baskin robbins is out of eggnog and my dad is pissed!

eat with your ears // issue 9

a dream within a dream, edgar allen poe—

i stand amid the roar

of a surf-tormented shore,

and i hold within my hand

grains of the golden sand —

how few! yet how they creep

through my fingers to the deep,

while i weep — while i weep!

o god! can i not grasp

them with a tighter clasp?

o god! can i not save

one from the pitiless wave?

is all that we see or seem

but a dream within a dream?

happy holidays to all the lovers who read this newsletter. we are in the darkest part of the year, my seasonal affective disorder is ramping up, and these new led christmas lights just don’t hit the same. if you can’t set a yule log ablaze this season, join me around these #fire tracks.

so much commercial christmas music plagues the season and all its soulless department stores, but there are a few tracks that still hold some cheer to me (let alone actual artistic merit). tune in for wholesome heart warmers, sensual funkies, and silent-night jazzers designed for a snowy morning. don’t worry, there’s still a healthy dose of corn. like, how could i not include my girl mariah???

so baskin robbins stopped carrying eggnog ice cream and my dad is freaking out. usually they release a limited batch of the holiday flavors like pink peppermint, gingerbread, and the ‘nog. this year though, my dad couldn’t find the eggnog flavor at any of the 7 baskin robins locations within 5 miles of his house (that’s 217 flavors!!). usually, he panic buys 4 pints, stashing them away until christmas morning, when he brews up his breakfast eggnog in a bathtub-sized punch bowl. it’s a heritage recipe of eggnog ice cream, eggnog, bourbon, rum, and brandy with cinnamon and nutmeg peppered on top. for the uninformed and uncultured readers, eggnog is literally eggs emulsified into full fat milk, sweetened with sugar (yep, that’s beef milk for all you oat milk freaks out there. it’s back in baby!)

eggnog originated in england obviously: the same country with the gall to slurp up hot beans for breakfast. in my dad’s punch though, eggnog ice cream acts as ice, never diluting the thick sheath of cream masking a near-lethal level of alcohols. luckily, the human stomach has a upper limit for heavy cream, so the punch acts like some sort of self-limiting long island ice tea. my family, like many churchless american families have slowly simplified our holiday traditions as the kids approach adulthood. no more claymation rudolf vhs tapes, no more cookies for santa, no more midnight mass, but the eggnog is here to stay.

this year, i personally scouted a few locations hoping to surprise my dad on christmas, but i found only barren storefronts with a lone employee tik-tokking his way to transcendence under the silver glow of the ice cream cake display case. on sight of the cakes, i plunged into some distant memory like a pensive. something between the baseball shaped dome and the iconic roast turkey cake launched me into childhood. all those little league baseball parties and birthday parties at chuck-e-cheese (the suburban version of a disneyland). i love nostalgia.

when i’m home for the holidays, i drown myself in nostalgia like a hot bath. there’s a certain comfort in the past. it has a quality of realness that the glowing potential of the future lacks. the past is a grass fed quarter pound patty, the future a beyond burger. the past is whole milk, the future is oat at best (beef milk’s back baby!!!). it’s sugar vs. stevia. there’s a reliability about the past, even if it’s not particularly healthy to consume.

i cooked dinner with my college friend ting last week, before I came home. we made tomato braised short rib sandwiches with manchego and pickled agridulce peppers from his own garden. the rooftop garden had been torn down weeks prior because the landlord had concerns about the wet soils weight. he argued it had cracked the roof, causing leaks in the 4th floor apartment during the last rainstorm. the neighbor julia who lived under the rooftop garden confirmed the ceiling had been leaking for 3 years already but it was too late. the landlord removed all 800 lbs of soil, carrying it down 4 flights of stairs. where’s green peace when you need them? we mourned the loss of the garden over hoagies, piling nostalgia for college relationships and our younger, freer habits into the grief. i asked if ting felt he regressed whenever he went home for the holidays—absolutely.

i revert to my worst high school self when I’m home. workouts? gone. balanced diet? pillsbury holiday cookies. year end goals? emily in paris. common decency and respect for differing opinions and political viewpoints? ha! guess again! going home for the holidays feels like settling. it’s sinking back into familiarity, a feeling I’ve avoided for much of my twenties in an effort to become my own person. what can be worse than settling? growing up, there was all this pressure to flee the coup, to be independent, but the day i finally left home, an unsettling void started to grow. i slowly became aware of something missing. what a sham!

the holidays—and baskin robbins’ ice cream cake line up—resurface feelings and habits from the past. the past has forever been an object to push away from, a culture to counter in pursuit of some fresh future fantasy. the urge to change is built into my human spirit, but nostalgia is a temptingly warm blanket. to me, the holidays, and really the entire winter, are a time to collapse inwards—a forceful opportunity if you will. sometimes the holidays look like depression, sometimes they looks like pride, sometimes they looks like absolute confusion about the past and the future—the dull gray of the abyss. while the there’s still the same eggnog punch, the same honey baked ham, the same faces at the dinner table, i’m the new addition to the tradition. i’ve changed.

