January review
Notes on what I ate, drank, and read last month, which includes Milton's Paradise Lost, Xu's Debts & Lessons, butter cauliflower, and a 2020 Austin Hope Cabernet Sauvignon
Working on this newsletter always feels like fixing up my living room in anticipation of guests that may or may not drop by for an impromptu visit—dusting the seats, putting away my clutter, and rearranging the limp flowers in glass vases with the hope of maintaining honesty while creating a positive impression. Yes, this is me, I hope you like it, would you care for a glass of water?
Following the metaphor: This entry is the first of my monthly open houses. This review, yet another exercise in vulnerability and personal archiving, is a series of notes on the most memorable reads and meals of the month. Maybe something will pique your curiosity or inspire an interesting disagreement. All are welcome. Stay as long as you like.
Reading
I began the year with a zine about apocalypses: Notes on the End (2022) by Andrea Tubig, a poet who writes with such a captivating balance of tenderness and desire I could only hope to achieve. In her eight poems is a darkly comic, defiant, and strangely celebratory surrender in the face of anticipated human doom.
Like Tubig, Zea Asis is another Filipino writer I am acquainted with through the internet. What strikes me the most about her essay States of Undress (2022) is the certainty with which she guides a reader through a constellation of intimacies, a certainty I think more young women deserve to command. She writes about art, womanhood, and desire in a manner that is serious but unpretentious; young but far from frivolous. From her work I am learning an art of disclosure.
Excerpt from Notes on the End (left), zine cover of States of Undress (right) - both zines sold at the last BLTX I wish I had physically attended! In the Marfa library, I randomly picked up Lynn Xu’s And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (2022). Its first two lines—“Rippling in the ceosops / foreskin of wind”—fascinated me so much I promised to get myself a copy of her work. I’d be lying if I said I understood the entirety of her book-length poem, but finding those gaps is what I really enjoyed about it, the reverberating sounds, the direct and subtle references, the dramatic yet elusive imagery. There is a sense of wrestling throughout the poem—with language, with time, with existence—as it oscillated between the grand scheme of things and a dive into a persona’s stream of consciousness. Delicious, gripping read.
Officially a fan of her work, I also finished her first book Debts & Lessons (2013), which I found much more accessible without being any less ambitious in its project. The first poem “Say You Will Die For Me” is astonishing—I wish I could say more about the poem beyond please read it.
Excerpt from interview Hisses and gasps marked my reading of Dara Weir’s You Good Thing (2013). The melody of the poems reminded me of Carl Phillips, but with the digressive yet coherent wandering evocative of language poetry. I read the book in one sitting, but even now I return to it for further study. I aspire to write with this breadth and romance.
I am embarrassed to say that I have not read many literary classics. Forcing myself through a book I can scarcely understand or appreciate, regardless of its praises and status in the canon (is there still one?), feels like a disservice to myself and the author. Instead, I like to think that I’ll find my own way to those books at my own time. As a teenager, I had read somewhere on the internet that any “serious reader” must have read Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. After one attempt at the novel, which I could barely read past the first section with its infamous madeleine passage, I felt dumb, unable to access the magic in the book that this exclusive club of “serious readers” raved about. Years later, as a young adult in the middle of her first corporate job, I rediscovered the novel, specifically Lydia Davis’ translation of it as suggested by my good friend and college roommate. The experience was completely different; I was often stunned by the composition of Proust’s many winding sentences, and the immense work it must have required for Davis to translate them. It quickly became one of my favorite books.
Paradise Lost is another example. Despite its reputation as one of the best poems in the English language, its form and language have always intimidated me. Eventually, I was reintroduced to the epic by HBO’s recently concluded and deeply underrated show His Dark Materials, which is based on Phillip Pullman’s trilogy of the same name, which, in turn, was inspired by Paradise Lost. Having just watched the story, I wasn’t too keen on reading the trilogy just yet, but I was intrigued by the source Pullman himself drew from in writing his novels. The poem was so thrilling to me that I would often stop after an intense scene just to recount it, with laughter, disbelief, or dismay, to Michael (who, in fact, was named after the sword-wielding angel).
Atrocities aside, some days I think I want to be Marisa Coulter. A force of a woman. Simon Hill’s The Proof is in the Plants (2021) feels out of place in this month’s list, but its earthly subject matter and everyday language grounded me from the transcendent, mythical space of Paradise Lost. As a long-time follower of Hill’s podcast The Proof, nothing in the book was particularly groundbreaking to me anymore, but it was an enjoyable refresher on the science behind plant-based eating. Naturally, he writes with a bias for plant-based diets, but he does so with high-quality evidence, nuance, and empathy, resisting the hyperbole and alienating language that advocates of various nutritional camps are prone to. His book is definitely a great resource for anyone new to the discourse.
