January Mishmash

Ice Storm, Birthday, and Projects Galore!

Jan 31, 2024

Do you ever feel like you have a preference for odd versus even years? I have a slight prejudice towards odd years, maybe it’s because I was born in an odd year. Looking back, I am trying to think of life milestones and where they fall. I moved out of my hometown in an odd year, moved to Portland in an odd year, and I got married in an odd year. We did buy our condo in an even year, and I can’t think of anything else major (besides cancer in an even year, which definitely goes in the con column!) but is there anything to this stupid theory? Thanks, as always, for reading. 🤓

Food!

I veered slightly off course with my annual New Years Black Eyed Peas, and made this extremely delicious recipe: black-eyed peas with coconut milk and berbere from Marcus Samuelsson. The Bean Club (aka the Leguminati) raves about this recipe all the time, and I finally made it and will be making this recipe going forward for every new year! It’s easy to make, perfectly spicy (I used jalapeno instead of habanero), and was a great change from the usual southern style BEPs. If you don’t like the earthiness of black-eyed peas, this is the recipe for you, it completely masks that flavor, and the berbere spice is warm and comforting—it is similar to a curry powder, or kind of a combination of a curry powder and chili powder, with some extra spices in the mix. I also made a heap of collards & kale, and cornbread. A perfect vegetarian meal! I might try this recipe with another type of white bean, I loved it so much! I found the Berbere spice at Whole Foods!
During the snow/ice storm this month, I finally made Granola! This is a really easy recipe, and is not too sweet. Extremely customizable and I am a little mad at myself for not making my own granola before now!! Thanks, friend and reader (you know who you are), for the recommendation (again!)!!!
Another ice storm meal, this is a fave of ours and I am surprised I haven’t shared it before! It’s not the prettiest (#beigefood), but it is one of those magical peasant meals that takes a few humble ingredients (onion, cabbage, farro, broth) and turns them into the most comforting hearty and healthy vegetarian feast! Cozy Cabbage and Farro Soup.
One more super cozy meal that I made this month: Broccoli Cheddar Soup! I love this recipe and always use more broccoli than it calls for, and you can go light on the cheese (but why?!). Highly suggest getting a really good loaf of bread to go along with it!!!

Books!

You can shop all my recent reads here: https://bookshop.org/shop/michelleflook (Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)

This year, I am going to share all the books I read each month, instead of just my faves! I finished 6 books in January! In no particular order (I gave all of these 4 stars):

Non-fiction:
- Soundtrack of Silence by Matt Hay (audiobook)- An interesting memoir, a man who starts going deaf and sets to memorizing his favorite songs that are tied to specific memories before he completely loses his hearing. There’s other stuff too: love, grief, surgeries. I liked it!
- Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground by Dylan Jones (audiobook)- A thorough history of the Velvet Underground that paints a vivid picture of so many people surrounding and involved in the group including Lou Reed, Nico, Andy Warhol, etc. There is plenty of commentary from various people and spans a long time period. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a good job of inhabiting all the different characters.
Fiction:
- Worry by Alexandra Tanner - a book that has a wonderful cover, and I would recommend to anyone who has a sister. All of the characters are difficult to like, but completely relatable and quirky. I laughed and almost cried.
- Let us Descend by Jesmyn Ward - A very beautifully written and heart-wrenching story, full of grief and survival. I did find it a bit confusing at parts, thinking, “Is this a dream? Did I miss something?” but no, it is actually more of a nightmarish reality for the main character, Annis. A story full of ghosts, memories, and cruelty. Jesmyn’s writing is hypnotic and vivid.
- Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody (audiobook)- a mystery story full of grief, and the rabbit hole of the title is Reddit. How far do you want to dig into a personal tragedy to find the truth?!?! I really liked this one.
- Holiday Country by Inci Atrek (audiobook)- A well read audiobook, definitely did a good job evoking wanderlust with its descriptions of seaside towns in Turkey. A coming of age story that takes its time setting the scene and characters, in which the main character is a 19-year-old girl who makes some rash decisions without realizing the repercussions until it is too late and it explodes in the last part of the book. Would be a good beach read!

TV/Movies!

