Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 19

Male friendships in crisis, Savannah Guthrie, missing restaurants, Recipe Corner, and lots of good news.

Dec 07, 2020

Hello, and welcome to Micah’s Read of the Week.

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This is a newsletter filled with things Micah Wiener finds interesting.

Check out the introduction post here and the entire archive of previous newsletters here.

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No game days. No bars. The pandemic is forcing some men to realize they need deeper friendships.

On this week’s Mind of Micah, we dive into this fascinating piece about how the pandemic has shined a light on male friendships.

For more than a decade, psychologists have written about the “friendship crisis” facing many men. One 2006 analysis published in the American Sociological Review found that while Americans in general have fewer friends outside the family than they used to, young, White, educated men have lost more friends than other groups.
Male friendships are often rooted in “shoulder-to-shoulder” interactions, such as watching a football game or playing video games, while women’s interactions are more face-to-face, such as grabbing a coffee or getting together for a glass of wine.
The moment feels heavier and so do the conversations. Some men said their friendships have begun to look more like those of their wives and girlfriends. For the first time in their lives, they’re going on walks with male friends just to catch up. They’re FaceTiming old college friends and checking in on neighbors — not only to talk about the NBA draft picks or their children’s soccer schedule — but to ask how they’re doing.

Subscribe to Mind of Micah and get this episode when it drops. Also, check out Back Door Cover and Too Much Dip. 🙏

How could you not like Savannah Guthrie?

“She’s front and center, critical to everything NBC News will be doing, hopefully for a long time to come,” said Noah Oppenheim, the president of the division.

Much of this NYT profile about the Today Show host centers on her townhall interview with President Trump before the election. That’s old news at this point. I found the importance of faith to Guthrie much more interesting.

“It’s probably one of the most exciting things to me,” said Ms. Guthrie, who attends a nondenominational church in Manhattan, while raising her children in both her Christian faith and in the Jewish traditions of her husband. “It’s far more interesting to me than anything else.
“I’m always so fundamentally aware of not being the center of the universe,” she continued. “Having a faith really helps you know your place in the world. And I really value that. And I find it endlessly fascinating. Believing in God, loving God, believing in a compassionate God, just absolutely spreads through everything I feel and the way I look at the world.”
She shares this outlook with her “Today” colleague Jenna Bush Hager, whose 2008 wedding she covered. After the death of former President George H.W. Bush, Ms. Bush Hager’s grandfather, Ms. Guthrie lent her a black dress for the service at the National Cathedral. They attend the same church, hang out together with their husbands. Their children are in and out of one another’s homes. Ms. Guthrie is the godmother to Ms. Bush Hager’s third child, Hal.
“We both talk a lot about faith and about, what holds us, what centers us, where our North Star is, how we want to raise our children,” Ms. Bush Hager said. “She and I both have had this tie. When things have happened in our lives, when I’ve lost my grandfather, having her next to me, sitting in the pew with our kids, there was something that very much comforted me and grounded me.”

Guthrie’s accent to the big chair on Today was a winding road, and it started with more than a bit of turmoil.

In her first role as co-host of show’s third hour, Ms. Guthrie quickly established the expected light, familial rapport with Al Roker and Natalie Morales. Meanwhile, she tried her best not to engage with the rumors regarding Ann Curry, whom NBC wanted to force out as co-host of its first two hours.
But on June 28, 2012, Ms. Curry, sobbing, told viewers that she “couldn’t carry the ball over the finish line,” as her colleagues, including her co-host Matt Lauer, tried to comfort her. That was a Thursday. More than a week later, Ms. Guthrie replaced her. There were no balloons. No welcome banners. This was it.

Guthrie was also in the center of the end of the Matt Lauer era at NBC News.

Then after more than five years sitting next to Mr. Lauer, Ms. Guthrie was woken up on the morning of Nov. 29, 2017 and told that she had to tell the world that his television career was effectively over. Trying, and failing, to control her anguish, at 7 a.m. she read the announcement that NBC had fired Mr. Lauer over allegations of sexual misconduct.
“That broke my heart,” she said. “That broke our hearts. That broke viewers’ hearts. And we all had to process it at the same time.”
Before walking downstairs to the set, she and Ms. Kotb had held hands in Ms. Guthrie’s dressing room. They prayed.

Quite a story. Through it all, Guthrie remains professional, and most of all, extremely likable.

“I’ve interviewed Tom Hanks five times now,” Ms. Guthrie said. “He calls me ‘Savvy.’ What are you talking about? I’m Savannah from Tucson. There’s no reason I should be here. I didn’t work any harder than anybody else. I’m just in on the joke. I know how lucky I am.”

Party of None: What I Miss About Restaurants

Pat Sharpe, veteran restaurant critic for Texas Monthly weighs in on something many of us are missing during this pandemic, restaurants and the people we visit them with.

Which brings me to the thing I miss most: my merry band of dining companions. Tacked to my bulletin board is a handful of Word document printouts labeled “Eaters,” one for each of the five major cities in Texas. Every dog-eared page holds anywhere from a handful to more than two dozen names. Most are my old friends; some are their old friends; all have been deputized for dining duty. In happier times I would email a few of them every couple of months: “Hey! I’m headed your way, and I’d love to see you! What are you doing Thursday night?” But I haven’t done that since spring. And, as it turns out, my friends are as wary as I am. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” one told me just before I canceled my March travel plans, “but right now we don’t want to eat with you.” My feelings weren’t hurt. I understood. But I miss them, and I miss just driving around, seeing what’s new, checking out the places I’ve been reading about, wondering about vacancies, spotting new construction. I miss being in the know.

