Friday Coffee Date 001: Pickles, Life-Saving Oatmeal, & Celebrating Dead Mothers (2024)

Welcome to Coffee Date Fridays! Our casual catch-up for the week where we chat about:

• 3 things that made life better this week

• 1 thing we’re celebrating now

• 1 thing we’re celebrating in the future (near or far—claim it!)

• A conversational weekly question for you

• And comment shout-outs from the previous week’s discussions

This week will combine 2 weeks’ worth of favorites! I promise they won’t be this long in the future.

So let’s get into it!

Two weeks ago, our family did an extreme “staycation.”

We literally stayed at home and spent the week getting food, going to appointments, and running errands.

I discovered some things that I really loved that week. And of course, a few things from this past week too, and wanted to share.

I LOVE tempura-anything by HelloFresh.

And luckily this most recent box had two recipes with tempura battered items (cheese and shrimp). So far I was only able to try one of the meals, and it was SO good!

It was a shrimp tempura masterpiece on a bed of jasmine rice, with roasted broccoli, quick pickles, and a super easy and flavorful spicy mayo I’m making forever now.

But this has quickly spiraled into an obsession with pickles.

An obsession!

Pickles!!!

Those… Pickles… In that HelloFresh recipe…

Something about hot and savory meeting cold, and vinegary (and sometimes crisp!) is unimaginably delicious.

I caught myself returning to get more sauce and SO. MANY. PICKLES.

After the dish was completely gone, I had to have more.

I made more of the HelloFresh quick pickles, and a batch of dill-ish pickles after having a Quarter Pounder with pickles (I tried and liked pickles on my burgers at my first job at DQ! I dunno why I ever stopped getting them on my burgers)…

I’ve eaten most of the “dill” pickles I made on my Boars honey maple turkey (I never get the name right; that may not be right) sandwiches with candied bacon, sweet and spicy mustard, and miracle whip.

Eating that with a small bag of Cheetos and an iced tea for lunch is just… *chefs kiss*

The HelloFresh remake pickles are gonna be eaten with some steamed frozen dumplings sometime this week hopefully.

I’ll share with ya how I prepare my frozen dumplings later too.

This pickle segment is long enough!

Ahhhhhh… Pickles.

The only thing I don’t like about this dip is that it uses the word “crab” when it’s mainly imitation crab.

Just a personal pet peeve of mine when I want CRAB MEAT nigiri at a sushi spot, and it’s actually KRAB.

But I digress…

I first tried this Krab dip years ago thanks to my grandma, and ever since the pandemic, Kroger’s deli has set out packages of certain meats and cheeses which (happily) prevents me from interacting with extra humans at the grocery store.

So you can imagine my joy when I found out the krab dip is prepackaged in the fridge section of the store!

It’s slightly oniony from the chives, sweet from the creamy dressing, and krab… it’s a nice treat on Townhouse crackers!

Love that I can just grab and go with it now!

[Insert picture of basic-looking oatmeal that was gobbled up in the very limited amount of time I had to make and eat it]

Life-Saving Oatmeal

During our super “staycation”, we had an eventful day/night/morning at my grandparents that led to us pulling an all-nighter.

I had to sit up on my grandparents’ couch from about 4am to 6am with the air conditioning hitting my back so I was FREEZING.

Once we got into the car to head home, I was daydreaming about my cozy, warm, comforter and turning on the heater in my room to snuggle in for a few hours (because my mom had a doctor’s appointment early afternoon)…

But the family decided to go straight out to breakfast at 7am instead of going home.

And it was SO. COLD. in the restaurant!!

My dad had to get the emergency blanket out of the trunk for me to use I was so unbearably coooold!

I poked my fork out of my blanket burrito like a tiny-armed T-Rex and ate just a couple bites of breakfast hash, and a baby slice of a Dutch baby pancake as I waited on my family.

When we finally went home, I only had maybe a couple hours to rest before my mom had to get ready for the doctor’s appointment mentioned above.

And I desperately just wanted to feel warmth again!

(I also knew I should probably put something on my stomach before we headed out yet again.)

So I ran to my plain instant oatmeal package and added:

• Malted milk powder

• Kerigold butter

• A big-ish pinch of salt

• About a teaspoon of brown sugar

• And a smaaall dusting of cinnamon

It was perfect.

You ever taste a toasty room as you deliciously drown under fluffy comforters wrapping you in safety and warmth?

Cause that oatmeal was like a pre-game for that exact moment I got to experience in record time.

A perfect and quick bowl of oatmeal and a substantial nap after a super cold all-nighter?

I was home.

Although I didn’t grow up with iCarly, I’ve been watching Jennette McCurdy for about a year as she talked about her tumultuous relationship with her mother.

I’d passively see her on Nickelodeon and thought she was pretty, and loved her tomboy ways before changing channels. And much more recently I heard about her enigmatically speaking out against “The Creator” when I’d watch video essays about Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider (gross) during YouTube’s video essay boom.

My most recent exposure to Jennette was when I stumbled onto her doing an interview with Mayim Bialik about enmeshment (a word I was looking into for my own past experiences).

And down the Jennette spiral I went!

