in good taste, vol. 103: industry plants
a light rant, the tombstone house, a chopped-up salad
Endless summer is upon us. We’re all going through it now in the US, whether you’re in the hot wet towel of Atlanta or on the radiating asphalt of Manhattan. And, like clockwork, people are absolutely losing their minds over 2 summer foods: pasta salads and tomato sandwiches. Last year was declared the “summer of the pasta salad” but I think it’s really hit its stride in 2024. It is inescapable. Everything is pasta salad. Everything is a cold noodle in some salad dressing with a black olive and a zucchini. Is Suddenly Pasta Salad behind this?
Now, about tomato sandwiches. Every year, just as it starts getting hot out, the food content farmers bust out their best Foghorn Leghorn and the old tomato-white bread-Duke’s Mayo-over-the-kitchen-sink routine. (There’s even ASMR videos for it. I’m sorry.) Every year, the same circus! Like it’s something new! Maybe, subconsciously, I look forward to it? A new sign of the season. We used to know summer by a day’s length, or wearing white, or the first lightning bug. Now it’s just ChatGPT poetry about sandwiches.
Not that there’s anything wrong with pasta salads or tomato sandwiches. I enjoy them just as much as everyone else! I won’t say no to a little room-temp pasta salad at the picnic. I’m just asking questions! Some people’s industry plant theories are about “Espresso,” mine are about pasta salad and tomato sandwiches.
A SCATTERING OF GOOD TASTES
What I’ve been up to:
We came back from our Boston & New York trip with COVID but lots of great souvenirs. Highlights included a brown-butter lobster roll at Eventide by Fenway Park, a brunch stop at Commerce Inn, the Fenway Victory Gardens, dinner with David at il Buco, a detour from the downpour at Dear Annie in Cambridge, cocktails with Carter & Michael at Double Chicken Please (more the fellowship than anything, TBH) and my new favorite hotel in NYC, The Ludlow
Planning a summer camp-themed party for next weekend
Library hauls: The Fraud by Zadie Smith (pass; I know, sacrilege), Wives Like Us (smash, a book of the highest order of Silly), Four Squares (charming), The Skunks (smash, delightful!!)
Admiring:
I have been reporting on the yellow trend in home design for work - you’ll be seeing more of it this year in all forms, if the pro’s are to be believed!
One day we will renovate our main bathroom, and while I don’t love every design choice in this piece (feels a little busy), I love its vanity-to-ceiling vertical storage
Come for the grass-thatched roof, stay for the incredible bookshelves around a staircase and throughout the interior - a gorgeous home in Dartmoor
Such a good idea to scan and collage your travel ephemera
Bear with me as I share this feature from a source called Mansion Global, about this man in Milton, Georgia who remodeled 4,000 square feet in his home after the 1993 movie Tombstone. This is the best news I’ve seen in the “rich people living a brat life” home category since I found out that Barbra Streisand has a mall in her basement!
“We had started to put moss on the beams to try to make them look old, but the builder came back and said ‘Don’t put anymore moss on it, we’ve got to take everything off,’ because there is no moss in the original town of Tombstone,” said Wallace.
Other items of note:
The “Life anti-checklist”: basically, a series of inconveniences by which you can measure how good your day actually is
Why the British are obsessed with the Cotswolds (and honestly, I am too after reading Wives Like Us)
A CHOPPED-UP SALAD FOR THE DOG DAYS
It is July, so I am at my lowest level of solar power, cosmically and cognitively. My workday lunches are more fuel source than fun and frisky, kind of a bummer to take back to my desk. The lack of inspiration here is a little ironic, considering where I work, but that’s me in midday mid-July! Dog days of summer! Dinner is the most inspired meal of the day.
All that said, I made a salad for lunch that was so nice, I had to share it. And it took no more creativity than an inspired shuffling of stuff in the refrigerator. This salad is kind of like if a Cobb salad took a Mediterranean vacation and read Rachel Cusk on the beach: strike the bacon and ranch, dial up the fresh herbs and fancy nuts. Revel in simplicity and clarity!
For the dressing: I’d made this pesto earlier in the week, because I had fresh herbs to use up. I think it’s worth making a batch so you get to make this salad with it (a happy accident), but it also makes quick work of a pasta sauce or as a lil dip for bites of roast chicken. My freestyle version skips the parmesan and opts for feta, uses whatever nuts are on-hand (like walnuts), and tastes a bit more acidic than the typical pesto.
INGREDIENTS
5-6 leaves of romaine lettuce, chopped
½ avocado, cut into chunks
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 hard-boiled egg, cut into quarters
¼ cup mozzarella, diced
Handful of shelled + salted pistachios
1 serving of canned tuna (I like Herb & Garlic, and I’m not afraid to say it)
For the pesto dressing:
½ cup of fresh thyme, fresh oregano, fresh mint, all stripped of stems
2 cloves of garlic
½ cup of basil
2 tbsp pine nuts or walnuts
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. crumbled feta
Salt + pepper to taste
Olive oil
WHAT TO DO
Put all the salad stuff in a bowl. Mix it around. When you’ve made the dressing, use about 2-3 tbsp. of it in your salad mixture and really toss it around until it’s fully combined.
For the dressing, throw the herbs, garlic, and nuts in a food processor until they’ve formed a paste. Add in the vinegar, a pinch of salt and pepper, and pulse again. Drizzle in olive oil to the dressing consistency of your preference, then add in the feta and add more salt & pepper if you’d like to. Pulse quickly and store in an airtight container for up to a weekish.