Sharpe then explores the crisis that restaurants and their owners now face.

Another thing I miss: blissful ignorance. Before this all happened, I seldom thought about how the restaurant industry actually works. I had enough to do just eating the food and writing the review. Now I know all too well that there is a multitrillion-dollar cat’s cradle of connectivity that joins restaurants to farms, ranches, dairies, orchards, florists, airlines, hotels, conventions, fairs, and festivals. You undo one loop of the string, and the supply chain collapses in a heap on the floor.

Back to that feeling we all share: these are weird and shitty days.

I miss walking in without a care in the world, of sitting down to dinner without fiddling with a mask, freezing at the sound of a nearby cough, or worrying that my server is putting herself at risk because she needs the paycheck. I miss my blissful ignorance.

And the piece ends with some more thoughts we can all agree on.

The holiday season is about to be upon us, so let me make a wish for everyone—owners, chefs, servers, bussers, farmers, ranchers, grape pickers, winemakers, brewers, and distillers—in the restaurant industry’s extended family: May Santa bring us all good fortune, a flattened curve, and a superlative vaccine as soon as humanly possible. I want my old life back, and I’m sure everyone else does too.

🙏

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Recipe Corner

We’re making flour tortillas

Very few things in this world are as good as a fresh, homemade flour tortilla. I made a batch of these a few weeks ago for the first time. I was intimidated, but I shouldn’t have been. It was easy! And v rewarding. The only downside is that there was flour everywhere. A small price to pay.

bacon fat

2 tablespoons plus ½ teaspoon vegetable oil or lard or butter

1¼ cups whole milk, divided

2 teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoons kosher salt

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for surface

Bring oil, ¾ cup milk, and reserved 2 Tbsp. bacon fat to a simmer in a small saucepan (be careful not to boil); immediately remove from heat. Whisk baking powder, salt, and 3 cups flour in a medium bowl to combine. Pour in hot milk mixture and remaining ½ cup milk. Mix with your hands until a shaggy dough forms.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes. Wrap in plastic and let rest at room temperature 1 hour to relax dough.

Divide dough into 16 Ping-Pong–size balls (about 1½"). Working one at a time and keeping remaining balls covered with a kitchen towel, roll out on a lightly floured surface to 6" rounds.

Heat a comal, griddle, or a clean large cast-iron skillet over medium. Working in batches, cook tortillas, reducing heat if they are getting dark too quickly, until brown in spots on bottom sides and air bubbles form on surface, about 2 minutes. Poke large bubbles with a fork to release steam, flip tortillas, and cook until brown in spots on second sides, 1–2 minutes.

Check out these cookies I made

These were truly delightful cookies. Sally deFries claimed via text that they were the best cookies she’d ever had. They were pretty easy to make and the marshmallow toasting process was extremely satisfying.

S’mores Blossom Cookies

1 ¼ cups (6 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

½ cup (3 1/2 ounces) sugar

8 whole graham crackers, crushed into fine crumbs (1 cup)

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 large marshmallows, halved crosswise

24 Hershey's Chocolate Kisses, unwrapped

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in bowl.

Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter, sugar, and 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Reduce speed to low and slowly add flour mixture until just combined.

Place remaining 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs in shallow dish. Working with 1 tablespoon dough at a time, roll into 1 1/4-inch balls. Toss dough balls in graham cracker crumbs to coat. Space them evenly on prepared sheets, 12 per sheet. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until just set and beginning to crack on sides, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies cool on sheets for 5 minutes.

Adjust oven rack 10 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Place 1 marshmallow half, cut side down, in center of each cookie. Broil cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until marshmallows are deep golden brown, 30 to 45 seconds, rotating halfway through for even browning, if needed. Transfer sheet to wire rack and immediately place 1 Hershey’s Kiss in center of each marshmallow, pressing down gently. Repeat with remaining cookies, marshmallows, and Kisses. Let cookies cool completely before serving, about 1 hour.

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Let’s end with some good news

A dog was missing for weeks. Then it wandered into Walmart and found its owner working at the register.

June Rountree and her husband circled their neighborhood night after night looking for their beloved lost dog Abby.
Three weeks later, an unlikely and perhaps miraculous turn of events left them convinced Abby is either the luckiest or the smartest dog in town.
Rountree, a longtime cashier at Walmart, was busy working her regular shift at register No. 6 on Nov. 28.
She heard a commotion, then looked up and saw a dog inside the store over by the ice machine. People were trying to catch the dog as it ran around.
“I said, ‘It can’t be,’ ” said Rountree, who then watched staff members trail the dog as it darted through the aisles.
“I was like, ‘What in the world is happening?’ ” said Danielle Robinette, 42, a customer service associate at the Walmart. “I’m a huge animal lover, so I just followed her, and she ran up to register No. 6.”
It was Abby.

Come on!

“I called her name and she came to me,” Rountree said. “I bent over and hugged her. I completely lost it then. I couldn’t speak. I was in complete shock and just couldn’t believe it.”

According to a psych professor at ASU, this shouldn’t be a total surprise.

“Dogs wander off in the heat of the moment — whether they spot a squirrel or food. But they have a tremendous connection and powerful emotional bond with their people.”

To quote Rex Chapman, “dogs, bruh.”

Bam Adebayo bought his mom a house

Adebayo is a break-out star for the Miami Heat who recently signed a major contract. Then he did what everyone should do, he bought his mother a house.