Hola, mis amigos! Today I return for #AMonthofFaves– Week 2. Please be reminded that I chose not to partake in the prompts for every day they are given; instead, I am selecting the prompts from that week that I wish to respond to and including them all in one weekly post.

The prompts are A Day (or Weekend) in the Life (Dec. 9), #AMonthofFaves On the Screen or in Your Ear (Dec. 11), and #AMonthofFaves The Cook It, Bake It, or Drink it or Eat It Edition (Dec. 13). Nothing was really striking to me about the prompt for December 9th, so I’m going to jump right to On the Screen or in Your Ear.

#AMonthofFaves On the Screen or in Your Ear

In My Ear (this heading feels weird?)

I’m going to use this space as an opportunity to run my mouth about all the shows/movies/music that I spent this entire year talking about in my Instagram stories and Twitter feed. For the most part, this probably won’t even be new media from 2019, just stuff I started paying attention to this year.

Let me preface this section by saying that if you want to maintain the illusion that I am anything but basic, you should skip this section. Anything who thinks I have original taste will be sorely disappointed.

To start, my obsessions with Fleetwood Mac and Elton John really exploded this year. I’ve been listening to them for years (along with the rest of the known universe; trust me, I know that this is entirely basic), but for whatever reason, I got really into ’70s music this year. Including Jim Croce because, honestly why wouldn’t someone love him? I don’t know. I’ve talked about this book enough, but Daisy Jones and the Six also promoted my addiction to Fleetwood Mac; I basically exclusively listened to them as I was reading. No regrets there.

Another musical obsession of the past year was Kacey Musgraves. Her most recent album, Golden Hour, is so fantastic– I don’t really even have critiques, which feels impossible. I’m not really good at listening to individual albums, so I listened to her collective work instead of this album alone.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t listen to Lauren Daigle a lot this year, as well. Her voice is bomb. She’s like a Christian Adele, who I ALSO listened to a lot this year. Don’t say I’m wrong, because I’m not.

Oh also, THE HAMILTON SOUNDTRACK. I saw the show in July, and I may never recover from the wonder that is this Broadway masterpiece. I spent LITERALLY months waking up with the lyrics stuck in my head, and I wasn’t able to return to sleep until the entirety of the song had played out in the radio of my brain. It was a long period of time, but I enjoyed it.

Podcasts should count for this section, right? Here are the ones I listen to every week religiously:

• The Popcast with Knox and Jamie
• Office Ladies
• Criminal
• From the Front Porch

There are other podcasts I really enjoyed this year (Believed, In the Dark, Revisionist History, From the Front Porch, The Bible Binge, The Dropout), but these are my go-tos. I think there’s also a wide enough variety in those mentioned above that anyone could find something to enjoy!

On the Screen

For the first time ever, I watched all of the Oceans movies, spurred by the fact that I watched Oceans 8 and really enjoyed it. My husband was confused by my delight until he realized that I hadn’t seen any of its predecessors and didn’t recognize the tropes. Hence, an Oceans marathon occurred. I can’t say it was my favorite franchise, or even the top 5, but it was fun!

I watch A LOT of tv. Like, an embarrassing amount. We finished Game of Thrones with the rest of the universe in the summer, and that was depressing and disappointing. We also watched Chernobyl, and HOLY COW. That was really impressive. And depressing. When Stranger Things came back, we binged that, as well. I’m finishing out the year with the new season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (if you haven’t watched by now, I might be forced to disown you as a peer or friend) which is just as hilarious as ever. Because of my obsession with the whole Romanov thing, I tried to watch The Romanoffs on Amazon Prime, but never finished it. I stand by the fact that The Great British Baking Show is the best reality show in existence; I watched the new seasons as they became available on Netflix and watched back through the old episodes and spin-offs. Making It came back in December, so I jumped on that. I also watched through The Office probably three more times and Gilmore Girls and New Girl respectively once.

During the stint of time that I was paying for HBO (see the shows listed above; we had HBO Now for the amount of times those were in duration) I caught up on their exclusive documentaries, including Leaving Wonderland, The Inventor, At the Heart of Gold (which led to an obsession and then to the NPR podcast Believed), and Everything is Copy about Nora Ephron, all of which were pretty great. I do so love a good documentary.

#AMonthofFaves The Cook It, Bake It, or Drink it or Eat It Edition

Yay, food! I love to eat. I love to watch cooking shows (should they be included in this section? I might go for it later) and baking shows, and I like to try new recipes from Pinterest, even though they only work about 60% of the time. I love pretty cookbooks, even though I basically never use them. Here are the ones that I do use, sometimes:

• How to Cook Everything: It’s not an exaggeration; this literally has all the basics of how to cook anything I’ve ever looked for.
• Magnolia Table: I don’t really buy into the whole obsession people have with Chip and Joanna Gaines because Chip drives me as insane as is possible for a human being to drive another being that they don’t actually know in real life.
• Alternatively, I really love Molly on the Range, but I’ve never actually cooked anything from it. It’s super adorable, though.

I don’t have access to my recipe box at the current moment, so I won’t be sharing any of my recipes right now, but I can tell you that my signature dishes include oatmeal bread, homemade chicken noodle soup, zuppa toscana, sweet potato hash, eggroll in a bowl, chicken quesadillas, and Pasta Mama.

I’ve given it a quality amount of thought, and it seems pretty imperative to include here my favorite cooking shows. Here you go:

• The Great British Baking Show (I mean, duh.)
• The Final Table
• MasterChef
• Chef’s Table

There are others I watch when desperate, but these are, in my humble opinion, the most satisfying.

Closing Remarks:

That’s it, friends! All of my useless opinions shared for the world to see.

Until next time, happy reading!