My 3 ingredients for a happier summer 🥒
Unveiling summer lifesavers.
Hi everyone, it’s Thursday. And you look great today.
This is Afirmativo!, where I send updates about articles that I publish on my blog and share things that have been on my mind lately.
End of August already. Can you believe it?
How was your summer? Things didn’t look too good for mine, but it all ended up being ok, so I thought I’d thank three culprits that made it a bit better.
1️⃣ Thank you, Chinese Cucumber salad
I always like picking greens from the menu at Chinese restaurants, but I never dared to have a go at any of the recipes. That changed when a Chinese friend shared their recipe with me. I’ve been basically feeding off of cucumbers all summer. Here it is:
Ingredients:
1 cucumber (I pick dutch ones for this)
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1.5 tbsp soy sauce
½ tbsp oyster sauce
½ tbsp rice vinegar (I use the dark one from Chinkiang)
Chiles — fresh or pickled (add at your own risk)
Set aside the cucumber. Dice the garlic thinly, and mix it with the rest of the ingredients in a bag.
The fun part: smash the fresh cucumber before slicing it roughly. Apparently that breaks the fiber and then it soaks up the sauce better.
Add the cucumber to the bag, shake it well, and stick it all in the fridge for 1h.
2️⃣ Thank you, past self using Google Maps
I’m a Google Maps addict. Every time I hear or read or see something nice that’s in some place, I need to look it up on Google Maps. Restaurants, buildings, hikes, beaches, museums, cemeteries, who knows. You probably do the same.
I usually add a note of why I saved it, who recommended it, or a link I should read when I finally get to visit it. You probably do too.
I currently “want to go” to 1,015 places. LOL. You probably have more. Do check and let me know if that’s the case.
Anyway, I was wondering what to do with some vacation days I had and I ended up ticking one item off the list.
This amazing lodge in Portugal hosted us and my books for 5 days. It was really nice.
3️⃣ Thank you, Mexico
Do you know cheladas? They’re beers with lemon and ice. Beer. Ice. Beer. Ice. Let that sink in.
It’s normal and even nice and most times delicious to put ice in your beer if you’re in Mexico or at a Mexican place and you call it chelada, it’s weird if you are not.
Well, I have a friend who thought it could be normal and even nice and definitely refreshing to put ice in his beer at all times during this hellishly hot summer. I followed his lead and that made me 1.1 times happier and 0.1 times soberer.
PS: Vibe coding, que es gerundio
An episode from the Cloud District podcast featuring yours truly discussing vibe coding was released yesterday.
You can listen to it on Spotify here — it’s 30 min long and (this is for mom and dad) my stellar appearances start around minute 9.
That’s all for today.
If you enjoyed reading, send me a word replying to this email or share it with someone you care about.
Alberto