PicoBlog

‘I tell you where you should go, Suzanne — Chechnya. It's fantastic. You can smoke everywhere there. You can smoke in an operating theatre in Chechnya.’ I will never forget the great Dame Ann Leslie, who has died aged 82, telling me that. We were somewhere in Soho in a fug of cigarettes; later we ended up in a leather bar. Ann said she would fit in fine there, as her “Hendon flash” took her everywhere.

So you’ve got a bottle of Bénédictine, and you’ve made a Bobby Burns and a Vieux Carré and a Good Fellow. What else are you going to do with it?  The short answer: Sweeten everything.  Okay — not literally, you know, everything, everything. But a lot of different drinks with a lot of different spirits and bitters.  In “The Case for Bénédictine,” I made two primary arguments: Bénédictine serves as a general-use, shelf-stable, spiced sweetener for cocktails.

#TGIF everyone! Aren’t Fridays the best? Finally, it’s time to get out and rid your body of all the stress it’s built up over the week. It’s time to dance, drink, rage, rave or whatever tickles your fancy. Me personally, I prefer to get ready at home with a few friends, then a house party followed by a place to rave and rage and just really let loose (all in the highest heels I can find, of course) 🤪

☀️ Good Morning: It’s always a good day when the Mets beat the Yankees, no matter which date it is on the calendar. Tylor Megill continues to look sharp. Max Kranick’s roster flexibility. Justin Verlander’s impact on the Mets’ 2025 payroll. A new episode of the Mets Fix podcast. ☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix! The tall, right-hander added three more scoreless innings to his spring ledger on Tuesday, striking out six (!

You know how sometimes when you’re eating a salty snack, you find yourself wondering, “Wow… would this make a great cake flavor?” Just me? Ok. I guess my brain is broken in that way so that yours doesn't have to be.  Honey-roasted peanuts are a perfect sweet and salty balance, so the flavor needed for a good snack cake is already there. It was the texture I had to figure out.

Well, how much time do you have? This week is packed like a tin of sardines with transits and a rather demanding full moon, which, while it does have some clarifying, motivational upsides, may also assault us with unexpected emotional chasms and breakthroughs. In fact, “motivating clarity and emotional chasms” might be the best phrase to describe the axis tension between Virgo and Pisces, mutable, or ‘twin-bodied’ signs that play oppositional tug of war in the Ancient Greek zodiacal wheel.

UPDATE, JUNE 2023: National Park Service contractors have removed the last pieces of the wreckage from the plane crash near Waterrock Knob. More info via nps.gov. We’re a little tense here in South Carolina as Hurricane Ian turns in our direction. I have a new post in the works that I will hold onto for next week, but in the meantime I’m unlocking a subscriber-only post that originally ran on July 11.

Hello! and so, here is a quick recipe for a very pleasing plate of spaghetti that I ate quite happily to myself just yesterday in between cleaning artichokes, making chocolate cake and brining a chook. It’s a sauce that can be quickly thrown together using the same principles to that of a pesto; garlic, herb, nut, olive oil, parmesan, lemon rind, lemon juice, salt, pepper. You can play around however you like.

In September this year the structures long referred to as the Domus Tiberiana reopened to the public for the first time since 1970. They once formed a spectacular facade overlooking the Roman Forum, straddling an existing Roman road, and in fact dating not to the reign of Tiberius (as was believed when it was given the name, which stuck) but instead to the reigns of Nero, Domitian, and Hadrian. It’s a fabulously intriguing space, and offers a coherent and exciting connexion between the Palatine Hill and the Forum.