Honey, Please, it's Spooky Season All-Year Now

Finally. FINALLY! It’s fall. People love to call it Spooky Season, but this entire stinking year has been terrifying, so that nickname has lost its impact for me and I’m skipping it. But autumn, to me, is like the Friday of the year. Everything from here on out, is about celebration. I’m planning cozy outfits, I’m planning cozy meals. I’m putting up my 12 foot skeleton to hand out candy, closely followed by cooking up a 12 pound Turkey skeleton (inside some meat), then we’re gonna chase it all with Santa squeezing his size 12+ skeleton down our chimney. And we’re not gonna stop being fucking joyful until January 1st, 2024, which, to me, is like the Monday of the year. Which must be why New Year’s Eve gives me the Sunday scaries? IS THIS ALL MAKING SENSE TO YOU THE WAY IT DOES TO ME???

I’m determined to have a good holiday season because last year my mom totally ruined Christmas by dying three days before. Mom, if they have Substack wherever you are, I’m sorry, but you did! Well, this is not true. After she died, but before Christmas, we got cards she had put in the mail probably the day before, with gift checks inside. The checks, because of estate probate rules, were uncash-able, but nobody cared because what she wrote in the cards were final words to us all which were worth more than anything else she could have given us. But, I’m a fucking holiday-holic, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I also mourned the lack of festivity that our last year ended on for obvious reasons.

Whether you personally celebrate Christian holidays, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Pagan or any other system of belief, or even if you don’t celebrate holidays at all, but see this is a cozy time where you just want to celebrate yourself, I am very passionate about helping all of us figure out how to do it with as little stress and mess as possible, to maximize the joyeux!

I’ve already started doing some gift shopping in order to avoid a desperate December 24th shopping mall breakdown. I know, I know. There is no ethical consumption under late stage capitalism. So, that being acknowledged, and trusting you to make your own thoughtful decisions about the purchases you make, I do want to recommend some kind of cash back shopping program if you’re gonna buy some things. My fave is Rakuten (formerly eBates), and I know a lot of you already use it and love it, while a lot of you don’t get it and I get that! I didn’t get it at first either, but I’ve been participating for years now and last year, I saved a couple hundred bucks back on my purchases for the year. And it’s not just for gifts either! It pleases me no-end to buy toilet paper and get money sent back to me. Right now, a bunch of Rakuten-friendly stores are offering 10% cash back. It’s like a coupon, for almost everywhere. If you want to try it out, here’s a little link. If you sign up and use it, you get a cash bonus, and I get a bonus. If that happens, I’ll use my bonusii to benefit a striking working actor this holiday season. Sound good?

Ok, we’ll talk more about gifts and gift ideas later. We have *some* days before crunch time and I don’t want to rile up the Grinches who hate that holiday decorations appear in stores too soon before the actual holiday. It’s called planning, but whatever, we all have to channel our rage somewhere, I guess!

Now is the time, however, where we can do a few things to prep our environs for welcoming guests or even just for cooking a bunch of food to enjoy ourselves without feeling like we have to put CAUTION tape across the entrance to our kitchens as they become man-made disasters of our own doing.

So, here’s my *three little things* I am prepped with to handle the Friday/Saturday/Sunday of the year with aplomb and gritty get-real grace.

