That's What I'm Here For

It’s been a stormy week here in the middle of the country.

A strong band of storms swept through the Ohio Valley last Sunday night, and a fresh batch bore down on us again on Wednesday. I know there’s a lot of science to weather forecasting, but the conditions by mid-afternoon—81 degrees, muggy and windy—were such that even a rube like me could’ve told you something powerful was coming. I’ve lived in tornado country for most of my life, so I wasn’t too concerned, but we took our usual precautions—making sure our phones and flashlights were fully charged, tying down the patio furniture covers, and giving the dog a healthy dose of anti-anxiety medication—and settled in for a long night of watching the local news.

(You’re not a local anywhere if you don’t have a strongly-held preference on local meteorologists, and Marc Weinberg of WDRB has my sword.)

As the front chugged toward Louisville, my biggest concern wasn’t necessarily that we’d face a direct hit, but that the kids would wake up in the middle of things and be scared. Around midnight, the emergency warning sirens went off, and I clenched my teeth. A velocity couplet—I don’t know the proper terminology, but my weather-nerd brother was texting me detailed updates from a thousand miles away—was tracking across the county on a line a few miles south of us. Still, we held out on heading to the basement, weighing the risks of damaging weather (low, for the moment) against the risks of waking two soundly-sleeping children (extremely high).

Just as I pondered this, I heard feet hit the floor down the hall and begin padding our way, and I sighed.

What’s that sound?

—It’s just the sirens, buddy. It’s okay.

Can I cuddle with you guys?

—Of course.

It’s been a big year of growth for my oldest. Surely this’ll sound naive to anyone with a teenaged, college-aged or full-grown child, but fourth grade has been a jump. He’s not a little kid anymore; he’s got his own network of friends, his own inscrutably-generational slang, and his own strongly-held-and-strongly-voiced opinions on pretty much everything we say or do. It’s been hard to let go of the kid he used to be, and I embrace any flashes that remain.

Earlier this week, there was a bit of a media kerfluffle after singer Chappell Roan made an offhand comment about all the parents she knew being ‘miserable’. People got loud and weird about it, because if there’s two things the internet loves getting loud and weird about, it’s “other people’s opinions on parenting” and “Chappell Roan”.

(For the record: I enjoy her music quite a bit, I was ahead of the normie curve on recommending her, and I think people generally need to chill out and leave her alone.)

The thing is? I understand where she’s coming from.

We don’t make a great pitch for parenting.

It’s a hard sell for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it costs a ton of money to have kids in this country. The downsides are plainly visible to everyone, too—you can see the lost free time, the tired eyes, the greying hair, the crumb-strewn minivan. That lacking curb appeal doesn’t concern me, though, because, well… I’m not trying to make a sales pitch for parenting! There’s lots of reasons why someone would or would not choose to have kids, and they’re pretty much universally none of my damn business.

Personally, though? I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

In spite of the stresses, the annoyances, the things that I’ve had to give up, the late nights and early mornings and the fact that I’ll be seeing a Minecraft movie with them this weekend, all of that—there’s a sense that I’m finally good for something.

I can’t solve all the problems of the world, as much as I would like to. I can’t make our leaders compassionate or even rational. I can’t roll back the last decade of national degradations, can’t regain the sense that everything I once believed to be true about where I lived was smoke and mirrors. I can’t fight off my worries for the kids’ more-vulnerable classmates, can’t shake the feeling that I’m either fiddling while Rome burns or screaming into a void, powerless to stop our march to somewhere darker and crueler than I’d ever imagined.

I can’t stop these things any more than I can stop a tornado from barreling down on this—I can only hunker down and hope they pass, hope that the storm loses energy, hope that our house gets passed over.

But I can put something good into the world.

The tornado touched down eight miles south of our house, cutting through an area of mostly industrial and office-park buildings, doing some significant damage but sparing any loss of life. As far as these things could go, it was close to a best-case scenario—unless it was your industrial building, I suppose. My son had been half-snoozing on my shoulder for a half-hour, occasionally groggily asking for updates. By a little bit after 1am, we were in the clear, and I led him back to his own bed, reassuring him that the worst was over as I tucked him in.

Thanks for taking care of us tonight, Dad.

—Of course, buddy. That’s what I’m here for.

Friends, it’s Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

It’s been a long week, and I’m ready to coast into the weekend.

I hope you are, too!

Today, I explore maximalist ideas in pizza, then offer up a pair of delightfuls drink for this transitional season along with some fresh new music, a thoughtful new book, a show that’s better than watching YouTube, and more!

It’s still raining, but you can stand under my—well, you get the idea.

We’re PuckMaxxing

I didn’t use my smoker as much as I should have last year, and I’ve been trying to rectify that this spring. I smoked a pork butt a couple weeks ago, and this past weekend, I threw a couple of spatchcocked chickens on—a much less time-consuming endeavor than the pork, but a tasty one nonetheless.

I employed that delicious smoked chicken in a number of meals over the week—a chicken-and-broccoli pasta and tacos among them—but what I really wanted to do was to put some of it on a silly pizza.

What do I mean by “silly”?

I mean the kind of pizza that has a bunch of different stuff on it, maybe even one thing too many. A pizza with toppings that aren’t really exotic but kinda sound like it when you put them all on a pizza. A “California” pizza, in the way we once classified these things. I’m channeling 1980s Wolfgang Puck, is what I’m saying. I’m PuckMaxxing.