Hello there,
At the beginning of the pandemic, some posited that we were all experiencing grief in the midst of a historic, collective trauma event. I certainly felt that way, but with almost a year gone, I’ve moved on to the acceptance phase, but that can be a slippery slope.
Routines are well and good in order to keep sane in quarantine, but grinding monotony is an ever-present threat. And trying to go as easy on myself as possible can lead to feeling stuck in a rut. So I’ve tried to push myself to stretch my brain now and then by trying or learning new things.
Watch
In addition to learning some Japanese over the past year, I’ve continued learning French, which I’ve been doing off and on since high school. With travel out of the question, watching shows with subtitles is actually a great way to build vocabulary.
I love Call My Agent! on Netflix; it’s about a group of bumbling talent agents in Paris and it’s very funny and just a delight to watch. The final season wasn’t as good as the other seasons, but the cameos make up for the less interesting plot.
A Very Secret Service (Netflix) is also a hilarious show about bumbling agents, but these are spies during the Cold War. The skewering of French bureaucracy is particularly funny.
Finally, Family Business (Netflix) is a très hysterical show about a bumbling Jewish family in Paris that runs a butcher shop and decides to branch out into illegal pursuits. It’s criminally short with only six episodes per season, but luckily a third season is coming.
(Fun fact: Liliane Rovère, who plays the grandmother and is also a star of Call My Agent, evaded the Nazis during WWII and after the war lived in New York for a bit, where she dated Chet Baker.)
Read
I haven’t had a lot of patience for nonfiction over the past year. If I’m going to read, I want to escape. But I’d read such good reviews of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures that I made an exception and I’m so glad I did. It’s written by a young British scientist whose real name is Merlin Sheldrake, pictured below.
It’s one of the most fascinating science books I’ve ever read, and undoubtedly the most beautifully written. It’s ostensibly about fungi, which seems pretty boring, but it changed how I think about everything (really!!). I’d like to share some of my favorite fun fungi facts here but I don’t want to spoil anything. Just read it.
(P.S. I will continue updating my book and watch list recommendations here.)
Follow
Cedric Grolet is a French pastry chef that makes the most incredible fruit creations I have ever seen. His signature item are desserts that look very much like the actual fruit, but are pastries. (Watch this very satisfying video of him cutting into a pear pastry.) He came to New York in 2019 for a pop-up at Dominique Ansel’s bakery, which was around the corner from my old office, but I was put off by the long lines. (Lesson: seize the day, wait in line!)
Do
After I finished the aforementioned mushroom book, my husband and I burned through a bunch of fungi documentaries on Amazon and then he ordered and grew this amazing lion’s mane mushroom, which we fried and ate. It was delicious and tasted like seafood. (His latest fungi-related experiment is composting.)
If you’re interested in trying to grow mushrooms, you can buy your own kit.
In other news
Over the past several weeks, numerous family members and friends have been vaccinated, which has me feeling like this bouncy littledog.
Until next week,
Rachel