For the past few several, I have written a few Top 10 lists like people do. I am trying something different this time around. Instead of focusing on things of the same kind (e.g., books, music, film, etc.) I am doing a Top 10 list in a smorgasbord of categories.
Here are some of my favorite things from 2022 with varying shades of color commentary.
1. Top Substack Newsletter: Cocktails with Suderman
My best friend gifted me a subscription to this great newsletter for Christmas last year. Now that we live in different states, the gift subscription was given to provide a kind of shared activity we could kind of do together even from afar. What a thoughtful guy, right?
It worked! It definitely helped us stay connected as we experimented with recipes. That means that unlike Frank Shirley’s “Jelly of the Month Club” subscription, this really has been the gift that has kept on giving throughout the whole year. Thanks, Sam.
Peter Suderman is not a professional bartender but shares his love for making great cocktails at home. It’s informative, accessible, and fun. Highly recommend if you want to learn how to make good drinks at home.
2. Top Spirit: Mezcal
While I’m on the topic of adult drinks, I’ll share a little bit about the Mexican spirit I’ve come to love this year. Typically, I am a big whisky guy but 2022 was the year of mezcal.
Perhaps the best way to describe mezcal is to compare it to tequila. Like tequila, mezcal is a spirit made from agave. Unlike tequila, which can only be made from Blue Weber Agave, mezcal can be distilled from any ol’ agave. The biggest difference in flavor is that mezcal tends to be a bit smokier. Mezcal develops the smoke profile because the agave from which it is made is roasted in stone-lined pits in the earth whereas tequila agave is steamed.
A helpful analogy may be that tequila is like bourbon and mezcal is like a peaty Highland Scotch. There’s more to it but that gives you a sense.
If you want to learn more, here’s a helpful article from Food & Wine or an older one from NYT. But, of course, the best way to learn about it is to experience it and there’s really only way to do that.
Some mezcal recommendations:
Los Siete Misterios Espadin ($$). This was the first mezcal I ever tried and was a revelation. It was almost like drinking Laphroaig.
Del Maguey Vida ($). This is a solid choice and really great by itself and especially in margaritas (or any cocktails as a stand in for tequila).
Here’s my favorite cocktail recipe with mezcal (which is also probably just my favorite drink): the Mezcal Last Word from Suderman’s newsletter:
INGREDIENTS
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
¾ ounce Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
¾ ounce Green Chartreuse
¾ ounce mezcal (such as Del Maguey Vida)
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all ingredients in a shaker.
Add ice, then shake until thoroughly chilled, about 10-12 seconds.
Strain into a coupe or Nick & Nora glass.
3. Top Books
Moving away from spirits, here are some of the best books I read this year:
Reparations: a Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson
I spent a good chunk of the year really wrestling with reparations. I wrote about it here and interacted with Kwon/Thomson’s book here. This is a good and challenging book that makes a compelling case for why the church’s focus on “racial reconciliation” is necessary but insufficient to righting the wrongs of racism and forging a unified Christian community.
You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World by O. Alan Noble
This compelling and accessible book addresses one of the assumptions most of us take for granted, which is the belief that it is up to each of us as individuals to create our own identities and make meaning. We believe we are responsible for freedom and fulfillment; it most often leads to being sad, tired, and lonely. Noble rebuts the lie that we belong to ourselves and charts a path forward, one that leads to life because it leads to God. This is a great book for our cultural moment.
You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News by Kelly Kapic
This is another great book for our cultural moment. I heard about this book in an Unbelievable podcast where Kapic was being interviewed along with Noble. Kapic’s book is a great companion to Noble’s. This is a work of theological anthropology where Kapic outlines what it means to be human including why our bodies matter, why dependence is not bad, and why our limits are good. There were two chapters I found particularly compelling. One was on time and the slow process of human development (Ch. 8 “Why Doesn’t God Instantly Change me”). The other was on the importance of being part of the Body of Christ (Ch. 9 “Do I Need to Be Part of the Church?”).
The Overstory: a Novel by Richard Powers
This is a story about trees. It’s also a story about humans. It has given me a much greater appreciation of the marvel of trees and fed my desire to save them so we can save ourselves. I’ve never quite read anything like it. To be honest, it took a while to grow on me… how tree like.
4. Top Poem: “When I am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
I’ve been in a Mary Oliver Phase for 5+ years running. Her collection in Devotions continues to be the poetry book I have turned to most. We happened to read this particular poem on vacation. It was on a lovely July evening while sitting on the shore of Lake Ontario under a willow tree as the sun was moved from gold to setting over the horizon. True story. Hard not to have make you think about some things.
I won’t say much about the poem other than it is vintage Oliver with its meditation on nature and how it might transform human nature.
5. Top Album: “Inside Problems” by Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird is one of my favorite musical artists and, according to Spotify’s year in review, he was the artist I listened to most this year. Apparently, I listened to “Atomized,” the first track on the album, 50x in 2022.
If you’ve never listened to Bird, this is a mighty fine album to get you started. It has all the best that Bird has to offer including excellent whistling, smart and witty lyrics that almost force you into a wry smile, big words, catchy hooks, and rhythmic grooves.
