Wishing You the Happiest New Year Possible Under the Circumstances
Or: Here's to Simple Pleasures and Sweeter-smelling Times
There is something good to be found in every year that passes. Except maybe 538CE— that one was completely awful and you probably won’t convince me otherwise.
Personally, I found 2024 to be a mixed bag. If one were to think of the year as a literal bag, I’d say it was of the beautiful “Made in Italy” variety with quality stitching and crafted of fine material but, deep within its recesses, a small, forgotten Ziploc® bag filled with durian fruit, surströmming, and egg salad burst its seams and leaked its contents into every nook, corner, crevice, and cranny. The resulting odor was so foul it knocked me unconscious for several days and no amount of wiping, washing, airing, disinfecting, or dousing with alcohol seems to do anything to mitigate the stench.
Still, I’d hate to get rid of the thing because it’s just so gorgeous. And so very, very expensive.
I have the feeling that 2025 is going to be mostly about finding ways to successfully mitigate that stench.
2025 will not be the Best. Year. Ever. Words like “amazing”, “perfect”, “iconic", and other superlatives that have been rendered meaningless will likely not pass my lips for the next twelve months. Hopefully, I will also keep the use of words like “horrific”, “tragic”, and “hellscape” to an absolute minimum.
In the year ahead, rather than hoping for the best, I think it might be a bit more realistic to find satisfaction and comfort in things that are “good” and “pleasant” or even “just fine” if absolutely necessary. I will make no plans for grand adventures. Instead, I will seek out simple pleasures and try to remember not to hoard these little joys for myself like some tired, greedy dragon, but to share them with anyone who might need them.
And— let’s face it— we’re all going to need them.
I am historically terrible at self-care and chemically prone to melancholy, but I’ve recently found that small victories in the kitchen help promote the former and hinder the latter. Something as basic as consigning a few vanilla beans to a sugary Ball jar grave elevates my morning coffee ritual, triggers the pleasure center of my brain, and feels like a small victory mere minutes after waking.
Other simple culinary pleasures include adding an extra ingredient or two to familiar fare like chives and roasted cherry tomatoes to a grilled cheese sandwich.
Appropriating classic recipes from different cultures and bringing them together in one dish is a surefire way to delight friends (or upset readers) and add a bit of fun to anyone’s diet— filling a gougère with guacamole and esquites at a party because all the tortilla chips had been eaten was an accidental/hunger-driven stroke of good fortune.
Trying out new-to-me cocktails has been a good way to get me out of my martini rut. May I suggest drinking your way through all the cocktails Maggie Smith offers to her guests in Evil Under the Sun? 2024 could have been deemed awful for the death of Dame Maggie alone. Drinks have helped, but fortunately I find I need fewer than in previous years.
Even little touches like adding parsley to finish a plate of pasta help make me feel that all isn’t lost.
There’s another, important bit of self care I’ll continue to practice in 2025: the care and feeding of this little corner of Substack I decided to name “Spatchcock” because my friend Craig talked me out of calling it “The Botulist”.
As always, thank you for reading. I’ll do my best to give you a bit of distraction from the world for a few minutes every week in the long months to come.
Wishing you the happiest of New Years possible under the circumstances,
Michael
For the record, I did see merit in The Botulist. And am still waiting for something to actually be spatchcocked on this blog. Or shuttlecocked. Either way.
Why does that cocktail shaker remind me of RD2D?
Also, might I recommend MFK Fischer’s How To Cook A Wolf (no wolves were harmed in the writing of such)? We might need such economizing during the next four years (may the deities have mercy upon our blue souls).
Thank you for your writing. You are a bright spot in my day.
May 2025 be a good year and not as horrendous as we expect.