Last Week in Chris: 5.31.26
Doubling up
It was a week of duos.
In progress: Golden brown and delicious
“Eye-talian food.” My dearly departed friend Stacey, who grew up in North Dakota, used to pronounce Italian that way. And I think her pronunciation is a good approximation of what I cooked this week. Sorta Italian, but not exactly.
It all began when I was thinking of trying the new New Jersey-inspired restaurant Umarell. But when I looked at the menu, I realized I could make pretty much everything they were selling. Meatballs. Yup. Pasta bake. Of course. Lasagna. You know it. Chicken parm? Hmmm.
I recently made chicken cordon bleu, which is essentially the same recipe if you don't add the ham and Swiss. So, that's exactly what I did. Around lunchtime on Wednesday, I got a marinara sauce going on the stove and, then, after work, I breaded a couple of chicken breasts and tossed them in a pan to fry, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. I served one up with some linguine and stuck the other in the fridge to have another night.
With a ton of leftover sauce on my hands, I decided to make a “pizza calzone” for dinner later in the week. I mostly followed the recipe, but decided to top it off with pepperoni (a pro move). Once baked, it was definitely a two-hander, so I fed the fridge again.
Despite what 23andMe says, I'm adding vaguely Italian to my lineage.
Taquería no ir. I was down in South Austin Thursday afternoon to see Paul Rudd’s so-so new movie “Power Ballad.” After the show, I decided to head down to my new(ish) favorite taco joint, Taqueria De Diez. It was barely dinner time, and I thought I could grab a bite before people packed in. Wrong. The tiny parking lot, shared with a Birds Barbershop and a CBD dispensary, was full up.
After driving around the block with no success, I decided to head home. But the closer I got to the Mopac, the westside highway, the less fun that route looked. I figured if I was going to sit in traffic, I might as well do it on 360, where the views are better. As I inched closer to the Arboretum area, I remembered Tacolada, a new San Diego-style Mexican spot, had recently opened.
Erica, a somewhat recent transplant and organizer of my Saturday morning writer's group, has been going on about how SD's Mexican food is better than ours. Having been here for 14 years and damn near a native, I took umbrage. Fine, I thought to myself, I'll try a burrito stuffed with French fries. I pulled in, parked, and walked into a nearly full restaurant where people were all sitting at tables with no food in front of them.
I found out why when I tried to order a carne asada burrito. “It's a 40-minute wait for food,” the cashier said. I immediately turned around and returned from whence I came. I was gobsmacked that they hadn’t been able to figure out what Taco Bell has been doing for 64 years. I just ended up having a PB&J sandwich at home.
Baby writer. This week, my Mom sent me a newspaper clipping of the first time I was ever paid for my writing. I made $25 for this incredibly important piece of theme-park journalism.
The Goldilocks of reading. Man, have I been struggling these days. I keep picking up books I can’t get into and end up casting them aside. In the last few weeks, I’ve walked away from Mary Beard’s “SPQR” (about ancient Rome) and T.H. Knight’s “The Once and Future King” (Arthurian legend). I’m sure I’ll come back to them…eventually. But I’ve been wanting a page turner after “Nuclear War,” and I think I might have found one.
Tom Perotta is a writer I’ve long loved, a bard of suburbia. His books have been turned into TV series (“The Leftovers,” “Mrs. Fletcher”) and movies (“Little Children,” “Election”). When I heard he had a new novel out, I couldn’t get to the store fast enough. And after a few nights with his coming-of-age tale “Ghost Town,” I’m already further along than I was with either “SPQR” or “King.” Third time’s the charm, I guess.
Two for two. Back in my 20s, my guy friends and I would buy a ticket for a movie and then sneak into a second flick once the first one ended. This is something I'd continue to do up until the early 2000s. My last “one ticket, two movies” screening was the very first “Spider-Man” and “Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones.” You can probably guess which one I paid for (and which one I didn't).
Well, on Saturday night, I resurrected the self-curated double feature with a key difference: I paid for both movies. First up was “Pressure,” the perfect old-man flick. It combined WWII and meteorology. It was all about whether a weather forecast was going to derail D-Day.
Next up was “Tuner.” It told the story of a piano tuner with a hearing disorder who gets pulled into the world of safecracking, and featured a few things I’m crazy about: classical music, jazz tunes, heists, and Havana Rose Liu. Honestly, “Pressure” and “Tuner” were two of the best films I've seen all year. Seeing them back-to-back is up to you.
Southpaw. Lately, my lefty has been contracting into what I call “Lego hand,” mostly when I’m sleeping, but more and more during the day. I was actually on a date several weeks ago when my hand went into “claw mode.” If she was astute enough to notice, she was kind enough not to say anything.
I've finally scheduled a doctor’s appointment to have it looked at. I’m hoping it’s tied to a nerve being pinched by the herniated cervical disc I already know about. That's an easy fix, just a shot in the spine.