Amena:
Okay. Y'all, it is possibly Tuesday when you're listening to this or whatever day you're listening to this, you making it. Okay. You making it. You taking your time to get through the week. You making it, okay? We're here. We made it. We made it into February now. I just want you to pat yourself on the back or say a nice thing to yourself because you made it. Also, this week I want to first talk about ashiness and just really quickly, I just want to get into this for a second because it's a thought that I've been having. And I like to think about things and then come on here and talk to y'all about it. So I have been seeing an acupuncturist lately. I don't know if any of you, maybe you also have experience seeing an acupuncturist. And I realized I probably have been seeing my acupuncturist off and on for the past several months and I realized in the last month or so that it's probably a high percentage of times that my acupuncturist has seen me ashy. And if you know you know about being ashy and I just, something about ashiness for people of darker skin, there is like an embarrassment level to it. Your mother, your grandmother, different people in your family were like oiling you down, greasing you up because they don't want you to be ashy out in public because why?
Amena:
Because ashiness equals embarrassment and I'm just going to keep it really live with y'all. I am a person who loves to moisturize because I just have dry skin in general. So I do love to moisturize. But I will say the pandemic has brought me to a level of like way less preparation for certain things. And a part of that is I'm not getting dressed in certain clothes. I'm not really being seen by a whole lot of people. So sometimes I just take that shower and I'm like, I just don't even feel like moisturizing anything right now. So I don't. But let me tell you the problem with that, that I didn't realize is when I go into my acupuncturist, there are certain pressure points that he needs to get to. So he'll be like, okay, when you come in pull your pants leg up past to your calf or something.
Amena:
But I can't really see my calf all that well from where I'm laying down. And then he turns the lights down. And I honestly forget until recently I went in there and actually looked down at my legs and it was like I felt three generations of embarrassment because I was so ashy. And I feel like I want to... It's like there are certain service providers that there are certain things that I want to ask them questions about, but I don't know how to ask the question without maybe it's stepping over a boundary of things we're not supposed to talk about. Like I wanted to ask my acupuncturist, my acupuncturist is a white man. So I was like, do you notice when people are in here and they're ashy or you don't notice it at all? And I don't know if he would notice because I don't know if he grew up having conversations about being ashy.
Amena:
I don't know. But in general I would want to know of acupuncturists, do you notice when people are being ashy? Okay. Other people I want to ask questions of are gynecologists. I want to know do gynecologists notice if your lawn is manicured or not? I really do want to know about that. And I'm like, I know they see a lot of vaginas every day. Maybe it's not a concern for them. Maybe they're like, hey, I see some lawns that are super landscaped. See some lawns that just let it grow until, and maybe it doesn't really matter to them, but those are questions that I think about when I'm laying on the acupuncturist table, especially now that I've discovered that my acupuncturist has probably seen me ashy more times than I realized.
Amena:
So what am I trying to say to you? Right now if you're somewhere where you can just go ahead and put lotion on is what I'm trying to tell you. Just save yourself from any ashy embarrassments. This is not at all what this episode is about. This is not what we're talking about today. But y'all know I like to come on here and just tell you some things I've been contemplating, things I've been thinking about. This episode is actually going to be a really fun one for me to record because I'm not only excited to share this with you, but because it's going to be a recurring episode that you will see pop up here every now and then. We're going to talk about her favorite things. And today that her is me. But we've got some very exciting guests coming up that will also be doing her favorite things episodes.
Amena:
And if you've been following the podcast for a while, you'll notice that sometimes a guest will come on and I just do sort of like a combination between an interview and a conversation with them about whatever we decide to talk about. But I've also been having a lot of fun developing some episodes here that will repeat over time. So HER Favorite Things is one of those episodes that will repeat. She Funny, which is an episode where I interview women of color comedians, those episodes will be reoccurring here. We're also getting ready to put out... Well, actually, as you are listening to this, if you are listening to these every week, we had an episode last week that was my first hashtag 40 AF episode. And I have been wanting and wanting and wanting to do that on the podcast for a while. So I'm excited for us to have some episodes like this that when you see the titles, you'll know what to expect, and it gives us a chance to get to know the guests that are here in some different ways too.
