Takeoffs and Landings
The Friday Newsletter has a flight to catch, but plenty to offer on this layover
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.
(Don’t worry—this isn’t an announcement of anything dramatic. I’ll just be sitting in the Charlotte airport.)
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and that’s really come to a head this week. Today, I’m headed down to South Carolina to meet up with a group of friends and attend the Clemson-Georgia Tech football game. I’m excited about this trip—which has been planned for months—but it ended up sandwiched directly between two work trips, creating a stretch where I’m gone from home for the better part of two weeks.
It’s a lot!
It’s easy to get cynical about travel when you do it often. You shuffle onto the plane, pull down the window shade, pop in headphones and put on something you can zone out to for a couple hours and just hope it goes fast. We’re getting into the busiest travel stretch of the year for many people, and it’s no one’s idea of a fun time navigating an airport terminal crowded with harried fellow travelers.
A couple days ago, I was sitting in the Pittsburgh airport waiting to board a flight, and across from me were a group of young travelers debating the details of their flight. Can I take this coffee on the plane? Will we have to get our checked bags when we connect? How do we know when it’s our turn to board? They were obviously nervous, but also clearly excited about wherever they were going—and I remembered how thrilled I used to be any time I got on an airplane.
Now, presumably their trip was for something more fun than the subterranean construction site1 I was coming back from visiting—but still, it was a nice way to thaw the ice I’ve developed in my frequent-flier heart.
Sometimes you’ve got to pull that window shade back up and enjoy the ride.
Friends, it’s Friday once again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
We’ve made it to the end of another long week, and after this week, things are sure to settle down, right?
Right.
In between my comings and goings lately, I’ve assembled another strong slate of ACBN-Certified Good Things meant to measurably improve your weekend. Today, that includes an easy-fancy-stew-adjacent-dinner, a cocktail that employs some of my favorite odd bottles, some quality entertainment options, lively discussion with The Internet’s Best Comment Section, pets, and more!
The “fasten seat belt” light is now on. Let’s fly.
7) Let’s get weeknight fancy
There’s certain flavors that I’m just always going to get excited about—trigger words on a menu that almost guarantee I’ll order a dish. (I am predictable enough that I can look at a menu, ask my wife what she thinks I’m going to get, and she’ll guess right 90% of the time.)
Near the top of that list is chorizo, and while my recipes have more recently focused on the Mexican kind, I’m just as fond of Spanish chorizo, the dried, cured version of the delicious paprika-heavy sausage.
I’ve made a variant of this dish a number of times over the years—often as a soup or stew—but for today’s version, it’s a relatively-quick stovetop sauce that envelops a nice firm piece of cod.