I have room for exactly one dinner date this weekend July 21-22.... so what are we waiting for?

Dearest gentle reader,

I am an A+ ruminator for better or for worse. I’ll cause traffic jams aisles at target while deciding on the best phone cord, delve into academic level research into the provenance of each soy sauce at the grocery store, and fry my brain more than state fair double stuffed oreo as I sift through the right verbiage for a blog post.

However, I’ve missed connecting with my gentle readers on my trips because of my intense dilly dallying around blog posts, so here’s to new habits and new connections!

I will be in St Louis July 21-22 for a personal trip this weekend, and would LOVE to get together for St. Louis style BBQ.

So if you’re in town and would love to ruminate and chill with me, please email me at josiequ@protonmail.ch

However, if you’re not in town and just want to sweeten my trip to St. Louis, I would love to be gifted a giftcard to the Darkroom so I can develop my film photos I plan on taking to commemorate my first trip to St. Louis!

XOXO

Josie Qu ❤️

POST SCRIPT

Josie’s top 3 this week (because I love to yap and I know you love to listen) 😉

1. Chinese cucumber salad topped with homemade chili oil

   As a Sagitarrius and a hottie with ADHD, I crave novelty. My kitchen pantry is a living exhibit of recipes I’ve discarded and rediscovered over the years. However this recipe has weathered the storm of my impulses and whims, and has emerged victorious in my recipe rotation for at least 5 years.
   
   Such unintentional devotion over time to the humble cucumber and the delicate dance between chili oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, salt, and vinegar has developed my palette beyond my imagination. 2023 also deprived me of my favorite set of measuring spoons so I’ve been cooking based on…. vibes for the last year.

   Due to my stubborn lack of ambition with regards to procuring new measuring spoons, I now visually know the proportions that will make my mouth pucker and sigh with pleasure. What another chef would call chaos, I call this milestone a wonderful marker of time and progress of my culinary craft!

   (I can feel the beginning of a very extended metaphor to be made about the joys of becoming a regular client to companions and becoming a devotee to a recipe over years, but I’m saving that thought for my next blog post!)

2. Learning how to clean my bike 📺

   1. Somehow I have not cleaned my bike for 2 years, and I haven’t learned anything about the mechanics of my bike despite owning it for 13 years. While I did not come away with a professional knowledge of bikes, I’m even more amazed by bikes now and have so many questions.

      1. When and how did we develop bicycles?

      2. Why am I still so obsessed with the story of Tom Justice, Chicago’s local bicycling bank robber?

3. Julio Torres’ show “Fantasmas” 📺✨

   1. I fall hard for shows that mix absurdity, political commentary, puppetry, and imaginative costumes and set design. “Fantasmas” is no exception. I has set the bar high, it’s perfection, no notes.

   2. Fantasmas comes as a welcome respite from the glut of well produced, visually arresting, YET mediocre television. Such a trend is akin to a West Loop restaurant shaving truffle and throwing caviar on everything with unearned aplomb.

      These ancient sturgeons shouldn’t have been gutted for such culinary misdemeanors, and nor should the bloodshot eyes of television editors have to shrivel under the blue light dealing with such excessive drone shot footage.

      If you find yourself nodding along to my rant, I highly encourage reading James Poniewozik’s “The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV” in the NYT and to delve into the devaluation of television writers in Hollywood and the history of last year’s writers’ strike.

What have you been grateful for this week? 💗

P.P.S. I will be resuming my patron only advice column this month! If you’re a beloved patron and would like Chicago’s Mistress of Flavortown to advise your flambéed questions, email me.

If you haven’t subscribed and you seek wisdom from my heaving orbs, you know what to do ;)