Dreaming of Summer & Elizabeth Warren

Take a trip with me back to warmer times

It may be Winter, but Eat Me is out of hibernation! Because I’m doing my best to think warm & sunny thoughts, this newsletter is dedicated to what I did over the summer: an epic road trip from the Pacific Northwest to Montana, with a few spots in between. Months later, I’m still reeling. 

DON’T @ ME

Anyone else still riding high on Elizabeth Warren’s last debate performance? I admit, I had been feeling pretty down about the primaries, but her total and complete evisceration of Mike Bloomberg has me finally feeling some optimism. And just today, Bloomberg announced that he would be releasing three women from their NDAs. Warren isn’t even president yet and she’s still getting shit done!

WHAT I’M COOKING 

Okay, so one of the best things we did on our trip was stay two nights on the magical Lummi Island. (Thanks for the tip, Ms. Lindy West!!) The dinner at Willows Inn is worth the trip alone, but on our second day there, we chartered a small boat (hi, Captain Jake!) and did some nature-watching, fishing and crabbing. 

By the end of the day, we caught a ton of Dungeness crab, brought five home and cooked those motherfuckers. The island is so small that there’s no grocery store, so we had brought butter (for the crab, duh) and enough fennel and olives to make that Altro Paradiso salad I’m obsessed with.

Haven’t stopped thinking about those crabs since we got back.

WHAT I’M EATING

Okay, settle in, because I’m going to give you the quickest possible rundown of the best meals we had over the summer. 

In Portland, we ate a miraculous dinner at Nostrana (who knew radicchio could be so good?!) and brunch at Beast. Both are female-owned, and the chef/founder of Beast wrote a great piece about #MeToo in the food industry a while back.  In Seattle we went to Bateau (also female-owned, in case you’re sensing a theme). They take sustainability and animal welfare really seriously and both Andrew and I had the best steaks of our lives. That said, the stand-out in Seattle for us was Din Tai Fung where we ate thirty soup dumplings JUST TO START. It was killer. 

I mentioned Lummi Island’s Willow Inn - which, honestly, I should dedicate an entire newsletter to - but what I didn’t mention is that they let us bring Layla (not a normal move for fancy-ass restaurants). She ate the ENTIRE TWENTY ONE COURSE MEAL. The servers were delighted and we were beyond proud. In addition to how amazing the food was (you can see the whole menu on one of my pics in this post, my favorite was the course from their smokehouse), I really appreciated that they provided a juice pairing - not for Layla, for me. I don’t drink, and it was pretty wonderful to have these legitimately special juices to go along with each course.

In Montana, it was all huckleberry ice cream all the time. At the Wich Haus in Whitefish, they had huckleberry and sweet corn soft serve and it was magic. Also, fried cheese curds. We had some terrific steaks at Sage Lodge (which is gorgeous). 

Honestly, the food was so good that I’m already trying to figure out how we can replicate this trip again in the next few years. 

WHO I’M READING

Tangerine Jones on the Privilege of Rage, this 2018 piece from Rebecca Traister on Elizabeth Warren and her “full-body fight to defeat Trump,” and Brandy Zadrozny who did a masterful job with an incredibly difficult subject - a woman who let online groups convince her it was okay to not seek medical intervention when she was pregnant and three weeks overdue. 

WHAT I’M WRITING

I am so fucking sick of reading about men who manage to somehow have children and a home but convince their female spouse that actually she’s a lot better off if she just handles everything. Hence my latest, Don’t Marry a Man Who Doesn’t Vacuum. It’s the advice I think every straight lady needs before she settles down. 

CURRENT OBSESSION 

Old-school Reeboks. I know I’m hardly alone and basically everyone in New York right now has a pair of these guys (which I also live in) but I just got a double-height version of them and they are GLORIOUS. Also, it makes me feel better about having something slightly different than the Air Force 1s that everyone has.