Ana(bel)

Tía, se me da fatal llamar por estas cosas, pero a ver si un día me animo porque realmente te echo de menos y sé que puedo contar contigo 🫶🏼

Send sleep my way. No use shedding any more tears over that very dark time.

Still awake and thinking about my darling cat and how my ex failed him and me when he decided [REDACTED]

You definitely are! I consider myself a trendsetter (in black metal, so take that with a grain of salt lol) for bringing 7 people from the US to Fortress Festival 🤣.

They look gorgeous though!

This means a lot, believe me. Thank you so much.

Thank you! I really appreciate every ounce of support —I'm very strong, but I've dealt with a lot and sometimes it wears me down.

Thank you for indulging my Tirana ramblings tonight. I'm restless and unable to sleep; my cat's 1 year anniversary passing and all the 💩 around it with my ex (I'd tell you if we had circles) got me so low. I need an emotional support cig and a double shot of whiskey in my chamomile tea.

I've never been myself, but I heard it pronounced today on good authority and I was 🤯

Only very tangentially related, but the memory made me smile: when I was a little kid, I once declared that "I'd like to visit Spain, but I wouldn't like to live there". I had no idea that I was *in* Spain already, it did sound like a different place from all the shit the news mentioned.

It was a very massive +200k protesters where I was (population 500k). I had never seen anything like it.

Is this the area where you live? Place just got brownie points if that's the case.

That was literally my first demonstration. I was in college and all of Europe was protesting against it.

Fellow Americans: Wossestshiresterswhatever, the pronunciation makes no sense! (Worcestershire)
Also Fellow Americans: Tooson! (Tucson)

(I love this shit)

Some of my Georgian cookbooks have cheese recipes, but I've never attempted them. Perhaps they'd be close enough, who knows. (I always do shortcut substitutions when I bake Georgian puris).

It's fascinating to me that you're like the 6th American who tells me they hate oranges, my favorite winter fruit. (Granted, I've never had a TRULY GOOD orange in 🇺🇸, but still.) Thanks for the heads-up though, because I had something with orange in mind for you and I will can that thought.

Orange and hazelnut are, to me, two classic pairings for savory foods. Eg, I use crumbled toasted hazelnuts & orange zest for spinach salads. Very complimentary to each other. The idea of using blood orange is mostly for the bit - because it looks gorgeous and contrast-y. But any orange would do.

What a great suggestion!

I would have loved to try that, sound glorious. "Ajvar that was left out in the sun" you're basically describing adjika :) although I'm sure the Armenian name for it is different and they put their very own delicious spins on it.

My powers of engagement are one of my best features.

What's your favorite, and what other thematic food weeks would you ask me to do?

As things stand, I don't have the skill to achieve a Neapolitan-style GF pizza, but I could offer a corn tortilla-based option with some adequate toppings, so that folks who can't eat gluten could still partake.

No keto options, though. Sorry, that'd be asking too much of Tirana.

Ty 🙏

I thought about it, but the candied habanero would sort of act like that.

Plant-based options would be Sluttinesca (my plant-based puttanesca) and Not’duja (homemade plant-based n'duja) with marinated artichokes.

Imperial. Dab of tomato sauce, generous topping of mature Cheddar, candied habanero slices, garlic chips as a finisher after it's out from the oven.

After. This is the way with the entire Mangal roast meat tradition that spreads from Central Asia to the Balkans.

Tirana. Ajvar as the sauce, kashkaval cheese, sliced cevapi (think “Balkan meatballs”), then topped with very thinly shaved raw onion (again, trust me on this).

Puttanesca. Garlicky tomato sauce, a sparing sprinkle of Romano (trust me), chopped anchovy & black olives, capers.
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[Seriously, why do you not usually see pizza puttanesca in menus? The mind fucking boggles]