I Don't Need To Know
A summer grilling favorite, a boozy dessert drink, some killer shoegaze, an uncomfortably relevant book, a fun game and more: it's the ACBN Friday Newsletter, friends!
I have a compulsive need for knowledge that does not always benefit me.
Intellectual curiosity is a good thing, of course, and I’d like to think that I’ve always had a healthy amount of that. Growing up, I was the kind of kid who would read almanacs and atlases as bedtime stories, and I remain deeply interested in a wide range of esoteric topics—something I explored when the “Roman Empire” meme exploded last year:
Having a supercomputer that can connect me to basically anyone else on the planet in my pocket isn’t always a good thing, though.
I can hardly wait for an elevator without pulling out my phone to see what’s going on in the world. I’ll stay up later than I should frying my brain with petty dramas I have no business caring about. If I sit down to eat a quesadilla, there’s a decent chance I’ll end up reading the Wikipedia article for “quesadilla” before I finish.
It wasn’t that long ago when college friends and I—I SAID IT WASN’T THAT LONG AGO, DON’T DO THE MATH—would have interminable, unresolvable bar arguments about facts, insisting we would look it up when we got home, something we never actually remembered to do. Now, we can (ideally) resolve these arguments in seconds, and that’s a power that’s completely corrupted my brain.
It’s a trait my kids have picked up, too—no matter what my son and I are talking about, invariably he’ll ask me to look up something on my phone. What’s the world’s most expensive house? What’s the hardest rock in the world? How much does a Lamborghini cost? What job makes the most money?
I applaud his thirst for knowledge, but sometimes I have to say no. (Usually because I’m driving.)
We just returned from a family vacation to California, the middle portion of had us taking a few days in the woods of Big Sur. I am not an outdoorsman; when my brother—an avid outdoorsman—asked if we were camping on the trip, I laughed out loud. I appreciate nature, though, and nature doesn’t get much better than that remote stretch of California’s central coast. For us, roughing it would simply be disconnecting for a few days.
My son was appalled when we informed him that our lodge would have no Wi-Fi or television and extremely limited cell phone service, and I’ll concede a small part of me was worried about disconnecting, too. What was I going to miss out on in the world?
As we hiked around trails in a state park, the questions didn’t stop.
What kind of bird is that? How old are these trees? Where’s the biggest redwood?1
I didn’t have the answers, and I couldn’t just whip out my phone to confirm. It wasn’t frustrating, though; it was freeing to not know for once.
There’s a lot of things masquerading as knowledge that seek to fill our days; political horse-race coverage, self-indulgent op-ed blathering, specious facts removed from context and repackaged to entertain or confuse or both. I try hard to stay informed, but maybe I’d do better to just turn off my phone and walk in the woods, marveling at the fragile majesty of the world.
ANYWAYS.
Is it hypocritical to wax poetic about unplugging in an email newsletter I’m sending to thousands of people on the internet? Probably! Caveat emptor; I will (probably) never log off.
In the meantime, friends, it’s Friday.
We haven’t had a proper ACBN Friday Newsletter in a couple weeks, what with my vacation hiatus. I’m coming back at full strength today, though, ready to talk about some things that could make your weekend better.
Today, that includes my favorite summertime grilling move, a boozy dessert drink, some killer shoegaze, a book that has absolutely no parallel to current events and why would you even suggest that it does, a fun family game, and more!
Don’t slam that laptop shut just yet.
I have been hearing a lot about “Brat Summer” but I am a middle-aged suburban dad so I probably misunderstood the assignment
I love experimenting with recipes as much as the next person. (Okay, fine, I love it far more than the next person, and I have five years of a newsletter archive to prove it.) This time of year, though, I find myself falling back on a few tried-and-true favorites for summer dinners. Smashburgers on the flat-top. Grilled chicken Caesar salads. BLTs, especially when tomatoes are in season. Pork butt if I feel like firing up the smoker. Pasta salad when I want to cook ahead for a few days.
(ICYMI, my Hawaiian Pizza Pasta Salad from a few months ago is a banger.)
My favorite summer dinner, though, might just be beer brats.
It’s not a complicated dinner, but it’s not supposed to be. I fire up the grill, toss some brats, onions, sauerkraut and beer into a foil pan, let them simmer for a bit while I get anything else I need ready, and then finish them right on the grill grates. They come out absolutely perfect—juicy, tender and flavorful inside, still crisp on the outside—and the effort level and cleanup is minimal.
It’s exactly what summer cooking should be.
Beer-Braised Bratwurst
2 pounds uncooked bratwurst
1/2 large yellow onion, sliced and separated
1/2 bag of sauerkraut
1/4 cup brown mustard, preferably from Cleveland
2-3 cheap lager-style beers (I prefer Narragansett or Hamm’s for this usage)
1 deep disposable foil pan
Slice the onion into rounds, then separate into individual rings. You could use the whole onion, but I save half to saute separately for topping the finished brats. Add the onion rings to the foil pan with the sauerkraut and mustard, then spread the brats out amidst them. Cover (or nearly cover) with beer.
Set a grill up in two zones—one side high heat, one side medium. Place the pan on the medium side. Bring to a solid simmer, close the grill lid, and allow to cook for 20 minutes or so. Remove the brats from the mixture with tongs, and finish on the hot side, just long enough to take some color.
Throw them on a bun with cooked onions, the remaining sauerkraut and more mustard, and boy, you’ve got a perfect summer meal. (They also hold really well as leftovers when cooked this way.)
What are your favorite go-to summer meals? What do you cook when it’s hot outside?
Il mio frappè porta tutti i ragazzi in cortile
Summer is not a time to be sophisticated.
We might want it to be—we might envision ourselves as fashionable urbanites sipping apertifs at golden hour on some Italian piazza—but the truth of the matter is, we’re more likely sweating it out by a poolside or getting sunburned at a theme park.
Today’s drink? Well, it’s a bit of both worlds.