Amena:
So I wanted to give you all a heads up about that so that you can check it out as we keep going here every week. Right? So we are talking about my favorite things today. And unfortunately this is not an Oprah's favorite things where I can be like, look, I've shared with you my favorite things. Now you are also going to receive these favorite things at your home. I do hope eventually that HER with Amena gets to that place where I can be like, we're doing a favorite things episode. We're talking about pizza. Every listener gets a pizza.
Amena:
I'm hoping to get to that point. Okay? So just keep tracking with me here. Who knows? Maybe you'll get some free pizza crust out of it. You never know what life has for you. Okay. So one of the favorite things that I was going to talk about is my favorite city to visit. And I have to say, my favorite city to visit is New York City. And maybe a lot of people would say that. I don't know. I feel especially poignant talking about my favorite city to visit because I have not been on a plane since March 2020. And that is not usual for my life. I normally... It'd be rare for me prior to the pandemic to go 30 days without being on a plane somewhere. I don't know what that means for my Delta status. I don't know. But I miss it so bad.
Amena:
I miss it so bad. I was actually talking to one of my best friends and I was telling her my top five food cities to visit and New York is top of my list. I feel like I said that, and now I need to tell you all the rest of the cities, right? New York is top of my list. I actually did one of my, I was about to say one of my favorite times, but I'm like, no, it's not one of my favorite times. It's the only time I've ever done this. My husband and I were in Philly for work. And we decided to just take a splurge and spend the rest of the weekend in New York. We scheduled a food tour with Famous Fat Dave, and it was a walking food tour of Manhattan and Famous Fat Dave has all these different types of tours you can do.
Amena:
And we walked New York with him for about four or five hours and ate cannolis. And we ate at this burger place that had like, it was like an Arabic version of the Big Mac. And we had pizza and we had scallion pancakes. I mean, it was amazing. So New York is still it's my top favorite city to visit period, but quickly about food cities. New York is on my number one. Next to New York is Chicago. Chicago is one of my favorite food cities. Shout out to everybody that's in Chicago, like the hot dogs, the pizza, just the restaurants. I mean, yo Chicago is one of my favorite food cities. Also, Austin, Texas is one of my favorite food cities between the tacos and the donuts. My favorite donut place of all time is in Austin, Texas, Gourdough's. And there were a couple of events over the years that I've been doing where I would have to go to Austin for some reason every year.
Amena:
And it's just like a pilgrimage. If my husband's with me or whoever's with me and my sister-in-law, we make the pilgrimage to go to this particular Gourdough's food truck to get the donuts. And we normally go to a food truck not far from there to get the tacos. But I mean, really, it's hard to go wrong getting tacos in Austin, Texas. My other two favorite food cities... Oh, Philly was one of them because I just love a good sandwich y'all. So Philly with the cheese steak and the hoagie. And I actually prefer the hoagie to the cheese steak, but I would travel to Philly just to eat that. Okay. I would really do it. And I'm trying to think what my other food city was outside of these. I probably would say LA would probably be my fifth food city. And that was not even something I was going to come on here and tell y'all, but those are my food cities.
Amena:
So prior to the pandemic, when we traveled, it was mostly for work, for a gig or for a client or a meeting or something like this. And then we might, for our favorite cities, we might tack on a day or two before or a day or two after to just hang out. But one of the things that I've realized during the pandemic is that whenever we can travel safely again, I would love to have times that I traveled to some of these cities just to kick it. Not to tack onto the end of a work thing, but just to go and have four or five days in Chicago to just eat, then hang out. And then some of it too is also when we would be in town for work, we would get to go and do a couple of fun things but it was very rare that we would get to see some people that we really like in those cities because of how our work schedule was.
Amena:
So I miss that. I miss traveling in general, but I realized it's not really that I've missed traveling for work as much as I just miss traveling. So now I have a list of all these cities that I want to go to. But my favorite city to visit is New York City. And what can I say? Those of you that are listening that live in New York, it's like you know all the things and if any of you that don't live there that have visited you know all the things. I mean, New York is just, it's just an amazing place to me. It's my mojo city. It's the city that I have been back to at various junctures of life, various forks in the road, where there were decisions or something that I needed to make. And I somehow I'm always drawn back to New York during a time like that.