1. I’ll admit it. I love, love, love regulating my emotions by allowing myself to softly tumble down a TikTok hole of a faceless homemaker with an excellent manicure restocking her family’s refrigerator with life-sustaining snacks all housed in very expensive and aesthetically pleasing kitchen and pantry containers. I will further admit that I have purchased many, many of those name brand containers in glass, silicone, acrylic and “indestructible” polyethylene and guess what? They’re all so desctructible. The tabs snap off the tops rendering them unsealable. The glass shatters. The plastic stains and peels. And while I love a colorful set of nesting storage pieces, those are only satisfying if your family goes along with your plan to always perfectly stack the containers in their original size order inside each other with their accompanying tops, also in size order, tucked beneath the stack. Here’s the thing. I live with some really good, smart guys who just want to make me happy, and even they can’t get themselves to do it. Furthermore, once filled, you’re stacking them into a pyramid in your fridge that is not only precariously balanced, it’s a waste of space and looks kinda shitty. Finally, all of us have known the pain of trying to track down a Tupperware you let your friend bring leftovers home in despite how much it pained you to break up your set. How many relationships have been destroyed by someone saying they can’t find the Rubbermaid container they borrowed when you just know it’s been stashed in their container cabinet somewhere, just like all the rando Rubbermaids you have borrowed from friends and claimed you could not find when they asked for them back. That ends this year, okay?

Just get these. They’re marketed as “Meal Prep” containers now, but they are better known as takeout containers. They come in different sizes, but I recommend choosing one or two sizes that you’d use most often. Within each size, they stack neatly and compactly within your container storage cabinet or drawer, and all the tops will always match all the bottoms. I like the rectangular ones because my refrigerator is also a rectangle, and you can pile up a whole bunch of them without wasting any space or feeling like you’re about to lose a devastating game of Jenga. If you don’t mind round things in your fridge, get some round ones! And these soup containers are so useful it’s what the professional actors portraying professional chefs drink out of on The Bear! If it’s good enough for Carmy’s lips, I think it’s good enough for all of us. We run ours through the dishwasher with nary a problem and have reused them hundreds of times. They don’t peel or stain, but if one should happen to break or get too raggedy, you can toss it in the recycling without mourning the loss of your investment too much. And, if you hand off some leftovers to a friend in one and it never comes back, it’s okay. It won’t fuck up your set and you can replace it the next time you order in Chinese food while easily remaining friends with everyone. LINKS IN COMMENTS!

P.S. I know we have complicated feelings about plastic, especially with respect to the environment and food. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’m shitting an entire credit card’s worth of plastic every week. But, these are actually lasting me much longer and being recycled at the end of their lives much more easily than more expensive options I have repeatedly tried. However, if you are absolutely against owning these materials, there are options made of heavy-duty foil, kraft board, even sugarcane that, while they may not be AS reusable, can serve a similar function while being more consciously disposable and even compostable. Check ‘em out!

P.P.S. I have started bringing these to parties of close friends as my hostess gift after numerous times of staying after a soiree to help clean up and discovering they don’t own nearly enough containers to pack up all the leftover food. Am I a genius or trashy? That’s for you to decide. But anyone can bring a mid-priced bottle of wine, y’know?

2. I am an absolute sucker for a cute kitchen towel. Especially seasonal ones that come in expensive sets of two at your local gift shoperie! And as Whitney Houston sang…nothing, nothing, NOTHING…pisses me off more than when someone I may or may not live with, just mops up a hot cocoa spill with a little Christmas dog in a sweater towel I purchased for $20 at Williams Sonoma with the express intent to have it become a family heirloom, pristine and passed down to all future generations. Have they no respect??? But also, what do *I* expect. Where I see adorable be-sweatered dogs, they just see an absorbent towel.

Buy these. In bulk. They’re STILL hella cute. But you can brutally sanitize them in the laundry and they come back for more. We bought a single pack of these 5 years ago and some are just now looking shabby enough that I’m ready to replace those with a fresh batch and relegate the old ones to the rag pile, which can still be kept clean and useful for things like hot-chocolate sopping when the occasion arises.

Save your sweet themed towels and save yourself some heartache by putting these in your kitchen and keeping your precious future family heirlooms under lock and key where only you can look at or touch them so they stay nice. LINK IN COMMENTS!

3. I know I was bitching about nesting storage containers earlier, and I think my reasoning is sound. However, there is one nesting item in my kitchen that is absolutely indispensable at this time, or any time, of the year. The nesting stainless steel mixing bowl set.

