End of 2021 reflections + the best things I read and cooked this year
Ending the year with some March 2020 vibes
This is my last newsletter of 2021, and it feels very weird to be ending the year feeling like it’s March 2020 all over again. This week, it seemed like Omicron really hit hard, especially in NYC but in many other places, too. Restaurants were shutting down due to outbreaks and exposures, testing sites had hours-long lines, rapid at-home covid test kits were flying off shelves at every drugstore, and everyone knew people who had tested positive or been exposed.
Even though we’ve been living in a pandemic for nearly two years now, this week, for many, felt as confusing and overwhelming as some of those early weeks in March 2020. Many more people are vaccinated now, but there’s still so much confusion about what to do. If you’re potentially exposed, when do you test? What do you do if you’re vaccinated and test positive? Do you cancel plans, holiday travel, events?
The research on Omicron so far shows that it’s far more transmissible than Delta, but also appears to be less severe, especially if you’re vaccinated and boosted. But even if it poses less risk to healthy, vaccinated individuals, it still poses great risk to us as a society collectively. I’ve been frustrated by some of the dismissiveness on social media, people saying you shouldn’t worry about it if you’re vaccinated, because “we’ll all get it at some point, it will be mild, and you’ll be fine.” That might be true for people who are otherwise healthy and vaccinated. But it is not necessarily true for many other at risk populations: people who have underlying health conditions, people with kids too young to get the vaccine, people who are elderly, people who are immunocompromised, people who are pregnant. A surge in cases could also overwhelm and fill up our already taxed hospitals, who could also be understaffed if healthcare workers test positive and have to stay out of work to self-isolate.
It’s exhausting, I know. We all feel it. No one willingly wants to go back to living with more Covid precautions, not when we had just been starting to resume some of our normal pre-Covid activities. But it is, unfortunately, necessary to prevent another major surge that hurts our society collectively.
So yeah, it’s a weird note to end 2021 on. We began 2021 thinking surely it would be better than 2020: we thought this was the year we’d all get vaccinated, hit herd immunity, and end the pandemic. Those things clearly did not happen, and we’re still very much living in a weird state of limbo like we were a year ago, albeit with more vaccines.
So if you need me this holiday season, I’ll be avoiding large groups and indoor gatherings, seeing only close friends and family, masking, taking rapid tests, and hoping that things finally get better in 2022.
Stay safe and well, and thanks for reading!
The best things I read in 2021
In no particular order:
The curious rise of Twitter power broker Yashar Ali, LA Mag.
How the pandemic ends now, The Atlantic.
Why is every young person in America watching The Sopranos? New York Times Magazine.
Slackers of the world, unite! The Atlantic.
I can’t complain, The Cut.
America ruined my name for me, The New Yorker.
Why millennials can’t grow up, The Atlantic.
We all have “main character energy” now, The New Yorker.
The pandemic shrank our social circles. Let’s keep it that way, New York Times.
The anxiety of influencers, Harper’s.
The cult of busyness, Vice.
The frustration with productivity culture, The New Yorker.
The day the good internet died, The Ringer.
Why American women everywhere are delaying motherhood, New York Times.
The lives of others, The Atavist.
The pandemic created a childcare crisis. Mothers bore the burden, New York Times.
I, phone, New York Review of Books.
The best things I cooked in 2021
Noodle-free chicken pad Thai: So this is obviously not authentic in any way, but I love this recipe that uses a genius hack: a bag of broccoli slaw! I made this SO many times this year.
What’s Gaby Cooking’s fish taco bowls were another dish that was in frequent rotation in my house. Easy to make and a great way to make fish fun.
Hetty McKinnon’s cold noodle salad with spicy peanut sauce was one of my favorite new recipes this year. It’s really adaptable — you can add more crunchy veggies depending on what you have on hand, and you can add a protein like chicken or shrimp if you want or keep it vegetarian. And the sauce is delicious.
Crunchy roll bowls from Pinch of Yum: Another easy vegetarian dish I loved!
Fish florentine: Renan is a noted fish hater, but even he loved this fish recipe.
This baked tofu with peanut sauce from Yewande Komolafe was so easy and delicious.
Another winner from Yewande Komolafe was this coconut fish and tomato bake, which was another great way to make white fish more interesting.
These baked chicken meatballs from Pinch of Yum can really go with anything. Sometimes I put them in grain bowls with roasted veggies, sometimes I toss them into pasta with marinara sauce. And they’re incredibly easy to make.
This raw asparagus salad with walnuts and parmesan gave me a fun, interesting new way to prepare asparagus
Some other recommendations
KN95 masks: If you’re thinking about switching from your cloth masks to something more heavy duty, I just bought these KN95 masks, which are pretty affordable and ship quickly.
A perfect green smoothie: I’ve recently become obsessed with this green smoothie, which I now believe is the only smoothie recipe I ever need. It’s a copy of Juice Press’s Clean Green Protein smoothie, and features bananas, spinach, dates, and hemp seeds and chia seeds. I also add a scoop of collagen peptides and a teaspoon of spirulina to mine, and I find it actually makes me feel full for a while!
Holiday cookies: Just here to report that I made these peppermint brownie cookies from NYT Cooking last weekend (pictured above) and holy shit, they are so good! They’re like the perfect hybrid of cookie and brownie. I recommend making them immediately. And this weekend I’m making a batch of chai spice snickerdoodles, which I now make every year.
A planner for the new year: I just bought my 2022 planner a few weeks ago. For planner nerds, it’s the Hobonichi Techo Cousin, which I’m now using for the third year in a row. It’s basically the perfect planner and I don’t think I’ll ever switch! It’s a little pricy for a planner, but since I use it everyday and it helps me keep track of every random to-do and meeting action item, it feels worth the investment for me. It is truly my favorite organizational tool.
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