the holidays can be tough because its where the past finally butts up against the future. forgotten memories creep out under the cover of pitch dark nights. i revert to my angsty, high school self. “if you think you’re enlightened, try spending a week with you family” says ram daas. that’s what i’m talking about i guess. its the idea that seeing family over the holidays is layered. it’s where the timeless tension between young and old is tangible. it’s a house holding both where we’re going and where we came from. it’s the egg, the chicken, the milk, and the eggnog. all under one roof.

i used to hate watching family videos from childhood. seeing my small body, grubby little fingers caused a surrealist sense of nausea. hearing your own voice is weird, no? with time though, nostalgia too ages like a fine bordeaux. during the holidays, i like to scrub through those old vhs tapes for moments when i dreamt of being exactly where i am today. it’s so indulgent i love it. the past is a story we tell ourselves though, it doesn’t control the future, but can it be a funny story? a tragedy? a sitcom? there are so many angles to write the same story. i’m literally writing about eggnog. i’m really just looking forward to the day my writing style is less corny—nostalgia for the future? future nostalgia? it’s december and i spent 20 minutes trapped in the memories of an ice cream cake. baskin robbins 31 flavors sure knows how to pick ‘em!

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anyways, i’m not sharing my dad’s eggnog punch recipe! its way too good! instead, i’m sharing some new recipes for y’all to make your own tradition with. in the ‘nog spirit, these recipes literally cannot be made anywhere near vegan. use these recipes sparingly like you would eggnog. they’re rich.

first, this mind numbing sticky toffee pudding replaces boring, normal, brown dates with fun, red, jujube dates (popular in taiwan). this recipe was pulled from win-son, a taiwanese bakery near my house i frequent just to eat this cake. think banana bread texture, but with a deep caramel taste. it’s a crowd pleaser so impress your family this season and let me know what they think—

secondly, its essential to my spiritual wellbeing that i roast a whole bird during the holidays. i’ve tried turkey 5 ways, attempted to braise ducks in soy sauce and chinese spices that still don’t fully understand, but a classic roast chicken still has my heart. i used to over season my birds because “tastes like chicken” was so ubiquitous, so boring. lately i’ve been scaling back the spices to let the taste of the bird shine. the chicken gave its life for, maybe it’s better to not to embalm it’s body with sweet baby rays barbecue sauce?

salt, rosemary, sugar, onion. the key to a good roast isn’t the recipe, it’s attention. the trick to the perfect roast is managing your oven temp over time. the perfect bird will cook to 155 degrees internally the second the skin turns golden brown. once pulled, the heat carries up to 165, the skin crisps up, and the meat falls off the bone—juicy with fat and salt. i know it’s a hassle to measure out the ingredients by weight, but the ratios are essential here. scale up as needed with your size bird.

year end, so this are the selections from the buffet of content i consumed this whole year.

last meal: [my own blackberry frangipane tart, see photo] - this year, i finally cooked something that was exactly what i wanted to eat. i have a precisely particular palette, so this was a huge milestone. i am beginning to wield my tools confidently after years of practice. feels great.

last album [music for nine postcards - hiroshi yoshimura] - i got very overwhelmed very many times this year. to cope, i listened to this japanese environmental ambient album over and over and over again. it still makes my whole body feel like i’m in a sonic sauna. it’s like drinking a warm cup of genmaicha, sunrise cresting through the fog of a bamboo forest. bliss.

last restaurant [four horsemen, brooklyn] - while i still worked here, i dined with my partner. 3 hours, a bottle of yann durieux i couldn’t afford, and a quince-sesame ice cream that made my brain vibrate. i think i cried. see photo below.

last movie [worst person in the world] - many of my brave friends abandoned their stable jobs this year to follow some quiet whisper inside them to seek some different way of living—it was far less glamorous than it sounds. this movie felt like how confusing our twenties feel nowadays. s/o to the dreamers.

last art [wolfgang tillmans - to look without fear] - a dj set is just a collection of songs placed next to each other, but when someone does it proper—there’s a holiness to it. wolfgang tillmans’ photography stretched across the moma’s top floor like a cathedral’s stained glass shadows. frank ocean’s blonde cover was but a sliver of tillmans’ capacity for intimacy through image.

last song [ride the storm - jakatta] - at 9am, the party still cruised on in a forest across the lake. i laid in the grass with someone i love, hearing the familiar riff of pepe bradock’s 90s warehouse anthem deep burnt. there comes a time in your life when you realize you don’t just have a life, you’re living.

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thanks for joining me for dinner. i’m reformatting this project in the new year to deliver more consistant writing for your join. let me know what you’ve enjoyed reading the most so far~~