But I’ll spare you.

“I’m Glad My Mom Died” is a memoir detailing the harrowing life of Jennette as a child star, abused by her mom during the process of making her child live out a dream her daughter never had, and unfortunately leaving her with plenty to heal from after death due to the past her mom set in front of her.

It’s quite a raw read. Loooots of content warnings.

And though I can verrrrrrry mildly relate to some parts of her life, I found myself comparing my childhood to hers.

I don’t remember rebelling from my parents until I was much older. Despite what my mom believes, I’m a very sure person when I’ve made a decision because I truly think it out.

Not all things, but way more–of course–than Jennette McCurdy.

Knowing that Jennette was brought up to want to do anything to please her mom, and to read her mom’s body language and emotional states (talk. about. anxiety.) better than anyone else as young as 6 is devastating.

“I’m Glad My Mom Died” may look like just a grabbing title for marketing purposes… but it’s not. It’s her truth.

It’s 2022. Let’s end the, “but… she’s your mom” narrative.

The world isn’t black and white, good and bad…

Just because someone gave birth to you doesn’t make them a good person, a non-abusive person, a… anything.

We really need to stop putting people on pedestals simply because of a title they hold but made no ethical efforts to gain.

Blackberry Jam

Ending this week with something short and sweet.

We ate out at another breakfast place, one I had been wanting to try… and the best thing was the little packages of blackberry jam I ate with my English muffin.

So yeah! It’s tasty and now a jar’s in our pantry to spread on toast soon!

Alright, I’m giving you a food break before diving back into more foods from this week.

I’ve heard here and there about a ✨magic✨ towel that just needs water to completely remove makeup, but I rarely wear makeup so it went over my radar.

I dunno what made me look into it a month or so ago, but people on Reddit said to just get a microfiber cloth at the dollar store cause it was the same thing with just a different label slapped on it.

And boy, it worked!

I wet it, and used one side to wipe a skin tint sample I wore that day.

I flipped it to the other side to wipe and see if there was any residue and there was virtually nothing left!

Game-changer! Especially on the days when I’m just too lazy to be double cleansing and finishing with micellar water before I even moisturize.

Hero Zit Patches

I’ve been using CosRX zit stickers since I received some as a K-beauty writer in a past life, but after realizing I was out as a whitehead emerged… I stopped by Target to grab a pack of Hero zit patches and…

Yay unintentional upgrades!

So Crumbl Cookie isn’t my favorite cookie place.

So one of this week’s cookies is cinnamon fry bread: “a melt-in-your-mouth frybread cookie smothered with melted butter and topped with a delicious scoop of cinnamon buttercream.”

Y’all…

I think with the few cookies I’ve tried, I’ve only eaten one fully over the span of a couple days.

… I had to stop myself from eating this one all in one sitting.

The cookie truly has a slight crisp on the outside and is sweet and kinda lighter on the inside.

Also tastes sliiightly buttery. It’s a pretty good cookie by itself, but when you add the scoop of cinnamon buttercream?!

Ooooooooh…

I got two more before next week’s cookies switch these out.

That buttercream is so… buttery!

I read from people who ate it 6 months ago (the last time the cookie was available) that they wished it was spread throughout the cookie, so I kinda mashed it down all around the cookie as best I could with a torn piece of the cookie.

So. Good.

Ube Mochi Donuts

Last favorite and we can move on!!

So when a new tea shoppe opened much closer to me, my family grabbed a box for dessert after dinner.

We got chocolate, coconut, strawberry, oreo… And I got ube (purple yam).

……

…………

….

…. Look at me.

Are you looking at me?

Come-come here… Look me in the face so you know how serious I am when I say:

I think that was the best damn donut I’ve ever eaten.

Mochi donuts are slightly crispy on the outside from being fried, but have a pleasantly chewy texture on the inside without being dense or jaw-tiring.

They’re SO light! And the flavor is so… refreshingly nice?!

I can’t ever see myself just buying one. I’d have to get a box of 3 from now on. Both because they’re so light, and delicious.

What’s something you’re celebrating from this week?

I’m celebrating the business breakthrough I had thanks to my coach just saying two. words.

That was it! Opened a floodgate to a dilemma I’ve had for weeks. It was wonderful!

What something you’re celebrating in the future—near or far?! Claim it!

I can feel the ease already: a September filled with more ease, organization, articles, and content ready to go!

I’m gonna make it so the rest of this month. :)

Since this was a food-heavy Friday Coffee Date (I’m gonna be honest, I don’t see that changing in the future), I’d love to ask you:

Do you have any foods you find yourself zoning out to when eating?

When I was younger, I was SO fixated on my crab legs—cracking them and pulling out the sweet, juicy meat all in one go to dip in clarified butter—that I didn’t even hear my grandpa apparently say “look at her go!”

I have 3 food like this:

• Crab legs (mentioned above, of course)

• Apple slices with honey peanut butter

• A pack of Austin peanut butter crackers

You have any?

This is the first of this series, so no shoutouts… yet!

If you made it to the end, thanks SO much for tuning in!

This newsletter is SO fun, so I’m extremely happy when anyone else is enjoying it too.