Amena:
I think what I realized the last time I was there and I think one of the last times I was there, I think the actual last time I was there was around November time of 2019. But before that I was there in April, in the spring and I was walking around, it was a trip to meet with a client and it was actually a last minute trip and I went alone and I was walking through the city and I was like, what do I love about this place? And think what I love about New York as an introvert is that you're there with all these people. Like when you're walking the streets, which most of the time when I'm there, I'm in Manhattan or Harlem somewhere in that vicinity. And like you're walking these like busy streets of New York. It's like mad people are in the streets walking along with you.
Amena:
But I think in a way, even though it is a big city and it's a busy place, I think also no one's worried about you. No one is paying that much attention to you. Even though you're in a crowd of people going a lot of places, you can still introvert. And in a way it becomes this place where, when I'm here in the South, it's very rare that you would be walking down the street and someone's not like, hey, how you doing? How you doing today? Oh, you walk here a lot? In the South, we're, we're starting a conversation with everyone. And when I'm in New York, people are just going about their business, doing their things. And in a way, even though it's a busy place, it almost gives me more silence and time to reflect. That's all I can explain about it.
Amena:
So I love that place. I love the food. I love the amount of things to choose from to do on a random Tuesday night. I actually contemplated moving to New York for a while in my twenties. I went and I stayed for a week. This wonderful and gracious couple. They were on vacation and they let me stay in their apartment for free. And only thing I had to do was walk their dog. So walked their dog and went and hung out. And I wanted to come into the city by myself because I wanted to see can I make it here by myself? I didn't want to go into a city like New York and think that I would be dependent on any friends or anything that were already there. And I ended up not moving there. Ended up staying here in Atlanta, which I don't regret now because shout out to everyone in New York that survives the winter.
Amena:
I've just been a Southern girl too long. And that was one of the biggest things that kept me from moving there. But I've been there just on vacation by myself. I went there for my 30th birthday with my best friend, Adrienne. I went to New York twice on a bus tour. Went to New York to work with some of the amazing clients I've had a chance to work with. It's just a phenomenal place. So favorite city to visit for me is New York City. And as soon as it is safe, I'm ready. I'm ready to go back to New York and just do all the things. Next question is what is my favorite food?
Amena:
I'm going to tell you the first thing that came to my mind is macaroni and cheese. Is that my favorite food? But I have to say, yeah, because I really can't think of another food that I would say is my favorite food. So we're going to go with macaroni and cheese right now. And the best macaroni and cheese I've ever had is here in Atlanta at Busy Bees soul food restaurant. And look, okay, this is coming from someone who is the mac and cheese maker in the family. I make the mac and cheese for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I make a good Mac and cheese, but that Busy Bees mac and cheese, it's like something is in there that I haven't even figured out how I could make at home. So favorite food for me, mac and cheese.
Amena:
Third question. Favorite way to eat food. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about this. My favorite way to eat food is in bed. Okay. I wonder if my memoir should be something where the title is that like, I feel like if I were to be true to myself, my memoir would be something like eating hoagies in bed and other tales of a poet and podcaster. I love to eat food in bed and I love to get food to go, which leads to being able to eat food in bed. Okay. And I'm laughing about that because I have realized in these years being married to my husband right, and any of you that have been in a relationship with someone a long time, it's so crazy how you could be in a relationship with someone a long time, but you're still like learning new things about them or realizing new things about them.
Amena:
So and I will say about this, I think too, when you've been with someone a long time, I'll say, especially for my husband and I, I feel like when we first got married we both have experienced divorce before. He experienced that from having been married and then divorced. And I experienced it as being a kid of divorce. So I feel like we spent the first two to three years of our marriage, just like, we need to do everything we can to hold this together. And I think a part of that was just leaning into each other's... I want to say like different wants or needs, even if you're like I don't really jive with that, or I don't really like it, but you just like lean into the other person. So one of the ways that I realized my husband was leaning into me was whenever we would go out and just decide we were going to eat out somewhere, he would always be do you want to go into the restaurant or do you want to get it to go? And I would always be like, I wanted to get it to go because why? I want to eat it in bed.
