Extra cilantro!! Yes!! My heart goes out to the people who think it tastes like soap.
I love this piece. Old school reporting which is always rich with beautiful storytelling.
Whenever I find money, I give it to the woman at the local barbershop because she buys food to feed all the feral kitties. This is making me realize I haven’t found money in a while. Time to go looking!
I've overcome the soap taste through repeated, stubborn exposure therapy and while I'm not into having extra of it, its presence doesn't gross me out anymore. Also, once I found out it's the same plant as coriander I concentrated more on the citrus aspect and that helped.
I'm so glad to hear that, Amber! I eat it every day!! I have heaps of cousins in England and they call the entire plant coriander. I wonder why we gave it two different names?!
1. Put it in my wallet and kind of forget about it. Though one time at a LEGO convention I found one in front of a booth and tried to find its owner. Booth guy was uninterested, no one around claimed to lose it, so I gave it to one of the convention staff who probably shrugged and went to buy tacos with it later, thinking me an idiot.
2. Pay off my house, renovate my house (bigger kitchen, garage, add solar). Invest enough to live off of forever, then go "shopping" on GoFundMe in the juvenile medical bill section.
3. I'd save vanilla because you can add whatever you want to it to make other flavors (insert jpg of guy tapping his temple and looking smug).
4. Maybe but IDC
5. Mexican places are popping up all over my area (never Indian places but a gal can dream). There's a place called Taco Time a few towns over that started as a food truck and was successful enough to expand. They're pretty freaking good.
Your ice cream answer is wise! You found your way around an ice cream extinction event. Bravo! But I want to highlight the medical debt section on gofundme. Your head and heart are in the right place, even if that place doesn’t have any Indian food.
1) True story, twice in my lifetime I have found a $100 bill on the street. Extremely boring, both times I tucked away in my mad money stash and eventually spent them, probably on groceries.
2) Absolutely following @Meridith ‘s lead on this one.
3) Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. No question.
4) The state’s not the problem, it’s the evil trolls in charge of certain ones that are the problem. How can I hate Texas when it produced so many of my favorite musicians?
5) I confess I never seek out tacos, I just am in a place where they are and tacos happen. The most recent: Hopmonk Sebastopol. Mmmmmm, fish tacos.
1) The last time I found a $20 bill, I ended up giving it as a tip to a bartender that was having a really rough night.
2) If I found $20billion, I would pay taxes on it, split the remaining half with my wife, split the remaining half of that (of prob about 5-6billion) to create a trust fund for my family members with specific instructions that accepting the fund means they can't ask me for more money, leaving me about $3billion, half of which I'd donate, leaving me $1.5billion which I'd buy a house (she'd use some of her half here) and then I would put $5million into a trust fund for myself and I'd have about $1.45billion or something left at which point I would just self-fund all the movies I want to make.
3) Cherry Garcia
4) People hating their states is as American as apple pie. What they do is they move to New York or California. However, if they hate New York they move to Florida, and if they hate California they move to Texas.
5) Food truck right off my subway stop is seriously amongst the best tacos in the city, so much that sometimes I pass two taco trucks nearer to my apartment to go to the good truck (not a problem on the way home).
It's my "if I win the lottery" assuming a jackpot in the nine figures plan, minus the legal expenses lottery winners need to protect their privacy and evade scammers and kidnappers.
“Or, maybe the money is counterfeit, in which case I’m absolutely buying Facebook because turning that wretched website off and hoodwinking Mark Zuckerberg would be the ultimate win-win.”
This one could be your best yet, sir. Your intrepid reporting about the taco shortage had me in a panic until you revealed that is not true. As a Socal resident, I life without tacos is simply not worth living. I was in Orange County, probably 2nd line to Los Angeles and San Diego counties in the love of tacos. I even own an old Invader Zim shirt that has Grrr on it will little pink foil hearts with "I Love Them Little Tacos, I Love Them Good." On to the questions!
1 - This problem is the same one I face when I receive Amazon gift cards. And the answer is always to buy a prink book. I will add it to my stack of probably 100+ books I have yet to read.
2 - This one is easy. I will ex-pat to the british Isles. I have always had the feeling of being born in the wrong country. I want to send my ass back to Ireland/England/Scotland where my family heritage is from. Buy a nice plot of land out there and live out the rest of my days.
3 - Ice Cream is delicious! I just found a new one from Tillamook, which is in my freezer right now - Brownie Batter Chocolate. Best I have ever had in my life. Ribbons of brownie batter in it. I would save Chocolate, and since there are so many varieties, I am insisting on an exception to save the whole damn set of different Chocolate ice creams out there. For mankind.
