PicoBlog

I feel pretty strongly that none of us need any more things. I love having things. I love books and hand-painted ceramics and beautifully made shoes. I love expensive candles and cashmere scarves. The truth is that I love to shop. I find that I can usually cure that craving by shopping for food. Italian product packaging is beautiful and/or amusing. A trip to the deli counter or the bakery means coming home with a collection of beautiful individually paper-wrapped items sometimes even tied up with a length of ribbon.

I ragged on the Instant Pot for years. Why does everything have to be done so quickly? Can’t you just let something simmer? Who has the counter space? But I recently caved and, I have to admit, I get the hype. It’s a cool and useful machine! Do I think everyone NEEDS one? Absolutely not. Do I think it’s handy? Absolutely. Do I feel like I’m many years behind on a trend?

Passover begins tonight and I wanted to share two of my favorite recipes for the holiday (they’re also great if you don’t celebrate Passover!). The first is a side dish, Charoset Quinoa, which has all the flavors of charoset, the mixture of apples, wine, and nuts that is a traditional part of the Seder plate. I love it because you can serve it at room temperature, which means you can absolutely make it in advance.

Buried deep inside my notes app is a list of popular quotes. It hasn’t been updated in a while. I hope to have more for my collection after you read this. Currently, there are 30. They range from spiritual to inspirational to simple reminders. I like looking at them occasionally and adding new phrases I come across that speak to me. I find them to be uplifting. Someday, I might post them creatively around my house.

This recipe is adapted from a 1972 cultural revolution era cookbook, and it’s my favorite Sichuan hotpot. If you’re familiar with Sichuan hotpot today, you probably know it mostly as… an eating experience with a certain degree of intensity. A cauldron of bubbling spice. A haze of flavor and pain clouded by steam, baijiu liquor, and the numbingness of Sichuan peppercorn. The type of meal where young dudes one up eachother based on how spicy they like their pot; the sort of meal that the late Anthony Bourdain characterized as a gastronomical SM session.

Pat Carroll died a few weeks ago, and as soon as I found out, I was four years old again. The Little Mermaid was the first movie I saw in theaters. At least, it’s the first movie I remember seeing in theaters. It left a very big impression on me, as it probably did for most kids born in the late 1980s. I watched a clip from it recently and was shocked by how much I still remember it, beat by beat.

Growing up in Jamaica, I never really understood the notion of Jamaica being a Third World country. When I left for America in 2015 for college, I remember hearing that I was referred to as a 'minority' in America. Hearing this made me feel inferior, but I did not see myself as inferior while growing up in Jamaica. Though we had our issues with colorism and social class prejudices, I had never felt as though I was being systematically oppressed—not like American blacks expressed, at least.

This four-part essay is an updated and extended version of a piece first published on my blog back in 2014, itself prompted by a popular talk I gave at Bristol Comic Expo the same year. I submitted my first script to 2000 AD knocking on twenty years ago. Back then the legendary British sci-fi anthology was your most viable option if you were unfortunate enough to be living in Britain and deluded enough to want to work in newsstand comics.

Last week, I wrote about what to wear to my grandfather’s funeral. On Saturday, 90 of Charles William Shackelford’s family and friends gathered in southern California to celebrate his life. Here is the eulogy I gave for my beloved Grandpa Chuck at his memorial. In, 2019, I asked my grandfather to tell me the story of his life. Here’s what he said: “Baby of the family. Youngest of six boys and two girls.