I Don't Want To Miss a Thing
The Friday Newsletter is in full Dad Mode this week with a spicy vegetable side, a robust cocktail, terrific music, a fun book, a big dumb movie and more!
I’ve always been the kind of person who fears missing out.
As a kid, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on somewhere else, and that feeling only compounded when I was out of the house and on my own. A weekend passing in college without turning into The Greatest Weekend Ever would leave me sour and convinced that everyone else was having more fun than me.
In retrospect, I’m sure this tendency contributed at least in some small way to my choice to move to New York City after graduation. I rationalized my decision to go there as being a good career move (I’m an architect, and they have tall buildings there), but the real truth was that I just wanted to be Where Things Were Happening.
Proximity to the action can only exacerbate the feeling of FOMO, it turns out. I spent most of my twenties there, and that time was often clouded by the sense that I’d arrived just after a party ended, that I’d found out about something a little too late, that the real fun stuff was happening just around the corner but I was too broke or uninformed or uncool to figure it out.
Eventually, I met someone great. No regrets there. We got married, left the big city for the flyover-country suburbs, and had a couple of kids.
You miss out on a lot when you become a parent.
We weren’t going out to bars or fancy restaurants anymore. I didn’t see a movie in theaters for four years, and my once-frequent concertgoing slowed to a trickle. We were at home most of the time, even before that year or two when we were all at home most of the time. I’d once left New York for a three-week trip with little more thought than making sure that my apartment door was locked, but now I was connected to home by an invisible tether that I could feel tugging on me any time I got too far away.
Those first six months of being a parent are, to put it bluntly, hell.
People—well-meaning, but deeply misguided—love to tell brand-new parents to “cherish this time” and coo about “how special this is”. Now that I’m well past that stage, I can understand the desire to nostalgize it. When you’re nearly delusional from lack of sleep and just trying to get a little grocery shopping done before the baby wakes back up, though, it doesn’t land well. You’re in the midst of completely reorganizing your life around a tiny, fragile, fickle and fiercely-demanding little creature who doesn’t even know how to smile yet, and it’s hard not to feel like you’re missing out.
That changed, and surprisingly quick.
I’ve made it my mission, any time I encounter a parent in this initiation phase, to acknowledge how rough it is but tell them how much it gets better. That screaming, crying, fluid-producing little baby learns to sleep. They learn to smile. They learn to laugh. They fall asleep on your chest on the couch or on your shoulder at the store. They laugh when you do exaggerated pratfalls and when you make up songs at bathtime. They come appreciate all the character voices that only you can do right, and the inside jokes that only you share. They wake you up when they’re scared of a thunderstorm or a bad dream or the shadows in their room and for the first time in your life you are the best solution to a problem, if only by being there to tell them it’s okay. A weekend afternoon spent playing wiffle ball in the backyard or building a fairy-house on the front porch is suddenly as good as it can get.
I don’t know if I’m a good parent.
That’s not me fishing for compliments, and it’s not for me to assess. Frankly, I’m deeply skeptical of anyone who touts their own parenting skills, and not just because every kid is a unique person with their own needs and wants and dreams, but because why are you telling *me* this? The only ones who can judge that are the kids themselves, and it’ll be decades before they can tell if I did a good job or not.
No, I don’t know if I’m a good parent, but that’s not the point, not right now.
All I know right now is that for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like there’s something better happening somewhere else.
This is it.
Friends, welcome back once again to Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
It’s Father’s Day weekend, and I’ve got a Dad-sized slate of ACBN-Certified Good Things lined up for you today. That includes:
A fresh way to make eating your vegetables unhealthy!
A full-send cocktail that makes ample use of the back of the bar!
Book, music and movie recs for the spiritual Dad in all of us!
Pets, discussion, and more!
Are you ready?
[waits for it]
Hi, ready. I’m Dad.
Advanced Studies in Brassica and Pork Fat
A big step in the transition from kid to adult—and maybe even to Dad—is not only eating your vegetables like your parents asked, but maybe even learning to enjoy it.
Like many people, I’ve had an adult turn in favor of Brussels sprouts that would have shocked me when I was a child. There’s a few obvious factors assisting us here—not only have we largely learned as a culture that Brussels sprouts are much better when roasted than boiled, but they literally do taste better now that they did back then.
(Also, bacon showed up to help like Randy Rhoads joining Ozzy’s band.)
Now, I enjoy a bacon-roasted sprout as much as anyone, but even typing the word bacon into a CMS makes me cringe, lest I wander into early-2010s Reddit epic bacon territory. It’s a great ingredient and it plays very well with all members of the brassica family, but it’s time to branch out, to experiment, to see other people in the pork fat world.
It’s time to give bacon the day off, and let ‘Nduja step in.
The spicy, spreadable salami-like Calabrian sausage is a personal favorite, one I’ve used in pepping up beans and pasta before. Today I’m leaning on it to make my sprouts sing. (You can find it at well-stocked grocers, or just order it online like I do.)
Brussels Sprouts with ‘Nduja, Lemon, Pistachios and Parm
1 pound Brussels sprouts