4 - Can't say anything nice here, since I want to ex-pat. I'll politely say that it's OK as long as tacos are not in danger.
5 - Place in socal, a chain - "Tacos Mexico". All over socal. all the things you want is an almost grimy taqueria. All the meats that are uncommon as well to gringos (cabeza, lengua, etc). Burritos are the largest I have ever seen. Even the "mild-er" sauce is scorching hot, but it depends of the day. I don't know of one close to me in the Joshua Tree area, and I miss it. I get it as much as possible when away. https://tacosmexico.com/
Your ice cream rec is going on the list! Thank you! Your expat plan is solid, but remember to save a few bucks to import quality tacos. One question: what is a prink book?
I am always bordering on pre-diabetic, am good about the junk food. But I will admit that my resistance broke a few times - I snuck a bowl or two, but I have to share with everyone. every. single. bite. delicious.
Oh boy. Where to start... Actually you gave a list. Okay, here goes:
1. $20 is a tough one. More than a dollar, where you could just put it in your pocket and it would vanish. You don't know how, or why, but it would there and then it would be gone. Just gone, into the ether. Yours is a good call, the tacos. I might split the difference and get 2 tacos and then a really nice cup of coffffe. Or, more practical, I would ffix the ffucking "F" on my keyboard.
2. 20 Billion? That's easy. A yacht, a crew, and I'm gone... Alternately I might give it to Mark Zuckerberg, just to fuck with you.
3. Had to think on this. Just one? Probably rum raisin, hold the raisin. Hold the ice cream. Rum. Just rum, please and thank you.
4. It is probably unAmerican, but New Hampshire. Fuck New Hampshire. You know what you did.
5. Taco Escobarr, Portland, Maine. Lengua and Pescado tacos with a side of pickled slaw.
I'm teasing, but you do have us (Maine) cornered. In order to go anywhere south, we either have to pay the tolls or go around Canada and down. Well played, NH, well played...
Good to see that hard nosed investigative reporting still exists. Relieved to hear that the Atacolpyse is fake news. You forgot to share a link to Abyssinian cat hacker story though. That’s a story I’d pay twenty bucks for.
1. We are soul mates with this answer: Ice cream or tacos or both. I live in Austin and before it is too late (prices for everything are crazy now), I could prob manage to buy both with $20.
2. I would move back to California near the ocean, prob Pacific Grove/Monterey area. Whatever's leftover, I would give you to take out FB.
3. Cookie Dough (Loved the McConnell's shout out. Undergrad from UCSB -- that is some good ice cream!)
4. I intensely want this country to survive Trumpism & Muskism (and the world needs it to) but I admit to a strong dislike of the Banana Republic of TX. I think I'm pretty patriotic but maybe everyone thinks this about themselves?
I'm so glad someone else knows the joys of McConnell's. Whenever I'm in SB, I go there. Thankfully, there's a location in the San Fernando Valley about 20 minutes from my house. I used to live around the corner from that location, but that was dangerous.
Ice cream. I seldom get it, because reasons. BUT. If I had to save one flavor from extinction, it would be Baskin Robbins 'Pralines n Cream'. That stuff is like crack.
It’s a great flavor. And I love Baskin Robbin’s. But I’ve also had excellent pralines n cream at local shops that do a higher fat old-fashioned style. So good.
I found $100 in cash lying on the ground three times in my life. Cool, eh? But I’ve also had $100 stolen from me twice, which is probably karma for not using the found money more wisely.
One thing Mrs. Wolf and I noticed after arriving in Texas was the utter lack of good Mexican food. Now, admittedly this is a North Texas issue. San Antonio and El Paso do not have this problem. But up here in Dallas, they have about 20 chains with the word “taco” in the name, and none of them understand the essential nature of a proper taco. It’s maddening.
Crispy beef taco is my Mexican test dish, because it’s deceptively simple, yet so hard to master. For my money, ($20 coincidentally) Ernie’s Taco House on Lankershim is the gold standard. Close second is Ricardo’s Place in San Juan Capistrano, which is perfectly situated for a midway meal stop on one’s way to or from San Diego.
I have heard from Texans that most of the state has lousy Mexican food, but very good TexMex, which is its own kind of deal. Have you guys gotten into TexMex?
From what I’ve been able to determine, Tex-Mex consists of replacing the wonderful traditional sauces of Mexican cuisine with canned chili or melted Velveeta.
For good Mexican food in Dallas, go to family-owned restaurants. I go to Herrera’s in Oak Cliff. Taco Cabana started in San Antonio. Their food and tacos good.
