Hi, gang! Bad news. I love Columbo now. What started as an innocent impulse pick while scrolling through hotel TV two weeks ago has become frantic 1 a.m. searches for “best Columbo episode make you cry,” “Columbo dog actor real name,” and “Mrs. Columbo Kate Mulgrew hair tutorial.” The problem is that EVERY Columbo episode is between an hour and 90 minutes long, which means I can only get through one episode a night, if I want to pay attention to the detective work. Which, of course, I do!
The best part of Columbo is that every time he walks onscreen, he appears as though he’s never had to interact with other people before in his whole life. I think they made Peter Falk stand quietly in a wet broom closet between filmings to maintain his air of “extremely smart guy who has never left his house before.” And even though Columbo spent a cumulative ~100ish hours on screen, Peter Falk still delivers this same genuine wonderment episode after episode. You know, we used to make real television. We used to have REAL ACTORS!!!
Okay, Grandpa Hattie is moving on.
Who The Hell Let Me Make Toffee
Moving on to STICKY DELICIOUS HOMEMADE CANDY, like a TRUE grandpa! So, one of the things I love about our new apartment is the kitchen. My last apartment’s kitchen was…lacking. The oven, in particular, was mercurial, but not consistent. It made two very uneven cakes and a persistent thumping sound. I stopped using it. THIS kitchen, though, is spacious and functional, and that means I am baking!
Which is bad.
I am not a person with self-control. On Thursday night, I made a batch of toffee, thinking, “This will be a nice treat for my boyfriend since I am going out of town and will not be here to bring an endless deluge of sugary treats into our home!” The problem is, I haven’t left yet, so I have just been here, at home, eating toffee nonstop. Every time I bake, I temporarily lose my access to reality. I imagine that I am a person who can, and will, resist pie/brownies/cookies/candy, and that my baked goods “will last all week!” Ha.
Anyway. Here’s the recipe if you want to ruin your own life.
1 cup salted butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 box graham crackers
1 bag chocolate chips
Get a cookie sheet. Put paper or foil on it, and spray with cooking spray. If you have a glass or tin baking tray, you can also use that; you’ll get fewer pieces of candy but the toffee layer will be thicker.
Lay out graham crackers until the whole sheet is covered with them. If there are extra graham crackers, crush them into little crumbs and set aside.
Put the butter in a saucepan. Stir until fully melted.
Add in brown sugar. Bring to a boil. Allow it to bubble for ~3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Pour brown sugar/butter mixture over crackers. Use a spatula and spread to the edges.
Bake in the oven for 6 minutes. When you take it out, the surface should be golden and frothy.
Immediately pour the entire bag of chocolate chips over the sheet of toffee-covered graham crackers.
Wait a minute or so. Once the chocolate chips have melted, spread the chocolate layer over the toffee.
Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over surface of chocolate layer.
Chill for two hours, then break into chunks. Eat it all.
New Column
If you’re a paid subscriber, you probably noticed something new in your inbox yesterday! Solicited Advice is my new column, in which I answer your questions, big and small, about writing. Yesterday I told
about my strategies for writing consistently. I’ve got some questions in the queue for future installments, but I’m still looking for more, so please comment or email over any of your queries!Seeking Donations
Hey, if you feel like doing something to help someone out today, here’s a cause you can contribute to! My friend Alicia is working to get her mom into a safe assisted living facility. I helped her set up a GoFundMe, and any contribution you can make is both welcome and appreciated.
Only 90s Kids Remember This
As part of my birthday celebration, my friends and I had a phenomenal weekend-long sleepover. We spent part of that time engaging in an age-old ritual: traumatizing each other with assorted weird movies and TV shows from our childhood. In a shocking twist, my friend Amy also knew every word of Too Smart for Strangers, a live-action Winnie the Pooh (!) movie about the everpresent threat of stranger danger (!!), which includes many original songs (!!!).
Anyway, in order from least- to most-frightening, here are some highlights from my own childhood that no one ever seems to remember but me.
Dot n Dash (longtime readers have seen me crow about this show in the past)
Trollies, particularly the W-TROLL radio show
Serendipity the Pink Dragon (my friend Molly also knows and fears loves this one)
The Puzzle Place (there was one episode, about invasive plants, that still gives me nightmares)
The Hugga Bunch (this may be the most deeply upsetting movie of all time, and not even because of the puppets/costumes…which make H R Puff n Stuff look muted and demure. You’ve been warned!)
What I Didn’t Buy This Week
I don’t need a new planner right now, but I’m always tempted by Agendio. Their books are VERY VERY customizable, and this week, they got me with an email about funny planning pages that are part of their template library. I like the budget page, titled "why can't I be rich," and the planning page that includes a section headed "Sometimes I start a sentence and I don't even know where it's going."
Did I already tell you guys the Lindt maple truffles are the most delicious thing to ever exist? I didn’t buy any this week, because I am going to visit my mom soon, and eat all of hers. I hope, in the days after Halloween, I can buy all the remaining maple truffles from the store at a discount before they are subsumed by peppermint everything.
I don’t care for Halloween very much but this Coach bucket bag is awfully cute:
Speaking of things that are awfully cute, these Vooglam glasses are spectacular:
I saw a hot sauce Squishmallow at Walgreens and resisted. Where is my prize?
I did not buy a midcentury telephone bench I saw on Facebook marketplace…but I AM getting ads for brand-new telephone benches/chairs now. Why are contemporary furniture companies making these?!
Has anyone tried Feline Pine cat litter? I read about it somewhere – maybe Samantha Irby’s latest shopping guide in The Strategist – and am considering giving it a try, but I worry the pine dust will make me so sneezy.
Bennett Sims has a new book coming out in a month, Other Minds and Other Stories. I think that Sims' book White Dialogues is one of the all-time best story collections. I'm going to buy this one for myself, and eventually, I'm sure, for other readers.
Next year, I want to read The Time of Cherries (Montserrat Roig) or The Alternatives (Caoilinn Hughes); I’m trying to get ARCs/galleys of these books before I pre-order them.
This is the year we all recognize the brilliance of Sublunary Editions! Yay!!! Thanks to a viral tweet, Indeterminate Inflorescence by Lee Seong-bok (translated by Anton Hur) sold out and is now in a second printing. I’m likely going to place an order for this in the near future.
Just one more thing1…I’m prepping more Solicited Advice content as we speak, but I’m also getting other new stuff together, such as a beauty column (!!!!!!!) and a series of reading syllabi. If you think of anything I haven’t covered yet in the newsletter that you might like to see, can you please let me know?
Thank you! I love you! Goodbye!
Just ONE MORE THING…!