miles here. i’m interested in the interesting and like to curate this semi-weekly newsletter for my friends and anyone else who wants to tune in.
🎧 what i’m listening to
Good Morning Jazz. I’ve been searching for the right vibe to start my mornings for the past few weeks, and I’ve finally found it. My mornings are slow and steady, with rituals like journaling and meditation, and set me up for the rest of my day, which pick up speed, and it’s been tricky to find that Goldilocks ‘just right’ vibe that is energizing but not distracting, mellow but upbeat. Unsurprisingly, Spotify has a strong playlist game, and their Good Morning Jazz delivers with perky tunes like Eric Rowland’s Soon, which makes me feel like I’m strolling and smiling through Mr. Roger’s neighborhood and Lou Donaldson’s Aw Shucks, whose sax gets my face scrunched and nodding in just the right way
🎬 what i’m watching
Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy. Wow. Just wow. I’ve never seen films that tug at my heartstrings quite like this. I’m late to the party, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight, having come out in 1995, 1994, and 2013, but these are films I’ll rewatch many times.
Based on an experience Linklater had meeting a woman in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989, the three films star Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy opposite one another on three separate romantic collisions in their lives over 18 years. The characters are cast perfectly and the scripts and even some songs (A Waltz for a Night) are co-written by Hawke and Delpy, which contribute to the blurring of fiction and reality. There is wit and wisdom in the dialogue with perfect depictions of those oh-so private and perfect moments like that first split-second of time when you fully connect with someone that is the most indescribable high.
Akin to cinema’s version of On Love by Alain de Botton, which I quoted from a few months ago, it isn’t easy to imagine a film that portrays love’s many chapters with more intimacy.
👨🏻🍳 dish i’m cooking
The best spaghetti sauce. Not kidding. Ready for a cook-off. A few different recipes inspired it.
One of many great things about spaghetti sauce is you can make a lot (this recipe makes 12 servings!), and you can freeze the sauce for ages (don’t go over three months) and enjoy the fruits of your labor for many weeks into the future. Some things I love about this recipe: the fantastic flavor the sauce gets from the pork neck bones and red wine, also that you get to eat the pork neck bones with your fingers like ribs amidst delicious slurping of angel hair pasta. The more senses involved in a meal, the better, and what’s more classic than a face messily covered with tomato sauce? Yum.
Ingredients
2 pounds pork neck bones
3 Italian or bratwurst sausages
1 onion (diced)
1/4 carrot (grated); used to sweeten the sauce rather than sugar
2 cups of your favorite mushrooms (sliced)
12 cloves garlic (chopped)
2 cans of crushed tomatoes (28 oz)
1 can tomato sauce (15 oz)
4 ounces tomato paste
1 cup red wine
1.5 cups water
Olive oil
Salt (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)
Pepper flakes (to taste)
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
Handful of parsley
1 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup buffalo mozzarella
Instructions
Dry off neck bones with paper towels. Place in mixing bowl and toss with salt and pepper. Healthy amounts of salt and pepper for flavor! Cover the neck-bones! Let sit for 30 minutes.
Chop, dice, and grate your onion, mushrooms, garlic, and carrot. Set aside.
Squeeze your sausage out of their casings and brown in a large soup pot. Remove to plate and set aside.
Add the neck bones to the same pot and brown in batches allowing some space in between. Remove to a plate and set aside. Leave the rendered fat from the sausages and neck-bones in the pot.
Add a bit of olive oil to the pan, then add all your veggies and mushrooms and your spices (except the parsley) to the pot and cook over medium-low heat until your onions are translucent. Turn up the heat a bit, add the wine, and deglaze the pan (this means to scrape the bottom of the pan of all the brown bits so that they’ll contribute to the sauce).
Add all your tomatoey goodness to the pot plus your water. Add the sausage meat and pork-neck bones and bring to boil before immediately reducing the heat to a simmer for 2-3 hours. Stir the sauce occasionally. Stir in the parmesan and the buffalo mozzarella and cook for another 30 minutes.
Boil the pasta, chop up the parsley, sprinkle on top of the plated spaghetti and sauce along with some extra parmesan, and enjoy!
🙏 thanks for reading. i appreciate you.
my best,
miles