Good encapsulation of the Notes community, but I think you may have omitted one category: the rather benign and unambiguously positive type of person who predominantly posts pics of their adorable, tiny, lil' angel-demon of a dog.
I feel like we haven't talked about Mortimer in a while. Has he noticed any taco crises or whatever the canine version of that is? How about those belly rubs?
1 - Buying food is a pretty good use of a magic $20. I once found a $20 in the street outside of Cafe Du Mode. That was enough for me to break even after gambling earlier in the evening. Coffee and beignets to end the night.
2 - I'd buy Star Wars from Disney and make the movies/TV shows I want. Finally, a buddy comedy with the two Scout Troopers from the first season of Mando.
4 - I think irrationally hating people for no other reason than they live across an imaginary line from you is about as American as you can get.
5 - I live in Texas, we are ground zero for tacos. A place just called Trompo down the street from me is my go-to. They actually were a best new restaurant in Bon Appetite a few years ago.
Great journalism piece! You could be the West Coast Anne Kadet!
1. Buy flowers for my wife (have I grown up, or am I full of crap? You decide.)
2. Move back to California. And New York. Not buy a Tesla. Give the rest to my wife, because I’d only get into trouble with that kinda money.
3. Always butter pecan.
4. It is un-American. Even Florida deserves pity rather than hatred.
5. Since I left CA for NC, I’ve had one good taco. But I would give $20B for a carne asada burrito from Lucky Burger in Pasadena.
West Coast Anne Kadet!!! I can now die happy. Put that on my tombstone.
Lucky Boy Burgers! I did not eat there enough during my time in California!
Thanks for the correction — it was Lucky Boy! Lucky Burger was in San Gabriel.
I knew where you were talking about but I looked it up on Google maps to be sure.
I’ve long thought of Mr. Estrin as my west coast counterpart!
Extra cilantro!! Yes!! My heart goes out to the people who think it tastes like soap.
I love this piece. Old school reporting which is always rich with beautiful storytelling.
Whenever I find money, I give it to the woman at the local barbershop because she buys food to feed all the feral kitties. This is making me realize I haven’t found money in a while. Time to go looking!
I love your found money habit, Jane!
I've overcome the soap taste through repeated, stubborn exposure therapy and while I'm not into having extra of it, its presence doesn't gross me out anymore. Also, once I found out it's the same plant as coriander I concentrated more on the citrus aspect and that helped.
I'm so glad to hear that, Amber! I eat it every day!! I have heaps of cousins in England and they call the entire plant coriander. I wonder why we gave it two different names?!
1. Put it in my wallet and kind of forget about it. Though one time at a LEGO convention I found one in front of a booth and tried to find its owner. Booth guy was uninterested, no one around claimed to lose it, so I gave it to one of the convention staff who probably shrugged and went to buy tacos with it later, thinking me an idiot.
2. Pay off my house, renovate my house (bigger kitchen, garage, add solar). Invest enough to live off of forever, then go "shopping" on GoFundMe in the juvenile medical bill section.
3. I'd save vanilla because you can add whatever you want to it to make other flavors (insert jpg of guy tapping his temple and looking smug).
4. Maybe but IDC
5. Mexican places are popping up all over my area (never Indian places but a gal can dream). There's a place called Taco Time a few towns over that started as a food truck and was successful enough to expand. They're pretty freaking good.
Your ice cream answer is wise! You found your way around an ice cream extinction event. Bravo! But I want to highlight the medical debt section on gofundme. Your head and heart are in the right place, even if that place doesn’t have any Indian food.
1) True story, twice in my lifetime I have found a $100 bill on the street. Extremely boring, both times I tucked away in my mad money stash and eventually spent them, probably on groceries.
2) Absolutely following @Meridith ‘s lead on this one.
3) Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. No question.
4) The state’s not the problem, it’s the evil trolls in charge of certain ones that are the problem. How can I hate Texas when it produced so many of my favorite musicians?
5) I confess I never seek out tacos, I just am in a place where they are and tacos happen. The most recent: Hopmonk Sebastopol. Mmmmmm, fish tacos.
Cherry Garcia for the win!
It's a paradox but if you had to live in TX for awhile you'd develop a strong dislike for sure.
1) The last time I found a $20 bill, I ended up giving it as a tip to a bartender that was having a really rough night.
2) If I found $20billion, I would pay taxes on it, split the remaining half with my wife, split the remaining half of that (of prob about 5-6billion) to create a trust fund for my family members with specific instructions that accepting the fund means they can't ask me for more money, leaving me about $3billion, half of which I'd donate, leaving me $1.5billion which I'd buy a house (she'd use some of her half here) and then I would put $5million into a trust fund for myself and I'd have about $1.45billion or something left at which point I would just self-fund all the movies I want to make.
