Month: May 2026

Good deeds for animals in need, Nantucket edition

A friend just posted pictures of sandpipers on Flickr and it made me think of walking on the beach on Nantucket with my grandmother. She had the technique for walking on soft sand down and when I was a teenager and she was in her 70’s I had to work to keep up

She would get up early every day to go walk on the beach. I am a morning person so I would often go with her. I loved the dew on the sand after a cool night.

My favorite story is one day walking by the ocean near Quidnet pond. A ray had beached itself – it was nearly four feet across, just lying by the edge of the ocean. Grandma walked past and without breaking stride she grabbed it and flipped it back into the water. It was so nonchalant, I couldn’t speak. She saw something that needed doing so she did it without interrupting her walk.

She passed away in 2011 at age 97, having been the first female GS-15 at the Department of the Treasury and meeting her first two great grandchildren.

Anniversary of an exacta

My father-in-law started going to the Preakness every year when his eldest daughter was in grad school at Hopkins (I’m pretty sure this is right. I don’t think anyone who reads this will be able to correct me if I’m wrong, but it ALSO doesn’t really matter for the story.) and continued for many years, eventually turning it into an annual family event.

One of these visits, May 15th, 2015, we were all excited to watch American Pharoah. He had won the Kentucky Derby already. He was a strong favorite to win the Preakness as well.

If you’ve never been to a horse race, this may be news – the featured race is usually not the only race of the day. It’s just the one everyone spent a lot of money on. The earlier races are often smaller fields, and there’s often a very heavy favorite. Let me tell you, it is super boring to bet on a horse running at 2:3 odds. Especially if you, like me, don’t bet large amounts. Winning a $2 bet and earning like $1.25 is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it’s not exactly exciting. So I liked to bet exactas. This means you pick the horse to win AND you pick the horse to come in second (you can do up to five but the odds of that are so low it heads back into boring territory again).

In 2015, I bet the exacta on the Preakness. I picked American Pharoah to win and long shot Tale of Verve to finish second. I’ll save you looking it up – this is the order they finished. I won about $340 on a $5 bet. It’s my biggest win at the track ever, by a good bit. This is partly because I do not bet large amounts – betting is fun in moderation, but it gets problematic fast.

It took me four days to finish this post and it ended up not being that interesting but I’m going to publish it anyway and you can’t stop me.

Egg with a hat

I love cooking with this thing.

A griddle on top of a gas range. There are two pieces of bread on top. Each has a small circle taken out of it. The circles are on the griddle next to the bread. In the hole where the circles were are eggs cooking

It’s a carbon steel griddle from Made In, if you’re interested in getting one.

I particularly like using it for this recipe. My dad called it egg with a hat. I don’t think he made it up but I’ve never heard of it anywhere else. I haven’t looked it up, though. It’s pretty simple. Use a glass and make a hole in a piece of bread. Put some butter on the bread and some butter on the griddle. When the butter is hot, put the bread on butter-side up. Let it cook for a minute, then flip it over and dump a salted egg into the hole. After it cooks for a bit, flip the whole thing over. Ideally you want the white part solid and the yolk a little runny. To serve, put it on a plate and put the “hat” piece of bread on top of the egg.

You can obviously jazz this up in all sorts of ways but I’ve honestly never bothered. Easy, delicious, reminds me of my dad.