Things That Made Me Less Cranky: October 2024 Edition

Starting to feel like I'm bicoastal, with one coast being Lima

Welcome to my monthly list of recommendations. It is made up of completely random things/events/moments that made me less of a raging, bitter, hag despite the dumpster fire that is our world. It also includes food-centric suggestions. Enjoy!

Idiosyncratic List of What Made Me Less Cranky

• Ballots that travel across continents—from New York to Lima to Brooklyn. Amazed it reached me in Peru to begin with! Happy that I got to drop it in a NYC mailbox because of an impromptu trip and won’t be wracked with anxiety over whether it made it out of the Peruvian post office.

• Flying for friends’ semi-impromptu weddings. I did not cheat death to the stay at home when people get married, come on now.

• Saying yes to romantic delusions from time to time.

• Fake Lima spring, when the sun graces us with its presence for about two hours before retreating to its cloud cave of despair.

• Learning more about your own country. Especially the history you never learned in school.

• The extremely online collective finally turning on LIB’s Ramses. Guys, we’re never going to survive fascism if we can’t even notice the enemy within LOL.

• In Peru, we serve tiny, finger sandwiches at kids’ birthday parties and they are the best damn thing your tastebuds will ever experience.

• How toddlers walk around with their hands up, as if they had just been ordered to get out of their cars for drunk driving.

• Tarot card readers by Latin American brujas. My apologies to all others, but they are other level.

• Meeting that friends all your mutual friends say you’ll get along with.

• Spanish-language food publications that don’t read like a press release, like 7 Caníbales and El Trinche.

• Lunches with dads where they tell you unhinged behind-the-scenes shit about their careers.

• The following Lima boutiques: Isidra, Querido Hábito, Minimal, Origen.San, WISQA, El Closet de Mi Hermana, and Warmi Chic.

• Committing to your dreams for the future, even if they are not the path most people carve for themselves.

• Nephews dressed up as anime characters, specifically Pikachu and Goku.

• Knowing when to end a good thing so it can remain a good thing.

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Restaurant of the Month: Colonia Verde, Brooklyn

My friend had her wedding dinner here so it is a restaurant that is imbued with great memories! Apart from that, I was impressed with their ceviche tostada and its generous use of leche de tigre, making this Peruvian nod with approval.

Bar of the Month: Rodeo, Brooklyn

Lima is a party town. Lima might have one of the most exciting bar scenes in the Southern Hemisphere. Lima has access to small-batch pisco brands, matacuy, Andean gin, and a host of other delightful spirits. LIMA IS ALSO LOUD. I miss a bar where you can sit, sip, and chat without hearing the frenetic sounds of the Venga Bus Is Coming honking in your ears. If you know of one in Lima, please slide into my DMs and (quietly) tell me where to go. For that reason, sitting at Rodeo with a few glasses of wine to have some very meaningful conversations with my companion felt like a treat.

Best Thing I Ate: Pan de Guayaba at Demo, Lima

There are two people I would follow till the ends of the Earth: Marissa’s mom in Love Is Blind and chef Juan Luis Martínez. This time, I’m enamored with this guava and goat-cheese filled pastry, his take on Venezuela’s pan de guayaba, where he swaps the traditional bread for croissant-type dough.

Best Thing I Drank: MiMo Quebranta Blanc de Gris 2024

Some very nice gentlemen at Chancay 850 offered me a glass of this Peruvian wine, a passion project from iconic pisco producer Pepe Moquillaza and Argentinian enologist Matías Michelini. The duo have been crafting natural wines made from local grapes and really pushing to elevate Peru’s reputation in the wine world. This was a marvelous revelation—crisp, saline and with no traces of the honeysuckle sweetness that’s the downfall of so many Peruvian white wines.

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The Month in Newsletters

Missed an issue? I got you!

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November & December Cranky Writing “Hour”

Paid subscribers get access to the weekly Cranky Writing “Hour”, a 40-minute virtual write-in. For the rest of the year, these will be on Monday at 5 pm CT/6pm ET. I’ll send out exact dates with a link in a separate email—there’s one Monday I’m skipping in November because of travel and I’m officially on break from Monday, Dec. 23-Sunday, January 6.

Hope to see you there!

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Help Me Reach 1K!

I am so grateful to all my readers and subscribers for supporting my work! I am also about 200 (free) subscribers shy of hitting 1K. I’d love to hit that milestone before the end of the year.

Why? I put a lot of thought into my newsletters and think it can serve as inspiration or a useful guide to others in my position—freelancing, nomading, shunning standard versions of adulthood.

Substack is a fantastic platform for voices that have no place in traditional media but it has many of the same issues of traditional media: it’s overly white, overly skews Brooklyn, overly US-centric, overly Influencer-y. And now with renowned media members starting newsletters left and right, it’s making it harder for people like me to even be seen. Numbers help.

Plus, I like a big round figure.

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