3) Cherry Garcia
4) People hating their states is as American as apple pie. What they do is they move to New York or California. However, if they hate New York they move to Florida, and if they hate California they move to Texas.
5) Food truck right off my subway stop is seriously amongst the best tacos in the city, so much that sometimes I pass two taco trucks nearer to my apartment to go to the good truck (not a problem on the way home).
All of these answers are correct. Well done! I really appreciate that you thought through the tax issues for the $20 billion.
I love how deeply you thought about the 20 billion dollar question.
It's my "if I win the lottery" assuming a jackpot in the nine figures plan, minus the legal expenses lottery winners need to protect their privacy and evade scammers and kidnappers.
And taxes. 😉
#2:
“Or, maybe the money is counterfeit, in which case I’m absolutely buying Facebook because turning that wretched website off and hoodwinking Mark Zuckerberg would be the ultimate win-win.”
This!!!!
It's been decades, but to this day, every time I see a picture of Zuck, I am surprised it's not Jesse Eisenberg...
Same! I recently watched The Social Network again and it’s even better all these years later. The film really nails Zuck.
This one could be your best yet, sir. Your intrepid reporting about the taco shortage had me in a panic until you revealed that is not true. As a Socal resident, I life without tacos is simply not worth living. I was in Orange County, probably 2nd line to Los Angeles and San Diego counties in the love of tacos. I even own an old Invader Zim shirt that has Grrr on it will little pink foil hearts with "I Love Them Little Tacos, I Love Them Good." On to the questions!
1 - This problem is the same one I face when I receive Amazon gift cards. And the answer is always to buy a prink book. I will add it to my stack of probably 100+ books I have yet to read.
2 - This one is easy. I will ex-pat to the british Isles. I have always had the feeling of being born in the wrong country. I want to send my ass back to Ireland/England/Scotland where my family heritage is from. Buy a nice plot of land out there and live out the rest of my days.
3 - Ice Cream is delicious! I just found a new one from Tillamook, which is in my freezer right now - Brownie Batter Chocolate. Best I have ever had in my life. Ribbons of brownie batter in it. I would save Chocolate, and since there are so many varieties, I am insisting on an exception to save the whole damn set of different Chocolate ice creams out there. For mankind.
4 - Can't say anything nice here, since I want to ex-pat. I'll politely say that it's OK as long as tacos are not in danger.
5 - Place in socal, a chain - "Tacos Mexico". All over socal. all the things you want is an almost grimy taqueria. All the meats that are uncommon as well to gringos (cabeza, lengua, etc). Burritos are the largest I have ever seen. Even the "mild-er" sauce is scorching hot, but it depends of the day. I don't know of one close to me in the Joshua Tree area, and I miss it. I get it as much as possible when away. https://tacosmexico.com/
Your ice cream rec is going on the list! Thank you! Your expat plan is solid, but remember to save a few bucks to import quality tacos. One question: what is a prink book?
Ahh…printed books….a thing of the past. 😂
Printed! Yes! I think there was a typo and I was like, is there some kind of book I’m not aware of?
Yes, my phone has a mind of its own. More likely, my typing sucks.
Here you go! This is the ice cream: https://www.tillamook.com/products/ice-cream/brownie-batter
I tried the brownie batter chocolate. Oh. My. God.
Agreed. I have never had something so perfect for chocolate ice cream. No words.
I didn’t want to share it. I was like Gollum with the ring. Not proud of that.😞
Wow! This is a helluva an endorsement.
I am always bordering on pre-diabetic, am good about the junk food. But I will admit that my resistance broke a few times - I snuck a bowl or two, but I have to share with everyone. every. single. bite. delicious.
Oh boy. Where to start... Actually you gave a list. Okay, here goes:
1. $20 is a tough one. More than a dollar, where you could just put it in your pocket and it would vanish. You don't know how, or why, but it would there and then it would be gone. Just gone, into the ether. Yours is a good call, the tacos. I might split the difference and get 2 tacos and then a really nice cup of coffffe. Or, more practical, I would ffix the ffucking "F" on my keyboard.
2. 20 Billion? That's easy. A yacht, a crew, and I'm gone... Alternately I might give it to Mark Zuckerberg, just to fuck with you.
3. Had to think on this. Just one? Probably rum raisin, hold the raisin. Hold the ice cream. Rum. Just rum, please and thank you.
4. It is probably unAmerican, but New Hampshire. Fuck New Hampshire. You know what you did.
5. Taco Escobarr, Portland, Maine. Lengua and Pescado tacos with a side of pickled slaw.
Great read on an early Sunday morning. Thanks!
