Pop music and cheese powder
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
Long story short, last week’s post did not get emailed to most of the people it was supposed to. Substack Support got involved, figured out the problem, and I have reorganized things here accordingly.
(The gist is that in my desire to be hyper-organized, I set up multiple newsletters for each type of post, kind of like folders, and turns out that if I do that, every single subscriber has to manually subscribe to each newsletter and…that is simply not going to happen. So now all my different categories of post are just all going to be in one main newsletter feed, aka CHAOS, and I just have to be okay with that.)
Anyway, if you did not see the post from last week, I do just want to say that I thought it was a pretty good one, and it took me time and energy to work on, and you should totally read it.
Anyway. I have tried, for the past several weeks, to start on the chapter I’m supposed to be writing that I have to turn in at the start of next year, and I just keep not having the energy. Not writing is a normal healthy part of the writing process, right??
Book of the Week
I generally enjoyed Greg Jenner’s A Million Years in a Day (my very personal caveat ahead, which I don’t expect will affect most people who would be interested in this book). It’s the type of book that seems specifically engineered for interminably curious people who are constantly wondering why and how things are the way they are, and what the history of everything is. (I cannot be the only person who looks around at everyday objects and wonders how long we’ve been using them and what they originally looked like, right??)
Over the course of the book Jenner walks you through a hypothetical day—your alarm clock wakes you up, you go to the bathroom, you get dressed, etc.—and dives into the history of it all: for example, how long humanity has been using clocks, what the first alarm clocks looked like, and even how divisions of time have changed over cultures and centuries. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the history of going to the bathroom, which answered a lot of questions I have had about how and where people relieved themselves in ancient times.
Now, my caveat: if you generally don’t read a zillion books a year, or generally don’t read books that focus on the history of mundane things, you will get a lot out of this book, which is written in a very entertaining fashion. However, I have read a lot of books, many fairly recently, about these specific topics; within the past few months I have read books about the evolution of timepieces, bathrooms, alcohol, etc., so I found myself slogging through what was otherwise very fun stuff, because I hate covering the same material twice. (This is what made me a very insufferable A+ student in school.) This is 1000% not the book or author’s fault, and I still got a lot out of it!
Articles I Enjoyed
Sarah Gruen and Chandler Dean: If I Emailed My Parents Like Democrats Email Me (McSweeney’s)
Mom, we don’t have a moment to spare. I’m asking—no, BEGGING—for you to chip in ASAP. If every parent reading this email contributes just $197.50 by midnight, we can defend the shirt I just bought from being returned this November.
This is literally the funniest thing I’ve read all week. They absolutely nailed the tone of those unhinged political fundraising emails. (People who live in not-America, do you get emails like this, or is your political system slightly more sane?)
As a result of rediscoveries and shifting approaches to programming, works by Schumann and Price have migrated to classical music’s mainstream in recent years, with attention from major orchestras, especially Philadelphia, and recordings on prestige labels like Deutsche Grammophon. But they were never truly forgotten, as their histories show.
It is WILD that Clara Schumann and Florence Price works are getting first-time outings at Carnegie Hall. ABOUT TIME. The article is also really good at explaining what makes these specific works (Schumann’s piano concerto and Price’s Third Symphony) so significant and what influences they had on other pieces; we desperately need education like this as part of the marketing for this type of programming, because so many lazy thinkers assume otherwise that these pieces are only getting programmed for “identity politics” (ick).
What I’m Listening To
Last Friday one of our generation’s great pop icons released the new album we all needed. I am talking, of course, about Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest release, The Loneliest Time.
The album overall is on the mellower side—more Dedicated than E•MO•TION. On the first couple of listens I thought the album shook out pretty clearly into “bops” and “vibes” (I usually prefer the former) but a couple rounds later I found myself gravitating towards the “vibes” group and finding that they had their own sneaky catchiness. CRJ, you’ve done it again.
At first my clear favorite was “Beach House,” which has every hallmark of a catchy, poppy confection:
“Surrender My Heart” and “Talking to Yourself”? Also immediately likable bops!
However, as of now, my power rankings would put “Joshua Tree” and “Anxious” way at the top. I have gone so far as to put “Joshua Tree” on my “current pop music smorgasbord” playlist.
Also, am I totally off in thinking that “Shooting Star” has very similar vibes as Kylie Minogue’s “Wow”?
Also, I really love the eponymous track, “The Loneliest Time” (which renders heartbreak as something tender, full of yearning sweetness) but the lyric “I've had more of those bad dreams / You were ten feet in front of me” just makes me think every time of Hadestown.
Miscellany
I usually don’t talk about products in these posts, but occasionally something low-key changes my life enough that I just have to talk about it.
Am I the only person who only just learned about cheese powder? Like, is this a thing that everyone was clued into except for me?
The King Arthur Baking page optimistically and aspirationally says that you can use this in breadmaking and on potatoes or whatever, but to me there is only One True Use Case for cheese powder, and that is for mac ‘n’ cheese. Boxed mac ‘n’ cheese has been an easy guilty staple for me since college; I don’t touch the bright orange Kraft stuff, but I’ve been very loyal to Trader Joe’s Organic Shells and White Cheddar, which I strongly suspect is just rebranded Annie’s Organic Shells and White Cheddar. (When my music history advisor in college hosted a potluck at the end of a course on Beethoven, I brought mac ‘n’ cheese, Beethoven’s favorite food, by which I mean I came over with three boxes of the TJs stuff.)
My problem with both the TJ’s and Annie’s products is that the amount of pasta you get is never what you need; generally I’ve found that one box isn’t enough for two adults, but too much for one person. The other week I found myself wondering if there was a way to get just the powdered cheese packet that comes in the box—because the macaroni is just regular dry pasta—and a quick Google search alerted me to the existence of cheese powder, which is just dehydrated salted cheddar, aka the exact same stuff that you dump out of the packet.
This tub of cheese powder has changed everything. It showed me that boxed mac ‘n’ cheese is a RACKET. It has allowed me to make mac ‘n’ cheese out of any kind of pasta. (I have since further optimized by getting pasta that has an even shorter cooking time than the stuff from the box.) And it has, more importantly, allowed me to make mac ‘n’ cheese in any amount that I want at a time. I have made huge portions for a quick two-people lunch. I have made tiny bowls for a snack. There are no rules anymore. I am, at long last, finally unstoppable. 🧀