Excerpt from The Proof is in the Plants (left) and Panics (right) Without planning, the short story collections I happened to read in January both had a surrealist slant. While Fernando Flores’ Valleyesque (2022) read like absurd, horror-comedy dreams set in the Texas borderlands, Barbara Molinard’s Panics (2022) depicted the surrealism of an unraveling, anxious inner world. In one story in Valleyesque, a woman navigates a used clothing warehouse that seems to come alive like a monster or turbulent sea; in Panics, a man travels to a city for a meeting and, there, becomes lost in a lightless, labyrinthine nowhere.
I ended the month with another work about the end of the world, Joshua Edwards’ A Monthly Account of the Year Leading Up to the End of the World, by AGONISTES, Prophet and Fulfiller, or, The Exhausted Dream, a tiny, palm-sized book of ten-line stanzas that never bores, never falters, like reading the personal notebook of an interesting stranger, obsessive and electric. To be this prolific is a gift.
One of my favorite excerpts from The Exhausted Dream
Dining
Before adopting a vegetarian diet in 2017, I ate a limited diversity of vegetables, rotating between the most common produce like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, cabbage, and various leafy greens. When I eventually developed a taste for other vegetables and grains—chickpeas, lentils, squash, broccolini emerged as new favorites—I lessened my consumption of my old picks, as if to compensate for years of monotony.
Perfect excuse to cook in my cast-iron skillet
One day, this vegan butter cauliflower recipe inspired me to revisit a beloved vegetable. The creator’s introductory monologue about enjoying a vegetable for what it is—a versatile, whole food—rather than transforming it into something else was refreshing in an era where food innovations, especially plant-based ones, are constantly being created and received with much fanfare. Expanded options and culinary techniques for vegans are wonderful and should not be taken for granted, but I think there is a trend towards highly-processed, meat-free products that plant-based eaters seeking a healthful diet should be wary of.
Since I’m not vegan, I substituted the plant-based ingredients with the dairy products I had on hand. The result, which took less than an hour to prepare, was rich and exquisite.Along with most meals, Michael and I often have a simple salad composed of spring greens and some chopped peppers, onions, carrots, and grated parmesan, so this beets and brussels sprouts salad stood out as one of the most colorful and filling salads we’ve made at home. Since we purchased the entire beet plant with its stems and leaves intact, we added the leaves into the salad and pickled the stems to avoid anything going to waste. I can’t give an opinion on the dressing from the recipe, however, as we drizzled our salad with the homemade honey mustard dressing we had on hand.
A shared bowl of this beautiful salad As someone who does mostly mental labor, I have a habit of snacking during work. A light yet satisfying snack I recently got into is stovetop popcorn. I would lightly dust it with a homemade barbecue seasoning composed of salt, pepper, smoked paprika, brown sugar, and garlic powder.
There are very few desserts I would choose over a well-made leche flan. It is, unfortunately, not a treat commonly found in Texas, so I committed to learning how to bake this delectable dessert myself. There are little differences in recipes available online, as the fundamental ingredients of the recipe are simply store-bought evaporated and condensed milk, but I followed this one, challenged by its ambitious claim as the “best”.
My first attempt last December was delicious but undercooked in the center. I was able to bake it thoroughly on my second try, though it teetered slightly towards overcooking. Still, the result was the familiar smooth and creamy custard I grew up with, satisfying my cravings for both sugar and nostalgia.
In making this dessert, what I struggled the most with was creating caramel through the wet method. Despite following the gentle shaking the process called for, crystallization would be triggered by a factor I was unable to determine, leaving me a hot, sticky pot of sugar crystals. I’ve used the dry method ever since—directly melting the sugar in the llanera—which I find to be an easier and much faster process.
Two of my favorite indulgences, sweet-salty popcorn and creamy leche flan For wine, Michael and I enjoyed two Californian bottles: a 2020 Leviathan and a 2020 Austin Hope Cabernet Sauvignon. The Leviathan, with its unassuming label that claims nothing more that “Red Wine” from California, surprised us. For a mid-range bottle, we were rewarded with a red that kept evolving in the mouth: spices, cocoa, at first, then berry notes, vanilla. Good amount of tannins, nothing overwhelming. We enjoyed it by itself the night we uncorked it, but left half the bottle for the following day where it peculiarly paired well with a butter bean soup.
The pricier Austin Hope bottle from Paso Robles was a solid example of Californian Cabernet Sauvignons: dry, full-bodied, often with notes of earthiness and black and red fruits, and marked with a boldness that I sometimes mistake for quality. We drank it on its own, remarked that’s not bad, but I imagine it would have been more gratifying to enjoy it with a hearty or savory meal. Given the cost and my initial experience with it, it is not a bottle I will likely pick up again soon.
