Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 97
Micah's great week, The story behind the PGA Championship meltdown, a terrible New York Post opinion piece, the real prize of Top Chef, Recipe Corner, and more.
Hello, and welcome to Micah’s Read of the Week. Please tap the heart button above if you enjoy the newsletter, and share it with a friend.
This is a newsletter filled with things Micah Wiener finds interesting.
Check out the archive of previous newsletters here.
Please, subscribe and share with a friend.
I had a great week
I made my last rent payment last week. It was an incredible feeling.
We close June 14th on the home we’ve been building since last year. It’s exciting to be moving to a new neighborhood in a home that is our own. But the most exciting thing is that we’ve already hit a winning lottery ticket. We’re moving into a home with a significant amount of equity before we’ve made our first payment. Homeownership is the fastest way to wealth. PERIOD.
According to the Federal Reserve, the average American homeowner has a net worth 40 times greater than the average renter. We got in the game, and we’ve already won before we’ve moved in.
There are some that don’t believe the double-digit appreciation we’ve seen in recent years will continue. Perhaps not. But I’m here to tell you, there is no housing bubble. Especially not in Texas or the rest of the Sun Belt.
Between housing shortages, demographic changes, and remote work mobility, this market will not crash.
When was the last time your family sat around the table for a holiday or birthday? Conversations around real estate always sound the same in my family: “I should have bought that when I had a chance,” or “should have never sold,” or “I wish I had the money now.”
Don’t hesitate. Get in the game now. I want to help.
I am a Certified Mortgage Advisor and a former real estate agent. And soon, I’ll be a homeowner. I want everyone to feel what I felt last week.
Start today. Visit micahwiener.com to schedule a risk-free home buying consultation.
Thanks,
M
Mito Pereira’s heartbreaking PGA finish doesn’t tell the full story
We’re now a couple of weeks past the PGA Championship. Justin Thomas won. But the story was Mito Pereira, an unknown Chilean rookie who took a lead to the final hole, but made double bogey and lost $1.83M and the title Major Champion.
Golf.com’s Dyan Dethier was lucky enough to shadow Pereira from Monday through the finish Sunday. His piece is riveting.
We’ll start after the finish of his tournament.
Antonia greets him behind the green; they share a hug, wordless. What can you say in that moment? Niemann swoops in next with an embrace of his own. Pereira looks at the rest of his friends. He winces. Ouch.
He looks visibly hurt as he signs his scorecard. He isn’t angry. He isn’t rude. He doesn’t throw anything. He just looks at his card, and at the television. His entire body just — sags.
A crowd awaits him outside the locker room: Niemann, Munoz, Ancer. Antonia. His team, his friends, his family. He pitches up for a moment. As they perch on golf carts, hats backward, I get the sense I’m looking at a Little League team coming off a loss. They’re bummed out. They’re cracking somber jokes. They’re in this together. It’s good to have friends like these for moments like these.
Inside the locker room, I confess to needing a translator. What did your friends tell you? He pauses.
“Just that they’re sad,” he said. “And that they wanted it for me.”
He starts to talk. To get it all out. “I should have like, played it left,” he says, talking about the tee shot on 18, tracing with his hands the ball flight that would have kept him high and dry. “I hit it bad, but I should have played it left.”
I can see him starting to replay the rest of the round in his head, shot by shot, trying to make sense of it. Searching for one more stroke, somewhere, to get back.
He packs his things, shuts his locker, wanders back toward the front. He hands out a couple leftover Ping hats to the staff, then pauses at the exit to make sure his agent has cash for tips. Then he steps out the front door.
It’s empty now, the entire area by the first tee. The crowd has migrated to No. 17, where they’re watching Thomas birdie the second playoff hole. Distant applause is a cruel reminder that there’s a golf tournament still going.
Golf is a cruel game.
Listen up, New York — Florida sucks, and you’ll all be back in five years
This column stinks, baby. New York tabloid opinion writers really are the worst and this piece from the New York Post is absolute trash in the most-enjoyable way.
As The Post reported, a record 61,728 New York state residents fled to the Sunshine State last year, a number likely to rise in 2022. Lower taxes! Schools without masks! No shoebox-size apartments that cost more to rent than it took to build Hudson Yards!
