The Amazing Race
We're past the point of embarrassment in this newsletter. I spent an entire issue telling you to watch Smash, and I stand by that (especially in quarantine)! So I'm just going to come right out and admit that until a few weeks ago, I had never seen an episode of The Amazing Race. But this newsletter isn't about shaming our pop culture pasts!! It's about celebrating that we've come to the party at all. So if you, like me, have been snoozing on the past 31 seasons (31!!!!), now is the perfect time to get started. The show follows teams of two as they race across the globe and complete challenges. The last team standing gets one million dollars. Something about the simple premise mixed with wanderlust, tricky travel logistics, competition and early 2000s technology is just what our household needed. Instead of starting from the very beginning, we've been Googling the best seasons and watching from there! Season seven was first up and we instantly fell in love. The seventh installment premiered in 2005 and features Survivor celebrities Boston Rob & Amber, who I very quickly became obsessed with (I've only ever seen one full season of Survivor, and I may start tackling that next!). Their tactics are controversial, but something about Boston Rob's mob boss mentality and whip smart game play really took the show up a notch. My other favorites from the season include the lovable Meredith and Gretchen, married retirees who are used to watching the show on TV and keep marveling at how happy they are to be playing the game. It's ADORABLE. Now, we're skipping ahead to season 21, where my current favorite team is again made up of Survivor alums: twins Natalie and Nadiya. I really need to watch Survivor...
A couple more recommendations for the week:
Mindy Kaling is back at it: I'm not going to lie. I've been a little disappointed that streaming services have not bumped up their release dates given the circumstances. Fortunately, Netflix already had Mindy Kaling's new series Never Have I Ever ready to go, and I burned through the first handful of episodes in one night. It's clever, funny, quirky, touching and a must-watch!
30 seconds of this White Collar reunion: The cast of the USA show reunited on the Stars in the House YouTube channel to reminisce and drop hints about a potential revival. But THE BEST part takes place at 01:20:41, when host Seth Rudetsky begs Matt Bomer to sing a few bars from It Only Takes a Moment from Hello Dolly and after some hesitation... WOW I was blown away.
THE BIG LASAGNA: On Sunday, Samin Nosrat hosted a lasagna party via The New York Times Instagram to walk viewers through her recipe. My mom and I attempted the recipe on Monday and were absolutely blown away. It was DELICIOUS. It took some work (and we even used store-bought noodles) and a couple of frantic moments, but the end result was absolute perfection (and leftovers on day two were even better)!