Amena:
And he would be like, all right. And my husband's real laid back. Okay. So it never dawned on me until after we'd been married awhile that he was really like, man, I love this girl, which is why I'm eating this food to go, but wouldn't it be better if we could eat the food while it was hot and eat it actually in the restaurant? So I was like, oh, I didn't realize that you felt this way. We had this whole conversation about it. So now we try to do... Well, of course, before the pandemic, we were trying to do more of like a give and take. Right. So I would try to have times where I could be like my husband likes his food hot. Like it just came out of the oven hot. He likes it like that. So sometimes we need to go into the restaurant and just eat the food in there. Some of it's like a broad thing with me that it's like, I want to eat my food, but I also want to be like dressed super comfortably, whatever. So do I love a dream date in a really nice restaurant where you can dress up and experience the ambience and the courses and the plating and the pairing of the wines and all like. I do love that, but I'm going to tell you what I love even more is getting food to go and eating it in bed.
Amena:
Now, part of why I learned to love this, again, is because I traveled for work. I remember very distinctly. I was emceeing an event in Philly and emceeing when you're emceeing an event, for me, emceeing is even more tiring than if I were just performing or speaking as like a keynote speaker there. Because if you're doing a keynote or you're performing as an artist, you typically have a slot of time, you're performing for 20 minutes or your keynote is going to be 30 minutes and you get there, you do your talk, you do your performance and you're done. But when you're emceeing, you are up on stage more than anyone else. And you're kind of carrying a lot of the emotional weight of like how the event's going. When the session ends on a high note, you're carrying that. If the session ends on more of like a contemplative of note, you're carrying that.
Amena:
So emceeing wears you out, even though I love doing it. So I emcee'd this event, I think I'd emceed for maybe three days in a row. And the event ended at like 4:00 on a Friday. And the venue was walking distance from the hotel where I was staying. I walked back to the hotel. I looked up a great place to get a really good hoagie. And the place that had the best Yelp reviews close by was actually something that looked like it was like a mom and pop convenience store but they also made hoagies inside. I take my little Uber, Lyft, whatever, over there, get my hoagie. Do I eat it in the car? Oh, no. I wait until I get back to the hotel. I change into my PJ's. I pull the comforter up to my neck. And I put the hoagie in my lap and I'm basically kind of holding the sandwich at my chest and eating it and listen, it's the best. And now that I am home and not traveling, I do still have some nights that I just like to eat in bed.
Amena:
Especially like a Friday night. I like to make myself a little snack platter situation and just eat it in bed. There's just something to me about eating in bed that is just glorious. It is one of my favoritest things, eating in bed. It's not my absolute favorite thing to do in bed, but it's one of my favorites. Next let's talk about the question says, what is my favorite way to cook? That's interesting. Favorite way to cook. I guess I would have to answer that by saying my favorite way to cook is unhurried and a new recipe and something that's not for, I was going to say like an event, but that's not what I mean. I mean like something that's not for a social gathering. That's my favorite way to cook. I do like cooking for social gatherings, but that has its own other type of satisfaction. If you've been listening to the podcast, you heard me telling you my stories about my foray into becoming like the Thanksgiving cook in the family. And so I still love that part. But my favorite way to cook is if I have a totally new recipe that I've never made, I buy all the ingredients to make it. And I just get to take my time following the directions and seeing where the directions lead.
Amena:
I also discovered about myself that even though I love to eat sweets, baking is not my thing favorite type of cooking. I love the eating part more than I love the cooking part when it comes to baking. And I think also I don't enjoy baking as much because baking is not something you can really play around with. You can't be like, I bet it's this much flour. I'm sure it's this much butter. Baking is more like a game of science. Whereas when you're cooking, you have some different things that you can try according to your own taste. You have a way you can make a sauce and decide do you like wine in it or not? Or do you like it with more or less butter? You have all these options of how you can make a thing. And so that's my favorite way to cook. Back in the day when my husband was deejaying every weekend, one of the things that I would do is I would have just like a night to myself on Friday night, he would go DJ and I would have a pasta night and sometimes I would find a recipe and make it. And other times, now this is the other, this is probably my second favorite way to cook.
