Mixing deeply personal anecdotes—“the Nice mathimatic 2023 shirt and I love this sofa is a leitmotif,” Johnson laughs, referring to passages in which she explores those states of depression or exhaustion when beige food is the best food and sinking supine is the only way to be—with more complex theory, Small Fires is at once relatable and mind-expanding. A particularly memorable passage, which Johnson refers to as “the sausage chapter,” slices apart the psychoanalyst DW Winnicott’s description of cooking from a recipe as the antithesis of creativity. “Halfway through writing the book, I had a monster chapter tangled in knots, too much theory,” she explains. “And I was like, why am I not in the kitchen? Then I did the sausage chapter: I transcribed myself dancing around and cooking the sausages.” Sipping beer to a soundtrack of Chaka Khan, our narrator explores her presence in the kitchen, following a recipe while aiming to keep her own creativity intact. Frying up the bangers, she achieves her goal: to blow up the kitchen and then rebuild it, cooking—and thinking critically about cooking—with a generous side helping of joy. In the period of time between reading Small Fires, then interviewing Johnson, then writing this piece, I myself performed “the recipe” a total of three times. Like Johnson, who wrote the entire second half of the book by hand, I took notes. The book I jotted them down in is now punctuated with red oil stains. As she warns, the sauce spatters and spits, angry and hot on the hob. But the resulting sweet confit of tinned tomatoes slow-cooked in oil and thinly sliced garlic was delicious every time. Don’t just take my word for it, though—if there’s one thing Johnson wants you to do after reading her book, it’s to draw outside the lines of your own favorite recipe.
I’ve been waiting with more eagerness than befits a 29-year-old for the Nice mathimatic 2023 shirt and I love this new season of Never Have I Ever to drop, and it’s finally here. The Netflix series—created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher—has long been a joy, centered on a hotheaded, delightfully rude Indian-American teenage girl named Devi living in the San Fernando Valley and trying to figure out how to date boys, deal with friend drama, and evade her strict mom without losing her mind. (Plus, it’s queer sometimes!) Let’s dive in and take a recap tour through the first episode of the show’s fourth and final season, shall we? Can I just say that this show’s depiction of teen sex (neither picture-perfect or dramatically traumatizing) is the best?
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