Zuck doesn’t need your $20 billion. If you want to fuck with me there are many better (and cheaper) options.
True, he’s got enough as it is. The yacht it is then! :-)
I'm from NH and you know what? That's fair.
I'm teasing, but you do have us (Maine) cornered. In order to go anywhere south, we either have to pay the tolls or go around Canada and down. Well played, NH, well played...
That's what you get for having all of that coastline 😝
LOLOL Touché!
AND stealing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. 😤
(Though TBH it was pretty ballsy of NH to go so long owning the rivers on all sides of us).
Good point. We could give it back, I suppose. Give us the Mt. Washington Observatory and we'll call it even. :-)
Good to see that hard nosed investigative reporting still exists. Relieved to hear that the Atacolpyse is fake news. You forgot to share a link to Abyssinian cat hacker story though. That’s a story I’d pay twenty bucks for.
I’ve got an AI working on it.
1. We are soul mates with this answer: Ice cream or tacos or both. I live in Austin and before it is too late (prices for everything are crazy now), I could prob manage to buy both with $20.
2. I would move back to California near the ocean, prob Pacific Grove/Monterey area. Whatever's leftover, I would give you to take out FB.
3. Cookie Dough (Loved the McConnell's shout out. Undergrad from UCSB -- that is some good ice cream!)
4. I intensely want this country to survive Trumpism & Muskism (and the world needs it to) but I admit to a strong dislike of the Banana Republic of TX. I think I'm pretty patriotic but maybe everyone thinks this about themselves?
5. Torchy's
I'm so glad someone else knows the joys of McConnell's. Whenever I'm in SB, I go there. Thankfully, there's a location in the San Fernando Valley about 20 minutes from my house. I used to live around the corner from that location, but that was dangerous.
Ice cream. I seldom get it, because reasons. BUT. If I had to save one flavor from extinction, it would be Baskin Robbins 'Pralines n Cream'. That stuff is like crack.
It’s a great flavor. And I love Baskin Robbin’s. But I’ve also had excellent pralines n cream at local shops that do a higher fat old-fashioned style. So good.
yup
I found $100 in cash lying on the ground three times in my life. Cool, eh? But I’ve also had $100 stolen from me twice, which is probably karma for not using the found money more wisely.
One thing Mrs. Wolf and I noticed after arriving in Texas was the utter lack of good Mexican food. Now, admittedly this is a North Texas issue. San Antonio and El Paso do not have this problem. But up here in Dallas, they have about 20 chains with the word “taco” in the name, and none of them understand the essential nature of a proper taco. It’s maddening.
Crispy beef taco is my Mexican test dish, because it’s deceptively simple, yet so hard to master. For my money, ($20 coincidentally) Ernie’s Taco House on Lankershim is the gold standard. Close second is Ricardo’s Place in San Juan Capistrano, which is perfectly situated for a midway meal stop on one’s way to or from San Diego.
I have heard from Texans that most of the state has lousy Mexican food, but very good TexMex, which is its own kind of deal. Have you guys gotten into TexMex?
From what I’ve been able to determine, Tex-Mex consists of replacing the wonderful traditional sauces of Mexican cuisine with canned chili or melted Velveeta.
This is what I’ve heard. Very strange.
You are correct and good Tex-Mex is a lie.
For good Mexican food in Dallas, go to family-owned restaurants. I go to Herrera’s in Oak Cliff. Taco Cabana started in San Antonio. Their food and tacos good.
Save the mint choc chip ice cream!
Good choice!
The best ice cream is whatever flavor has the most candy. But I really just want candy.
Good encapsulation of the Notes community, but I think you may have omitted one category: the rather benign and unambiguously positive type of person who predominantly posts pics of their adorable, tiny, lil' angel-demon of a dog.
That person is a damn hero!
I feel like we haven't talked about Mortimer in a while. Has he noticed any taco crises or whatever the canine version of that is? How about those belly rubs?
1 - Buying food is a pretty good use of a magic $20. I once found a $20 in the street outside of Cafe Du Mode. That was enough for me to break even after gambling earlier in the evening. Coffee and beignets to end the night.
2 - I'd buy Star Wars from Disney and make the movies/TV shows I want. Finally, a buddy comedy with the two Scout Troopers from the first season of Mando.
4 - I think irrationally hating people for no other reason than they live across an imaginary line from you is about as American as you can get.
5 - I live in Texas, we are ground zero for tacos. A place just called Trompo down the street from me is my go-to. They actually were a best new restaurant in Bon Appetite a few years ago.
Finding $20 outside of Cafe Du Monde is like finding $100 anywhere else.