Amena:
First favorite way was what I described to y'all earlier. But my second favorite way to cook is when you have a random assortment of things in your fridge, and you're trying to figure out how you make a dish out of that. So some pasta Fridays, I would have pasta, I'd have like a little bit of pecorino cheese, maybe a little bit of cheddar cheese. I might have some mushrooms, some leftover green onions and kale or something. And trying to figure out either combining a couple of recipes or just winging it and trying something and throwing some things together and see how they turn out. That is probably my second favorite way to cook. I think I would be a good Chopped contestant if chops had no time limit. If it was like, somebody brings you a box and they're like, take three days, then I'd be like a fantastic Chopped contestant.
Amena:
So that's my favorite way to cook. And I actually read an article not too long ago that talked about how cooking can encourage mindfulness. And I think that's why my favorite way to cook is to cook unhurried, when there's no expectation. Like me making a pasta dish that I've never made before is different from me making mac and cheese for the family on Thanksgiving. I love them both, but a little bit of the pressure is on because it's Thanksgiving and the food has to be like top-notch. And there recipes I know. So there is like a certain rhythm to entering a recipe when you know it and knowing your way around your own kitchen. I think there's something really wonderful about that to me. But when I'm in my kitchen making something I've never made before, it's like I feel very proud of myself at the end of it. And it's kind of creative to me to try out something new. So that's my favorite way to cook.
Amena:
Okay. Next question says favorite pizza toppings. Okay. Favorite pizza toppings of all time. These are like the basic toppings I have to have is mushrooms, green peppers and red onions. I have to have those three things. Even if I don't have a meat on it, those three things have to be on there. And then sometimes I might add pepperoni or sometimes I might add chicken. Just recently I tried adding Italian sausage just to see like, hey, what's this like? But those are pretty much like my standard pizza toppings. I was actually having a really interesting conversation with my best friend when we were talking through the favorite food cities to visit. And we were talking about pizza for a while because I also feel like pizza, first of all, rewind the tape. She asked me do I prefer thin crust or deep dish pizza? And that sent me on a whole memory train, where I was thinking about when I was growing up.
Amena:
I feel like the more I say this, the more I'm like back in horse and buggy days. But anyway, when I was growing up, Pizza Hut had brick and mortar restaurants, like full service restaurants that had like booths, think they had a salad bar in there. And I just remember for me and my friends at that era of life, which I guess would have been somewhere between us maybe being an elementary school, maybe through early high school for me, I was getting into high school in the mid 90s, right? It was like a celebratory place. It wasn't odd for someone to have their birthday party at Pizza Hut or for my mom to want to take us to Pizza Hut if my grades turned out good. And you sit down in the booth and order your pizza and they'd bring your pizza in the big, cast iron dish.
Amena:
And I was like for nostalgic reasons, I probably do prefer deep dish because of those Pizza Hut memories. But I really like them both. I told y'all how much I love New York. I traveled to New York for a while over the years, where New Yorkers that I would meet would always be like, well, which one do you like better, New York or Chicago? New York or Chicago? And I would be like, I don't know because I had never been to Chicago. So I was like, as far as I know, it's New York pizza. That's the one I love. And then I went to Chicago and I was like, I don't know, guys, that was delicious. I mean that deep dish. And I've been to Chicago enough times, like I've been to Gino's, I've been to Lou Malnati's, like that Chicago pizza.
Amena:
It's like I had to have surgery a few years ago and my good friend, Sandra, she and her husband actually sent us a frozen Lou Malnati's pizza that like when it gets to you, you can put it in the oven. And man, it was like one of the best things that ever happened to me. So I'm sorry, New Yorkers. I got to give that to Chicago. Like if I was the judge, I would give that round to Chicago on pizza. I can't speak to you about cheesecake or hotdogs. Okay. I can speak to you about hot dogs. And I also think Chicago wins that one too, but maybe New York wins on the cheesecake. I don't know. Y'all are going to have to fight that out without me. But I did mention to a friend of mine who's from Harlem that I loved Chicago pizza more than I love New York pizza. And she was like, wow. So you enjoy just eating lasagna that's masquerading as pizza? And I was like, oh gosh. Oh dear.
