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Hello Crush,
Thanks for all the notes about the story I wrote last week, Love Is Terribly Inconvenient. It’s about my new pup, Koko. One very thoughtful CRUSH Reader, Di, wrote this:
“Your piece about Koko was sweet, funny, and for those with dogs, all too familiar.”
Thanks, Di!
Well it’s just barely February but it is February, so we are focused on rolling out some dating stories — mine and yours! In our series Willing, CRUSH Readers (including yours truly) have shared dating stories with Lisa Ellex. We‘re starting in today’s Letter with Deb and John’s story.
Want to share a later in life dating story with Lisa Ellex? You talk to her, she’ll write it up. It could be very brief, or even epic. Write to me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com and I’ll set you up with Lisa.
OR - if you just want to shoot us a little thing yourself, just write it up and send it over. Dish@PrimeCrush.com. Remember, you can be anonymous!
In This Letter. +Willing: A Series on Dating, Sex & Life from Grown-ups. We told each other we weren’t ready for anything serious … but it happened that we saw each other every night. +Book Review: Be Ready When The Luck Happens By Ina Garten. Reviewed by Dish Stanley She’s mostly created her luck through exceptionally hard work and by being a bold, decisive, calculating and strategic risk-taker, not to mention an obsessive perfectionist. +Three Things I’m Crushing On: My Favorite New Recipes. +dishing. +Social Media I Loved This Week. +Our Song of the Week
Willing: A Series on Dating, Sex & Life for Grown-ups
Dating is so complicated at this stage. We’ve got emotional scar tissue from umpteen years of living and loving. We’ve got nerves. We’ve got the practical obstacles of baked-in structures and demands, familial and geographic. Too often, we just can’t break through. But then sometimes we do.
Willing. “A New Beginning and a Hollywood Ending” by Lisa Ellex
Debbie is 60-something-year-old, filmmaker/writer/director living in Long Island, New York.
“When I met John, I had not dated in almost 20 years. I was 47 at the time and was on Match.com and a bunch of other sites and I got many, many responses. I felt like I had to answer everybody so it was like a full time job. But after a while, I would see the same people and they would use the same old photo even though they had become decades older.
I was very selective. I think I got 100 responses and spoke to just six of them, and met four. I made a list of exactly what I wanted. But I wasn’t feeling anything. So I cancelled all the sites. It was just too much work.
A month after I was off, John reached out to me on a site that I had not been on in a while. It was one of those sites that’s free for women but men had to pay. He should not have been able to see my profile but somehow his email came through. I figured he was either really smart or he was a jerk. I didn’t think he was my type but we arranged to meet for coffee at a Starbucks. We both hate Starbucks but it was the closest place to us. As it turned out, John was living a block from my godmother. We told each other we weren’t ready for anything serious; I was almost divorced and he was separated. I had such a horrible marriage that I made myself a deal that I wouldn't get serious with anybody for about three years.
So we had our first date. Then our second date. And I don’t know that we said we’d be exclusive right away but it happened that we saw each other like every night. I might have seen those other four guys in that week and I told them I had met somebody I liked and I stopped seeing everyone else. John and I haven’t been apart since.
We were together for only about two or three months and I didn’t have a cell phone. John said, ‘Let’s just get a plan together.’ That was our first big commitment. A year later he moved in– at my 12-year-old daughter’s request. I didn't think I’d ever get married again. I think the only reason we did it was that we went through a lot of stuff. I had gotten sick and John went into his pension and handed me a check for $5,000. Then he got sick and was in hospital for a week and everyone just assumed I was his wife and we decided we really wanted to take care of each other. Then a friend of mine said, ‘If you two want to be married, you can use my house on the water.’ Another friend from Phantom of the Opera on Broadway said he would sing at my wedding. Another friend owned an Italian restaurant. So we got a tent and that was it. Now we’re together for like 20 years– though it took me 10 years to say ‘yes’ and another three years to stop calling him ‘boyfriend’!
Back when I was the Nassau County Film Commissioner, I would never date in the industry – I just didn’t want to – because it’s very easy to be used. John, at the time, was teaching at a school in Queens. A self-described ‘Yale educated construction worker’ with a Broadway background, John ran a lot of scene shops for Broadway and Off-Broadway. So, when I started making my own movies, he started as production manager. He took gorgeous photos and said he’d really like to be a DP (Director of Photography) so we got him a camera and now people are hiring him all over the place. We work together and apart. He’s like my Swiss army knife filmmaker– wherever I have to put him, he can fit!”
Indeed, filmmakers Deb Markowitz and John Marean are the perfect fit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.
Book Review: Be Ready When The Luck Happens By Ina Garten. Reviewed by Dish Stanley
Her memoir’s title might imply that Garten’s success has been the product of a lot of luck, but that’s just part of the image she constructs of effortlessness. She’s mostly created her luck through exceptionally hard work and by being a bold, decisive, calculating and strategic risk-taker, not to mention an obsessive perfectionist.
Back in 2000, when my brother was still married to his now ex-wife Claudia, she brought Ina Garten’s Parmesan Smashed Potatoes to a family dinner. The potatoes were revelatory. For one thing, over the previous five years of family dinners, Claudia had never brought anything that tasted good. For another thing, these weren’t just good, they were perfectly delicious. Who knew mashed potatoes could have so much flavor and texture? (Beyond the inspired addition of Parmesan, Garten advises to use red potatoes, which are creamier, and keeps the skin on.)