We really enjoyed Fargo Season 5 (streaming on Hulu)! Season 4 felt like a slog but season 5 was fast and fun and felt more similar to the first couple seasons of the show. Juno Temple is so good, and Jon Hamm is so convincing as the bad guy!!
We watched the movie Killers of the Flower Moon (streaming on Apple TV+), and even though I feel that a 2 hour movie is long enough, this 3.5 hour movie did hold my interest and was interesting. I never read this book, but I would recommend checking this movie out, if you have any interest at all.
Beau is Afraid - a very strange, unique, stressful, dream/nightmarish/surreal movie. 3 hours long but definitely not boring. It's hard to describe but if you can get thru the first 45 minutes, which was the most stressful sequence I think I've ever watched, the rest is relatively smooth sailing, though of course it's also unsettling and dark, with a tad of absurdity to lighten the vibe here and there (Ari Aster is really good at keeping the viewer on their toes!). Not sure if this is actually a recommendation, but if you are into weird movies, or if you liked Hereditary and/or Midsommar, you should watch it!
A much more fun movie that we watched this month is Self Reliance (streaming on Hulu). We have had some bad luck recently with comedies that turned out to not be very funny, but this one was not as disappointing! Jake Johnson wrote, directed, and starred in this movie—a feat that always impresses me!
Last but not least, Mean Girls (2024)! I was skeptical, but this new (musical) rendition was so much fun!

Projects!

When one of my favorite people said they wanted to commission a quilt, I got very excited and really took my time to decide what pattern I wanted to make. I decided on the Swap Meet Quilt (pattern by She Makes Joy) and am honestly so obsessed with how this turned out. It’s always hard to part with each quilt that I make, especially when I have worked on it for many weeks and rearranged the blocks endlessly until they are perfect! I used a lot of fabric and scraps from my stash that I really love, and bought only a few supplementary fabrics to fit the color vibe I was going for. Each block is unique, and I added a little tiny hand stitched X to the center of each block, adding an extra touch of love. I am so thrilled that this quilt will be used and snuggled under by a supremely lovely human for many years!
I’m obsessed.
can you spot my tiny hand stitch in the center?
I also started a few other sewing projects this month that I am really excited about!
- Here is my January block from the Sweet Potato Quilts Block of the month club. Each month will be a different block, but I picked all the fabrics for the full project already. I am second guessing all my fabric choices, but am going to stick it out and hope that it all comes together in the end.
- I also decided to do 100 days 100 Blocks from Gnome Angel. I am using this project to use up lots of little scraps, and the end result will be very eclectic, with pieces of fabric leftover from all kinds of quilts that I have completed through the years. I am not doing much pre-planning, just looking at the requirements for each block, one by one, and picking fabrics that go together for that one block, versus looking at all the blocks as a whole to try to picture the end result. There are 50 squares and 50 rectangles, and once all 100 blocks are done, I will sew them all together into a quilt! I am having a lot of fun with this process! I like the structure of following the patterns, and the randomness of digging through scraps. I realized after I finished sewing the first 10 blocks that I trimmed them all just a bit too small, due to not reading carefully and just moving along instead of double checking because I was in a groove. Once I figured out my mistake, I decided that I will just add an extra border onto those blocks so that they will fit into the full quilt, rather than starting over. Here are a few of the blocks that I really like so far:
  9 random blocks completed in January from 100 days 100 blocks
- One more project that I started is the AGF Sewcialite Sampler Quilt. This is a 5-week project (2 patterns a week, 4 blocks) that includes a series of 10 patterns. Each one is sewn twice in inverted fabrics. I picked all my fabrics for this, using fat quarters from my stash (I have a lot of them!), matching up a light and a dark fabric for each block for ultimate contrast. I really love this project so far, the patterns are modern, but use classic block elements, and I just love the inversion of the colors. Sampler quilts are good skill building projects! I haven’t done them before because I typically get fixated on a specific pattern and have to create it. Projects that take things block by block don’t typically appeal to my impatient nature. But I am trying to prioritize projects to use up fabrics I already have, and so having multiple projects to work on is working out well, so far!
  Here are the first two blocks from this project:
  First two blocks from AGF Sewcialte Sampler 2024

Miscellaneous!

I successfully completed Yoga with Adriene’s 30 day yoga challenge again this month, and am so glad I did it. The group text with some friends I recruited kept me going on some days! I got up early every weekday to do the practice before work, rather than after work, which was the right call. I am going to try to continue with this schedule as much as I can. Helps me to start the day in a positive mindset.
My birthday happened! I am now 43, and whenever someone asks me how old I am (which isn’t often), I always have to do the math from my birth year to make sure I am answering correctly. Does everyone do this? The past few years just all blur together in my head. We went out to dinner with a couple friends and had a great time, but I have to say that the best thing about my birthday is I got my haircut and it’s so cute!!!!! Over the years I have generally gotten a haircut around my birthday as a treat to myself, it’s sort of a tradition. But the last few years have been weird with COVID and budgetary issues and cancer, so it feels good to be back to a fun hairstyle that I actually chose, rather than having a hairstyle that I am stuck with due to circumstances outside of my control! Hair is so weird!
Haircut! Styled and wild.
Last (very exciting) thing… We got a new car!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's fully electric, and we are so excited! We have been talking about this for quite some time, but finally took the plunge, with some 2023 year end incentives. Compared to the 2003 Honda CRV we had before this, it feels like a car from the future!