It's The Most Wonderful Meal Of The Year
In praise of leftovers
Hello, hi, hi, hiiiii Dames Nation! As I write (and will soon send) this week’s issue, it’s the day after Thanksgiving in the US, and I’m thinking about leftovers. Not The Leftovers (I do think about that show with some regularity and should probably commit to a full rewatch this winter, though it will surely be a different experience watching since the advent of COVID). No, I mean the food type of leftovers. It occurred to me a few years ago that my actual favorite meal is always leftovers – a small, welcome lightning bolt of self-understanding.
I like to cook occasionally and am fine at it, but my true joy in cooking isn’t in eating the meal when it’s fresh out of the oven or skillet or whatever, it’s in eating the leftovers a day later. The flavors have melded, there’s no prep or clean-up beyond putting my dishes in the dishwasher, the only time I need to spend is re-heating them, and I know I’ll enjoy the food itself – it’s all upside!
I also enjoy the serendipitous mix-and-matchiness of leftovers life. A little of this, a little of that, maybe a few bites of some other tasty thing? Yes, please. I’d been on the Girl Dinner train for years without ever thinking of it that way (I usually think of it as a minimal-effort charcuterie board or grown-up snack tray, whatever floats your boat).
It turns out that this is a longstanding family tradition. My maternal great-grandmother was an outstanding cook who was also not a morning person and was known for encouraging her husband and five daughters to eat leftover cake and pie for breakfast. My maternal grandmother was apparently such a devotee of leftovers that one of my uncles once wondered aloud if she went around to the neighbors’ houses to see if they’d be willing to part with their leftovers when she ran out of her own. In her hands, turkey leftovers became stock, turkey-noodle kugel (a casserole), sandwiches – my dad once joked that he wouldn’t be surprised if she transformed it into a believable approximation of pressed duck. My mom cooks vast quantities of beloved Thanksgiving and Passover dishes to cut her future self a much-needed break. I went out to breakfast with my sisters this morning and ordered a full stack of blueberry pancakes and will enjoy those leftovers tomorrow, along with favorite leftovers from my parents’ house — cornbread dressing, two types of cranberry sauce, turkey, and green beans — over the rest of the weekend.
Om, nom, and one more time with great enthusiasm, nom. Naturally, I’d love to know about your favorite leftovers and what makes them so appealing to you.
I don’t often identify with Homer, but this is some very solid common ground between us
Dames Nation: Keeping It Classy-Fied!
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Some Links We’d Like To Share
I’ve been writing a lot lately! For Vulture, I’m encouraging Welcome to Wrexham’s third season to do more of one of the best things they did in season two by focusing more episodes on the club’s professional women’s team, and recapping For All Mankind’s fourth season. For Telly Visions, I wrote about how costume drama fans might find their way into watching Welcome to Wrexham and continue to have a ridiculously fun time writing about my favorite aspect of The Gilded Age in Carrie Coon’s Costume Corner.
My inbox and text notifications have been blowing up with discount offers all week, and if you’ve had it up to here with that sort of thing, I very much understand. If, however, you are in the market for sale codes, the Code Hub that Caroline Moss is curating for listeners of her podcast Gee, Thanks, Just Bought It is an exceptionally good and frequently updated one-stop shop. Her newsletter is very worth subscribing to, as well!
If you’re in the market for good nonprofits to donate to, especially among organizations run by and for Indigenous folks, I’m a longtime fan of the American Indian College Fund and am impressed by new-to-me health organization Indigenous Women Rising.
Dame Margaret’s Recent Recommended Acquisitions
This is the silliest thing I have purchased recently that I really like: the Tucky, a nifty elastic belt you wear underneath your clothing and tuck tops up into, a trick that lets you make things that aren’t cropped look cropped, or achieve a tucked-in look without bulky lines showing up in your bottoms. It’s hard to describe, but easy to demonstrate in video, and it’s definitely the kind of thing you didn’t know you’d need until you own it. It’s $20 (down from $30) for Black Friday, and possibly even more discounted if you buy it through TikTok.
I also have my eye on the Stitchy, from the same brand. I think I will be asking for it for Christmas.
I own too many jumpsuits to justify buying another, BUT: Mixed by Nasrin, a small brand that’s been dogging my steps on Instagram for literal years now, is having an incredible sale on their signature jumpsuits, which other mid-sized friends of mine recommend without reservation. Perhaps you, dear reader, will be able to justify what I cannot.
I have recently, to the detriment of my emotional wellbeing, become aware of two extremely cool, ethically manufactured shoe companies making expensive but not impossibly so shoes: Bryr Clogs, whose chartreuse Oxford-style clogs haunt my dreams, and Zou Xou Shoes, a company which makes these square-toed mary janes both with lug soles and without that are, to me, a platonic ideal of what a cool mary jane should be. If I have to suffer knowledge of these companies’ existence, you must as well.