Amena:
So those are my favorite pizza toppings and pizza crust as well for you all. But let me know, Chicago, New York people, you're welcome to get in my DMs and plead your case. You're welcome to send me suggestions of places I must go the next time I visit your cities. I love Chicago and New York being in a war about pizza because it just means every time I go visit either place, I will just eat the pizza. So that always works out great for me. Last question is what is my favorite thing about being me? That's a hard question to answer, actually. I'll tell you the first thing that came to my mind. The first thing that came to my mind was my favorite thing about being me is that I can find some way to laugh in almost any situation.
Amena:
Most times that works in my favor. Every now and then it doesn't, though. But most times it works in my favor. But I feel like that's one thing I love about being me. I'm sure in therapy that there's some defense mechanism there about why I'm choosing to find things to laugh about in some situations that are not laughable at all, but I really do love to laugh. And I love noticing things that are funny in a situation that might not be that funny. So I think that's one of my favorite things about being me is my love of laughing. And I just love to be thinking about all of the odd things that we do as human beings that are funny. So that's probably one of my favorite things about being me. What are your favorite things about being you? I decided in this episode that the question, what is your favorite thing about being you, would be the one consistent favorite things question in all of these episodes that any guest that's here that's the question I want to ask. Because I think for many of us, some of us don't have this issue.
Amena:
Some of us just, we know we really do love ourselves. But some of us, we don't love ourselves and big up ourselves as much as we should. We're mean to ourselves or we say mean things to ourselves. We think negative things about who we are. And I think it's good to have a moment to remind yourself about something that you enjoy about you. And I think it's good to find ways to enjoy your own company. So as you are leaving this episode and going back into whatever life is like for you between work and just breathing air and whatever family stuff you may have going on, give yourself some time to be with you when you can. And I know for some of you, that's only going to be in the bathroom because of how your household is.
Amena:
That's my time. I'm alone. And that's it. Or that's my time I have to enjoy my own company. And I know for some of you it's been a long pandemic of being alone, much longer than you would ever plan to or ever intend to. So let's try this week to do whatever we need to do for our souls. For those of you that need more time to appreciate your own company, find even small ways to do that. And for those of you that are like, look, I've been enjoying my own company for like a year now. We're in a pandemic. I'm just here at home. I get that, too. And maybe what's better for you is to find some ways to stay connected to the people that you love and stay connected to the people that when you hang up the phone with them, you feel loved. You feel cherished, your cheeks hurt because you laughed a lot or your belly hurts because you laughed a lot. Let's remember to be gentle with ourselves, to do what we can to remind ourselves that we are loved, that we are worthy, that we are valuable people who bring value to all sorts of places and spaces where we go. So that's a few of my favorite things, y'all. I hope you'll share some of yours with me.
Amena:
Oh my gosh. That was a lot of fun talking to you all about that. I hope you enjoyed learning a few of my favorite things and I hope that you'll hit me up on Instagram and tell me one of your favorite things about being you. For this week's edition of Give Her a Crown, I want to shout out poet, playwright and novelist Ntozake Shange. She's the writer of choreopoem and Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. I first saw the play when I was in school at Spelman College, shout out to all my Spelmanites listening and seeing each character dressed in their signature color, seeing the dance and the music. It just changed my life.
Amena:
I was at an open mic a few years ago, and a young woman went up to the mic to read and she said, I want to read a passage from Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls. And I stopped her. I stopped to correct her like a good auntie should. I told her no, ma'am. You are reading from Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls. And I know that there is a movie version of this work, but I encourage you listeners to buy and read this book for yourself. And if you ever have the opportunity to see this work as a play and onstage, you should do it because it's beautiful and heart-wrenching and a wonderful. It is Black girl everything. Ntozake, thank for your words, for caring so much about Black women seeing themselves and their stories in your work. Ntozake Shange, give her a crown.
Amena:
Her with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.