Andrew Bird came through Pittsburgh in the summer and we got to see him live on a gorgeous night at an outdoor venue. Iron & Wine was touring with him so we caught both. It was a perfect evening with some friends.
Here are some of my favorite tracks from the album:
6. Top Show: The Last Kingdom
Apart from Ted Lasso and the Great British Bake Off, I don’t really watch shows. However, I did get really into The Last Kingdom this past year watching all five seasons after the final episode officially aired.
The show is British historical fiction based off a series of novels. The plot spans the late 9th and early 10th centuries and tells the story of Saxon and Dane conflict, which ultimately led to the Kingdom of England emerging from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Many of the characters and central events are historic but the show is carried by Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a fictional protagonist. Born the son of a Saxon lord and then enslaved and eventually adopted as a son of a Viking leader, Uhtred embodies the tensions, clashes and ultimately the synthesis that the country experiences.
The show has its fair share of violence and sex (which certainly gets old) but the depiction of the cultural and especially religious tensions between Saxons and Danes made the show quite good.
7. Top Gizmo: Ooni Fyra 12 Pizza Oven
Most of the time, technology doesn’t really live up to its promise to make my life better. Most of the time it ends up sucking time and attention away from my real priorities. Not so with this gizmo.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that our family adopted the tradition of making pizza every Friday night. We became very proficient in making a simple but delicious dough and pizza sauce but were always a little underwhelmed with the pizza baked in our oven. In the summers, the oven would heat up our house too much and it couldn’t really get hot enough to cook a good crust. So we decided to try a pizza oven and bought the cheapest one from Ooni, a Scottish company that got its start on Kickstarter.
We absolutely love it. We have a great system down and have learned how to make fantastic pizza with it (not quite as good as great brick oven pizza from a restaurant but darn close). The stove itself is fueled by wood pellets. It heats up to 900 degrees in about 15 minutes and it can cook a 12” pizza in about two. These pizza ovens are made to live outside and it became a fun activity for hosting friends for an evening of good food.
8. Top Recipe: Shakshuka
On the topic of food, the most enjoyable recipe I made this year was Shakshuka with Feta by Melissa Clark from NYT Cooking.
The first time I ate shakshuka was while I was in Israel a few years back. At first, eating this savory tomato-based dish for breakfast was a strange thing in a strange land. Since then, I’ve ordered it every time I see it on a breakfast menu at a restaurant. It always seemed like one of those things that is hard to do right at home but turns out that is a lie almost as grave as the lie that we belong to ourselves (just joking, but seriously).
The recipe is hard to mess up and quite delicious. When I make it, I prefer adding fresh dill instead of cilantro or parsley. I also like to cook up some thick cut bacon, chop it up, and add it to the top as well.
9. Top Film: Babette’s Feast (1987)
Continuing the theme of cuisine, my favorite film this year was also about food. This not a new movie. It’s 35 years old.
Babette’s Feast was released in 1987 and won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The screenplay is adapted from the short story written by Isak Denisen (AKA Karen Blixen). It’s a story of two Danish sisters who take in Babette, a French refugee who is fleeing political persecution. Babette becomes their maid and lives with the sisters who have become the de facto leaders of an ascetic, Pietistic religious community founded by their late father. Babette ends up winning the lottery back in France and makes an elaborate for her new community to express her gratitude and on what is the 100th birthday of their host’s father.
The story is about all of these things. But mostly it’s a story about the power of a meal to transform our existence. I have spent the past several years thinking and reading and researching and celebrating the eucharist. This is a profoundly eucharistic film that about feasting and community and memory and hope.
It’s so simple and yet miraculously manages to also be profound. Much like the bread and the wine.
10. Top Moment: early morning fishing on Lake Ontario after a storm
As a spiritual practice, at the end of every year I like to remember key moments and savor them. 2022 was a gift of a year (just like all of them) full of many wonderful moments but this particular one has stuck with me.
In late July, our family rented a cottage right on Lake Ontario. I tend to hype up trips like this with unrealistic expectation and this helps nobody. The trip started off pretty low. On our first full day, the sky was dark and scary, the waves were big and choppy and the wind was howling something fierce. Our view from the shore reminded me of “The Fog Warning” by Winslow Homer without the boat or the halibut. Accessing the water was more precarious than we expected and the water seemed unswimmable for our kids. It was hard to imagine that changing. Alas.
It stormed wicked hard that night but the morning brought a new day. It’s hard to even re-imagine how magnificent were the colors of that sunrise. The picture, of course, can’t do it justice. It was like a tasteful warm-toned tie-dye of sky bleeding into the water which reflected its glory back. It was almost like a mirror, like if I hung upside down from the tree, it would have looked the same.
That morning, my wife sat on the shore with her Bible and her coffee, enjoying both of God’s revelations. I climbed down the rocks into the quiet waters with my fishing pole. I walked out maybe 25 or 30 yards until the water was about waste deep. It was a bit cold and the morning air was colder. I had to wear my puffer jacket and I was warm enough.
Eventually the sunrise woke the kids. They were sleeping in the bunkroom whose large and curtainless window opened up to the horizon. They came out shivering in their PJs with squeals of joy and also “I’m hungry.”
I caught no fish and I was supremely happy.