You’ll all be sorry. As Jason Mudrick, head of Madison Avenue-based Mudrick Capital Management, put it, “The main problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida.”
Ok. So we’re not off to a terrible start. Nobody likes Florida! It stinks. I can get behind this message.
Chattering-class media slobs gush over South Florida after booze-fueled junkets to overhyped food and art festivals or after scoring free meals at whichever trendy Manhattan restaurant was the latest to open a satellite there.
But real life in the land of palm trees, manatees and badly mixed mojitos is a different story.
Compared with New Yorkers’ frenetic pace, people move slowly, if at all — even in supposedly dynamic Miami Beach.
Ok. So maybe folks in Florida move a little slower than New Yorkers. Doesn’t everybody? I wonder what evidence our columnist will point towards to back up his claims.
A male model was busted in March after he masturbated for all to see at a Starbucks on Collins Avenue and 29th Street. I’ve been to that Starbucks. The perp likely was just trying to pass the time waiting for bored baristas, who once took 20 minutes to make my latte, to complete his order.
Huh?
Big Apple apartment dwellers worry that a new building will block their river or park views. In South Florida, a new high-rise can wipe out the entire ocean. It happened to a friend of mine who believed the vista he enjoyed from the tip of South Beach was safe — until a monstrous skyscraper somehow rose on a “protected” sliver of land.
As for supposedly ubiquitous sunshine — my friends spend much of their time plotting escapes from rainy summers when it’s “like living inside a wet sock” and from the six months every year under hurricane watch.
Nothing like building an argument based on second-hand accounts from nameless “friends” of the author. Let’s continue with more hot takes.
Only in Florida must you go north to go south. For the blue-state crowd downstate, where nary a Southern accent is to be heard, life’s an Upper West Side or brownstone Brooklyn wine-and-cheese party. “Arrest Trump” is on many a tongue. In the state’s swampy, red-state midsection and panhandle, they’d happily tune in to a Confederacy Network if one were to spring up.
And everywhere, the wild kingdom rules.
How wild, you may be asking? Jurassic Park-wild, baby!
A Palm Coast woman claimed she saw a baby dinosaur in her backyard last year and posted a video to “prove” it. A recent genius visitor to the Jacksonville Zoo had his wrist bloodied when he stuck his arm into the jaguar cage. A resident of central-state Odessa was confronted by an 8-foot-long alligator on his doorstep a few weeks ago.
The author has made it this far. Time to bring it home:
The state’s 1.3 million gators, it should be noted, are only officially considered a “nuisance” if they’re at least 4 feet long. If you move to Florida, bring a tape measure — and check your brain at the airport.
How exactly would one “check your brain”? Nevermind. This piece stinks.
The Real Prize of Top Chef
How the Bravo reality show redefined fame and success for professional chefs
I love Top Chef. This season was delightful and the best chef won. It’s a great show that always delivers. And it’s been delivering a long time! But what is the goal of this show in 2022? By what metric should one measure the impact of Top Chef?
By the show’s own logic, the most salient metric should be the number of restaurants opened by Top Chef alumni, which the show posits as the ultimate achievement for a chef. An acclaimed, award-winning restaurant is the grand prize.
But Top Chef did change something bigger than restaurants. It changed what it means to be a successful chef in America by unmooring chefs from restaurants. Hitherto, restaurants had long been the prized underlying asset of chefdom. It was the foundation on which all other fame and renown was built. As late as 2012, this was the goal.
But in 2022, that’s no longer the case. The goal is to escape the kitchen.
After all, what kind of prize is a labor-intensive, stressful, life-and-money leeching, overhead-heavy endeavor with a terrible success rate, razor-thin margins, and ever-increasing costs?
No wonder chefs, winning and nonwinning alike, have used the platforms afforded them by Top Chef to, well, build additional platforms. Many have become authors. Others have gone down the direct-to-consumer route with hot sauces and lager. Melissa King, one of the most talented and compelling contestants, now curates culinary experiences and brand collaborations. A surprising number of chefs have been sucked into the television world themselves. The most successful of these have become hosts. Carla Hall, for instance, or Kristen Kish, who hosted 36 Hours on the Travel Channel and on TruTV. Others have become serial contestants. Michael Voltaggio got his own show (Breaking Borders), and after that ended, he became a regular on myriad shows, including Guy’s Grocery Games. In recent seasons, Top Chef has started to devour its own young, as alumni are summoned to appear again on Top Chef to judge and crown new Top Chefs. And, of course, this platform leads to brand collaborations and sponsorship deals, the revenue from which outstrips the margins of even a successful restaurant with far less work.
