A Meat-Stuffed Pumpkin, or Second Breakfast #6
Hello! This is Meghan McCarron, and you're reading my newsletter, Second Breakfast. You can find me on Instagram, too. If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe here.
In May, when Breath of the Wild: Tears of the Kingdom came out, my partner and I were home with our two-month-old baby. We retreated into its magical world of straightforward problems like monsters to kill and puzzles to solve whenever our real adventure was napping.
For the uninitiated, the first Breath of the Wild, which came out in 2017, was an immersive, wander-everywhere-and-fuck-around blockbuster, and the sequel reproduces many of these pleasures. One of the best things to fuck around with in both games is the food. You can hunt, forage, and buy ingredients to cook into a huge number of dishes. Some give extra abilities, some restore tons of hearts, but most of the recipes exist for the fun of making, like, a carrot cake. In the new game, one side quest is devoted to cheese.
There’s a dish from both games that my partner J. has always wanted to try: a meat-stuffed pumpkin. In May, we were living off pre-frozen bean soups and friends' kindness, so that kind of project cooking was off the table. This fall, at pumpkin time, J. brought it up again. We now had an 8-month-old baby (how??), and I was back to cooking. J. rarely requests specific dishes, so I offered to give this pumpkin a try.
When you think about a meat-stuffed pumpkin, what do you picture? The phrase sounds tasty, and it looks enticing in the game, but an actual pumpkin hollowed out and filled to the brim with meat didn’t sound good at all. What kind of meat are we even talking about? I googled the phrase to see if anyone had attempted a recipe. One Reddit poster showed off a photo of an IRL recreation, but had no patience for the recipe plz crowd. Fair!
I decided to start with the pumpkin. I took too long to get started, so most of the grocery stores and farmers markets no longer carried any. But my local Erewhon (mY lOcAl ErEwHoN) still had small sugar pie pumpkins tucked on the bottom shelf of their produce display. I have never seen anyone but me purchase a vegetable from this Erewhon.
I did persuade J. that, at least for this first attempt, we should try a stuffed pumpkin recipe that was likely to work, rather than risk our big project becoming a pile of dried-out ground meat inside a gourd. I found Dorie Greenspan’s "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good," the everything being bread, cheese, cream, and bacon. I swapped out the bacon for some ground lamb to make things slightly more meaty. The assembly wasn't really that difficult, just scooping out a small pumpkin, and cubing a bunch of bread and cheese. I got the assembled stuffed pumpkin in the oven early enough to be a weeknight dinner for a friend who was in town.
I do not have an attractive photo of this presentation-heavy dish. But good lord was it delicious. The rich, herbal filling combined with mildly sweet pumpkin was a satisfying, stick-to-your-ribs, dark-at-5pm meal that didn’t feel too fancy to be eaten on a weeknight. Our baby, now 9 months old (how???) loved scooping up the cooked pumpkin with his hands.
J. was delighted. She now wants to make more things inside a pumpkin, sort of a bread bowl situation. Perhaps some curry. I was delighted, too. I hope I remember to inject whimsy into my dinner routine more often. Sometimes, recipes exist for the fun of making the thing.
This is the season of year-end roundups and reflections. I love reading them. But I don’t feel up to writing a big one for myself.
I will say two things. One, I love being a parent more than I’d ever imagined, and I hate that I’ve gotten sick once a month since he started daycare. As my therapist constantly reminds me, both can be true. The past few days, I’ve been stuck in bed. J. brings him to me to nurse, and every time, he breaks into a giddy smile and waves.
And two, I've been so grateful for the support of family and friends and fellow journalists as I made a double transition into parenting and freelancing. That includes you reading this newsletter! So, thank you.
JOURNALISM CORNER
I profiled Nesrin, a former revolutionary who now sells incredible Syrian food at farmers markets in West LA, for the Los Angeles Times. She has since told me that people from all over the Southland have shown up at her stall, thanks to the article. Hearing things like that is the best part of my job. If you live in Los Angeles, go try her food! I love her eggplant tagine and her baklava especially.
READING CORNER
Ryan on the "pivot to rich" in the New York restaurant scene
The complicated legacy of Twitter harassment, from someone who lived it
Love the idea of an archive of thinking and feeling
I also love the PHOTOSNACK newsletter
As someone who grew up super Catholic, I found this op-ed on the Church's recent decision to bless gay couples moving
The concept of the "Chili Line" in the lede of this classic Calvin Trillin piece is really speaking to me
I noticed my hip pain got a lot better after a few months of sitting on the floor with the baby, I endorse floor sitting
It is a surreal feeling to be growing too old for the internet
Southern California friends: consider OC Ktown
Take us back to the breakfast wine magazine era
VIDEO CORNER
It's the holidays, and then dead week. Maybe you want to spend 4 hours watching a YouTube video? Full disclosure, I've known Kat and Harry for a few years now. But beyond the amazing investigative work they've done here, this video makes one of the best cases I've seen for what it takes to make good work on the internet, and why that work is worthy of respect. Also, Harry is very funny.
That's it! Thank you for reading. I hope you have a smooth rest of your 2023. The baby gave me his case of hand foot and mouth, and we had to move all our holiday travel to January. It's sad, but the silver lining is that the holidays are one of the low-key best times to be in LA. I'm praying my latest child disease has cleared up in time to go eat dumplings in the SGV on Christmas.
Here's a few of my favorite photos I took this month.