Claudia had gotten Ina Garten’s cookbook The Barefoot Contessa as a birthday gift. For anyone unfamiliar with Garten’s cookbooks (if there is anyone), she is famous for her recipe development, which is to say that she obsessively experiments and tests her recipes before publishing them, something that surprisingly few chefs were doing, particularly back then. (Martha Stewart‘s recipes were a disaster, in contrast.)
Her first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa, was published in 1999, and in the 26 years since, Garten has published 22 more cookbooks (I have every single one), closed the gourmet store she first became famous for, become a Food Network TV star, and launched (and shut down) a frozen food line. That’s just in her professional life. In her personal life, she has been famously married to her uxorious husband Jeffrey (a former investment banker and Yale professor), bought and renovated an East Hampton compound, a New York City apartment (or two) and a Paris townhouse and become friends with an awful lot of cool celebrities. (The one I am most jealous of was Nora Ephron.)
She’s had an enviably happy, fun and exciting life. You can learn all about it in her recent memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens. (She reads the audible version herself, and I toggled between reading and listening.)
Her memoir’s title suggests that Garten has had a lot of luck, but in my view she’s being sly. She’s mostly created her luck. She’s worked exceptionally hard and been a bold, decisive, calculating and strategic risk-taker, not to mention an obsessive perfectionist. She has also remained doggedly committed to her brand, which can be summed up with the words “authenticity” and “approachability.” The casual effortlessness she exudes that is central to both her authenticity and approachability belies her behind-the-scenes, relentlessly driven personality. The success of her “oh, it’s just me, nothing fancy” brand is all the more impressive as she has not only become a major celebrity herself, but also surrounded herself with a large cadre of friends who are major celebrities.
Over dinner with friends, I compared Ina Garten to a model whose look is ‘the natural look.’ The ‘natural look‘ looks effortless but in actuality, it requires a great deal of effort and expertise.
Garten has been lucky, as the memoir’s title suggests. Her biggest stroke of luck was being spotted through the window by her beloved husband Jeffrey in 1963 when she was only fifteen years old, visiting her brother at Dartmouth College. Jeffrey was a junior and after seeing her from afar wrote her a handwritten letter to ask her out on a date. It turns out, we learn, that she grew up in a tough and unloving household and the paternal and supportive Jeffrey saved her from that. In one form or another, he has saved her many times since. Theirs is truly a remarkable, blessed marriage and in many ways the story of their enduring, fulfilling marriage is the real heart of her memoir, just as he is the sustaining love in her life.
Continue reading here
In this series, readers like you share recommendations for the things they love the most, right at this moment.
Three Things I’m Crushing On: My Favorite New Recipes.
Trader Joe's Chicken Won Tons with Spicy Sauce From Lisa Breckenridge (@lisabreckenridge)
I have now made this recipe five times in the last couple weeks and it’s the reason I keep packages of Trader Joe’s chicken cilantro wontons on hand, as well as Momofuku chili crunch. I’m all in on leveling up my TJ’s fix.
Peruvian Roasted Chicken with Spicy Sauce
Don’t we all eat sooo much chicken, now that we realize we haven’t been getting enough protein and that fish is likely jammed up with microplastics? This recipe, though, has so much flavor you won’t even realize it’s chicken. And if I can’t convince you, then maybe the fact that it gets five stars from users on the NYT Cooking app will. I ordered the aji amarillo and the aji panca pastes online — crucial ingredients — and you will probably have to, as well.
Lemony Sheet Pan Chicken with Crispy Chickpeas and Kale
My friend Nina, who really doesn’t cook, sent this one-pan recipe to me and it’s easy and delicious. I ordered the preserved lemons and Aleppo pepper online in advance.
What was your favorite recipe of 2024? I’d love to know! Write to me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com (and it would be super helpful if you remembered to put “Favorite Recipe” in the subject line so I catch it). Thanks!
dishing.
Things I thought you might want to know about, and some you probably don’t.
I can’t wait to watch Questlove’s documentary Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. Questlove shared the seven minute opener on his instagram here, and CRUSHes, it’s a stunner. Here he is talking about it on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
My friend Nayeema Raza is launching a new podcast, Smart Girl Dumb Questions. If you were one of the millions who heard her engage with Kara Swisher when Nayeema produced the podcast On, then you are (like I am) psyched to listen to her host her own show. Nayeema, whose wicked smart, says it’s a new show to answer the dumb questions we’re all thinking but don’t want to ask out loud. When I had lunch with her recently she said “it’s for people who think intellectual curiosity is cool …” That’s us? Right, CRUSHes? Follow the show to hear the first episode when it drops soon.
Paula Porzikova returned to Estee Lauder as a brand amabassador. I’m happy for her, happy for Estée Lauder, happy for all of us. Porzikova has been provocative on her social media feed, and at times I have felt overexposed to her, but I think she’s generally out there advancing things for those of us over 50. Go Paulina.
Social Media I Loved This Week
Song of the Week
Broken English by Marianne Faithful
R.I.P. Marianne Faithful
Broken English is from the 1979 album of the same name that Faithful released as a comeback after many years of heroin addiction, anorexia and homelessness. Her voice was raspy from severe laryngitis and living on the streets of London. She described the album as her masterpiece.
Happy February, friends!
XO,
Dish
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The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