Recipe Corner
Poached Salmon and Napa Slaw With Citrus-Miso Dressing
FOR THE SALMON
1 lemon, halved
Four (6-ounce) center-cut salmon filets
FOR THE DRESSING
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice, plus lime wedges for serving
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons white miso
2 large scallions, white and light green parts coarsely chopped, and dark green parts thinly sliced and reserved for garnish
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
Pinch ground white pepper
1/4 cup mayonnaise
FOR THE SLAW
4 cups lightly packed thinly sliced napa cabbage (about 1/2 small head)
1 medium carrot, grated on the large holes of a box grater (about 2/3 cup)
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion (half-moons)
Make the salmon: In a deep skillet with a lid, add enough water to fill about three-quarters of the way and bring it to a low boil over medium-high heat, adjusting the heat as necessary. Fill a kettle with a couple of cups of water and bring to a boil to add later, if needed. Squeeze the lemon into the water in the skillet, then place the fish skin-side down in the pan. Add more boiling water from the kettle, if needed, to submerge the fish. Return to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook, adjusting the heat to maintain a low simmer until the fish reaches an internal temperature of 125 degrees, 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of fillets. Transfer the salmon to a large plate and let rest for 5 minutes. Cover and refrigerate until completely chilled, at least 4 hours. Before serving, flip the fish over and remove the skin and any brown flesh underneath it.
Make the dressing: In a blender, combine the lime juice, orange juice, miso, the white and light green parts of the scallions, the honey, salt and pepper into a blender and blend until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides of the blender with a spatula as needed. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and whisk in the mayonnaise until combined. You should get about 1/2 cup. (If you have a large blender that requires more volume to work properly, double the dressing recipe.)
Make the slaw: In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage, carrot, red onion and about half of the citrus miso dressing until combined.
To serve, divide the slaw among four serving plates, top each with a piece of salmon, drizzle the fish with the remaining dressing and garnish with the reserved scallion greens. Serve with a wedge or two of lime.
Chewy Date and Dark Chocolate Cookies
Here’s a good way to use up some of that tahini you bought for last week’s salad.
2¼ cups (281 g) all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. Diamond Crystal or ½ tsp. Morton kosher salt
2 large eggs
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup well-mixed tahini
2 tsp. vanilla extract
¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
¾ cup (150 g) light brown sugar
9 Medjool dates, pitted, 5 chopped, 4 quartered lengthwise
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate (70% cacao), chopped, divided
Flaky sea salt
Whisk flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt in a medium bowl.
Using an electric mixer, beat eggs, oil, tahini, and vanilla in a large bowl on medium speed until creamy and emulsified, about 2 minutes. Beat in granulated sugar and brown sugar until combined, about 45 seconds. Reduce speed to low and beat in dry ingredients, chopped dates, and three quarters of chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, just until combined, about 30 seconds. Cover dough and chill at least 3 hours and up to 12 hours.
Place a rack in middle of oven; preheat to 375°. Using a #10 cookie scoop (about 6 Tbsp.), portion out dough onto 2 parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 3" apart. Top with remaining chocolate and press gently to adhere. Gently press 1 date quarter into top of each cookie. Sprinkle with sea salt.
Working with one baking sheet at a time, bake cookies until golden brown around the edges, 13–15 minutes. Let cookies cool 5 minutes on baking sheets, then transfer to wire racks and let cool completely.
Did Micah practice yoga this weekend?
Yes. 60 minutes at Meanwhile Brewing Sunday with Hannah.
That’s 21 in-person weekend classes in 22 weeks this year. Namaste.
More Micah
Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip
Twitter: @micahwiener & @producermicah (Why two twitters? It’s a long story)
Mortgage Inquiries: savewithmicah.com
Instagram: @micahwiener
LinkedIn: @micahwiener
TikTok: @mortgagemicah
Peloton: #badboysofpelly @micahwiener
Email: micahwiener@me.com
NMLS #2090158, equal housing lender.