and the whole book just felt like it was rushed, which Picoult kinda affirms in the ‘Interview With the Author’ section of the book where she says she wrote it in two months. This book feels more like a chronicle of the early days of the pandemic with a dash of fictional love story.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis is a collection of essays, poems, and informative pieces discussing the current climate crisis we are all living in and ways to navigate it. I ended the collection feeling more hopeful than bleak, more inspired to make personal changes and to organize with my community without feeling like it is pointless or too late. Yes, we have lost so much due to the climate crisis. But think of all that we can still save.
My paperback copy of ALL WE CAN SAVE. I am holding it in front of our fire pit. There is a stubborn snowbank in the background. This photo was taken May 3 😅 Television shows that I enjoyed!
Jury Duty is a documentary-style comedy show that follows a jury deliberating a court case while being sequestered. Everybody is an actor except for one person, who has no idea the whole thing is fake. It is hilarious and wholesome; I really really reallllly enjoyed it! You can watch the series for free on Amazon.
Sometimes (and by sometimes I mean most days) when I get off of work and settle down for the night, I don’t have the brain power to pay attention to a television series with a heavy plot. Enter: REALITY TELEVISION. It’s entertaining, doesn’t require you to remember specific details from episode to episode, and is pretty easy to digest for the most part. Recent favorites have been Selling Sunset on Netflix, a show that follows a group of realtors in LA selling multi-million dollar homes with a gross amount of square footage and too many bathrooms. Wealth is truly wasted on the wealthy—I can think of much better ways to use your dollars than to throw them at an ugly McMansion with lots of empty space. It’s full of dumb drama and I love it. Below Deck: Sailing Yacht (and all the other Below Deck spin-offs) is a show that follows yacht crew who bend over backwards to ensure big tips from their very wealthy and often high maintenance clients. It is messy, as you can imagine when you work and live and spend your leisure time in a close space with the same people for weeks at a time, and it is so entertaining!
Rain Wilson and the Geography of Bliss is a fun, reflective show where Rain travels to countries around the world to discover what makes people happy. I love Rainn Wilson and this show makes me love him even more. It’s light and hopeful, and you can find it on Peacock.
Podcasts that I can’t get enough of!
I mentioned Maintenance Phase in a previous newsletter—it’s a fantastic podcast that dissects the scumminess of the wellness industry and how anti-fatness is ingrained in literally everything. I’ve been listening to it nonstop and wanted more. I started searching for other podcasts hosted by Michael Hobbes or Aubrey Gordon. This led me to discovering If Books Could Kill, a podcast in which each episode the hosts, Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri, look at a popular book and reveals the problems and/or misinformation within them. And then I found You’re Wrong About, another Hobbes podcast, where he & Sarah Marshall discuss well-known events/people/phrases and they ways they’ve been misinterpreted or miscast. Both podcasts are so informative! Maybe I should’ve labeled this section ‘Michael Hobbes podcasts” lol.
I’m always looking for new podcasts to listen to so if you have a recommendation feel free to leave a comment or DM on Instagram. :)
And now, a recipe for you!
Dairy-Free Mushroom Stroganoff Pasta
I’ve been in a recipe rut lately, making the same meals every week, and while I do genuinely love chickpea curry and creamy sun-dried tomato pasta, I was growing tired of eating the same thing over and over again. I recently worked with a patient who told me that his wife made the best stroganoff, and it brought back the memory of the stroganoff that the kitchen served at a nursing home I worked at a few years ago. For a mere two dollars, the cook would serve you the home cooked meals she was pushing out to the residents, and aside from the country fried steak, the stroganoff was my favorite. It was so rich, so full of flavor, and very delicious—I knew I wanted to try to recreate it. My version is dairy-free and if you omit the Worcestershire sauce (I just learned this week it contains anchovies lol), it is vegan. It is very tasty, very hearty, and will definitely be a repeat dish at my house!
Ingredient List:
16 oz of mushrooms, sliced (I used white mushrooms, but brown would be very delicious too!)
1 yellow onion, diced
1/4 teaspoon of dried thyme
6 garlic cloves, minced or grated (the stuff in the jar is just fine)
2-3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups of vegetable broth
3 tablespoons of cornstarch
1/2-2/3 cup of full-fat coconut milk (or ~1/3 of a 13.5 ounce can)
Parsley or dill, salt & pepper, or any other seasonings you’d like
16 ounces of your favorite pasta (I use Banza chickpea pasta. It’s gluten-free, high in fiber & protein, and tastes great!)
Worcestershire sauce & white or marsala wine (optional)
How to Make It:
Get your ingredients ready, your mise en place! Rinse your ‘shrooms and put them near the stove. Measure out your seasonings and ingredients and have your minced garlic ready to go!
Whisk the vegetable broth with the cornstarch and some salt & pepper. Have it on standby near the stove.
Cook your pasta according to the directions on the packet. Begin making the stroganoff sauce as your pasta cooks.
Heat your oil in a large skillet over medium-ish heat. Once shimmering add your diced onion. Cook for 3-5 minutes or until it’s translucent, stirring occasionally.
Add the dried thyme and garlic. Cook for ~30 seconds, stirring continuously.
Add the mushrooms and continue to cook uncovered for ~10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add a splash of wine and Worcestershire if you are using it.
Add the broth/cornstarch mixture to the pan. Bring it to a boil and then reduce it to low, letting the sauce simmer for ~5 minutes.
Turn off the heat and add your coconut milk. Season to taste with salt & pepper. I also added some dried dill & parsley. Your tastebuds are your tastedbuds, and mine are mine, so season how YOU would like :)
Combine your pasta with the stroganoff sauce, and stir it so that the pasta is coated. Serve it up and then enjoy!!
If you make this dish, I would love to hear what you think of it!!
Annnnnd that’s all folks! I hope June was good to you, and I hope that July is even better. Don’t forget to get outside and enjoy the fresh air when you can, and if you can’t—curling up with a good book or some trash TV is another good way to decompress :)
If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support me further, may I suggest sharing Parallel Charts with a friend or foe with the recommendation to subscribe. As always, thank you for taking time to read this!