It’s my observation that most average humans grossly underestimate the number of bowls they will need to have in order to prepare a feast, while also continually underestimating the *size* of the bowl they will need when preparing treats. This bunch of bowls has got you covered for all of that and more. Again, they’re a commercial kitchen staple that not many people have in their homes and I’m here to tell ya, that’s a huge mistake!

Use a large one to toss a family dinner salad. Use a medium one to toss a lunch salad and eat right out of it like an animal! They make versions with lids if you want to store something in your fridge inside them, but ours are lidless and I have never regretted that. You can use your hand mixer with them, or an immersion blender. You can use them to marinate and mix and feed your pets or to corral garbage scraps when you’re cooking or to put soapy water in to clean the bathroom, and they wash up really easily and never look a day older than brand new. They even make great puke bowls, that you can then decide to never use for anything else, or continue to cook with much to the horror of many people. (Remember when the great puke bowl debate was raging online that time, LOL?) It is no exaggeration when I tell you my household uses at least 3 out of the entire set every single day for something or other. They are, by far, one of the most useful and used items in our kitchen. And they only take up the same space as one large bowl in your kitchen. They are a holy grail item, as far as I’m concerned and they don’t cost a lot for how much they will change your life. LINK IN COMMENTS!

Ok, I did say three little things but I do have a couple of bonus kitchen cooking and prep items I highly recommend and could not live without.

First, this waterproof rechargeable kitchen scale.

I have owned many kitchen scales for many reasons! If you’re trying to live that portion-control life, it can be helpful to acquaint yourself with what serving sizes look like and a scale like this can do the trick. The reason *I* love to have a kitchen scale is because when I am baking or cooking, I hate dirtying every measuring cup in the house and still running out. With this guy, you put your bowl on top, choose the measurement unit, zero out the total, then measure your ingredients by weight right into the bowl! Then, you zero it out again before weighing out your next ingredient right into the same bowl! If this isn’t the definition of working smarter, not harder, I don’t know what is.

I recently got this model because I tried to deep clean my old one and the digital display started doing funky things that looked like when you were a kid and typed out 55378008 on a calculator and held it upside down to crack up your cousins? Anyway, I’m so glad, because this one is waterproof and therefore washable, the platform itself is nice and big so you can see the display even if the bowl you set on it is quite large, it’s low-profile so I can stash it away in my cutting board drawer. I also love it because it’s rechargeable or uses batteries. I like having the option to plug it in for a few minutes instead of flying into a rage because the batteries have died exactly when I needed it to work and “there are never any batteries in this friggin’ clown house!” Yes, I am quoting myself. LINK IN COMMENTS!

The other thing that gets SO MUCH ACTION in our kitchen is this air fryer.

I was SO LATE to the air fryer game. I’ll admit, I thought they seemed kind of stupid. I thought they were glorified toaster ovens, which I think are glorified tiny ovens, that all just take up unnecessary counter space where I could be putting down my junk mail instead. But I was wrong. I was so very wrong.

I got this air fryer as a gift from our friend Nelson, after he’d received one as a wrap gift on a show he’d worked on, and as he evangelized, I put it out to be polite. I did not expect to fall in love with it as deeply as I have. And everyone in the family feels the same. Our poor oven might be filled with cobwebs for all we know, because for the most part, we’re air frying everything we eat. We use it more than our microwave. I’ve been daydreaming about putting scoops of leftover stuffing in this thing to reheat and crisp up on top. I’m gonna bake some apples in there as a side dish tonight and I don’t even know what the main dish is gonna be and I don’t really care because the apples will really be the star.

Does it require a bit of an investment, both financially and in terms of counter space? Yes. But I have spent one hundred dollars on much less useful things in my lifetime. And, I’ve used counter space for much less useful things. LIKE JUNK MAIL! If you haven’t boarded the air fryer train for whatever reason, it’s not too late to punch your ticket and take a ride. LINK IN COMMENTS!

Now I want to hear from you guys. What are the kitchen/food/guest prep items you absolutely cannot live without this year?