lunch

The Trump administration spent Friday fighting to avoid restoring $4 billion in food assistance in jeopardy due to the government shutdown, suggesting it might need to “raid school-lunch money” in order to comply with court orders.

The claim was part of a break-neck appeal in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, where the government hoped to duck a court order that would force it to pay out for food stamps — formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — through November.

“There is no lawful basis for an order that directs USDA to somehow find $4 billion in the metaphorical couch cushions,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett A. Shumate wrote in the appeal.

The administration’s only option would be to “to starve Peter to feed Paul” by cutting school lunch programs, Shumate wrote.

On Friday afternoon, the appellate court declined to immediately block the lower court’s order, and said it would quickly rule on the merits of the funding decree.

SNAP benefits are a key fight in the ongoing government shutdown. California is one of several states suing the administration to restore the safety net program while negotiations continue to end the stalemate.

Millions of Americans have struggled to afford groceries since benefits lapsed Nov. 1, inspiring many Republican lawmakers to join Democrats in demanding an emergency stopgap.

The Trump administration was previously ordered to release contingency funding for the program that it said would cover benefits for about half of November.

But the process has been “confusing and chaotic” and “rife with errors,” according to a brief filed by 25 states and the District of Columbia.

Some states, including California, have started disbursing SNAP benefits for the month. Others say the partial funding is a functional lockout.

“Many states’ existing systems require complete reprogramming to accomplish this task, and given the sudden — and suddenly changing — nature of USDA’s guidance, that task is impossible to complete quickly,” the brief said.

“Recalculations required by [the government’s] plan will delay November benefits for [state] residents for weeks or months.”

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island ordered the full food stamp payout by the end of the week. He accused the administration of withholding the benefit for political gain.

“Faced with a choice between advancing relief and entrenching delay, [the administration] chose the latter — an outcome that predictably magnifies harm and undermines the very purpose of the program it administers,” he wrote.

“This Court is not naïve to the administration’s true motivations,” McConnell wrote. “Far from being concerned with Child Nutrition funding, these statements make clear that the administration is withholding full SNAP benefits for political purposes.”

The appeal could extend that deadline by as little as a few hours, or nullify it entirely.

But the latter may be unlikely, especially following the appellate court’s decision late Friday. The 1st Circuit is currently the country’s most liberal, with five active judges, all of whom were named to the bench by Democratic presidents.

While the court deliberates, both sides are left sparring over how many children will go hungry if the other prevails.

More than 16 million children rely on SNAP benefits. Close to 30 million are fed through the National School Lunch Program, which the government now says it must gut to meet the court’s order.

But the same pool of cash has already been tapped to extend Women, Infants and Children, which is a federal program that pays for baby formula and other basics for some poor families.

“This clearly undermines the Defendants’ point, as WIC is an entirely separate program from the Child Nutrition Programs,” McConnell wrote.

In its Friday order, the 1st Circuit panel said it would issue a full ruling “as quickly as possible.”

Starting Sunday, actor Jason Ritter will be back onscreen as attorney Julian Markston in Season 2 of the CBS legal drama “Matlock,” loosely inspired by the 1980s and ’90s Andy Griffith show of the same name. He still gets a thrill when he thinks about the cast he gets to work with, which includes Skye P. Marshall, Beau Bridges and Oscar winner Kathy Bates.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

“You almost, but not quite ever, forget that you’re working with an absolute acting legend,” Ritter says. “Kathy is so sweet and so kind and such a team player and collaborator that it helps to sort of stop that voice in your head from going like ‘It’s Kathy Bates!’ every time it’s a scene with her.”

The 45-year-old L.A. native, part of an entertainment family that includes his late father, sitcom legend John Ritter, didn’t offer up many details about the new season but did say viewers can expect more on-the-edge-of-your-seat episodes. (If you need a refresher of last season, episodes of “Matlock” are available on Paramount+.)

“It has the same pace and fun mystery as the first season, but now my character’s secrets have been revealed,” says Ritter, who regularly posts about the show and his fellow actors on Instagram along with humorous bits.

At home with actor-wife Melanie Lynskey, whom he married in 2020, and their 6-year-old daughter, there aren’t any great mysteries that need to be solved, but there is work to do before bed.

“When midnight starts,” Ritter says, “we’re probably finishing up the jobs, as we call them — you know, the dishes and the chores and cleaning everything up, which is a lovely habit that I’ve gotten into from [my wife]. I always used to just wake up to the nightmare from the night before and I’ve learned to really appreciate waking up to a clean area.”

After lights out and some sleep, his ideal Sunday picks up hours later and is filled with plenty of coffee, some miniature golf or a nature walk and more.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: A different kind of call time
I will wake up usually at 7. If our daughter is going to school, then I have to wake up at 7 so I can start making her lunch and getting stuff ready. But if she’s having a bit of a sleep-in [on the weekend], then I still have to wake up at 7 to make sure everything times out. And then I’ll make her little lunch and her breakfast. While she’s eating breakfast, she usually gets to watch an episode of something. That’s my prime scrolling through social media time.

9:30 a.m.: Time for more coffee
We would all pile in the car, and our first stop would probably be a coffee stop. We are a big coffee family — not our daughter. We always make a pot of coffee in the morning. And even though we’ve had several cups already, we’ll stop at Go Get Em Tiger, one of our favorite coffee places in L.A. We’ve come to know a lot of the baristas there, so we get to chat about life and everything. And then we’ll be back on the road.

10 a.m.: Miniature golf or a ‘beauty’ walk
Our daughter and I will go to Castle Park, which is the miniature golf place in Sherman Oaks. My daughter and I have really bonded over miniature golf, and that’s sort of our little thing. Any miniature golf course has a real special place in my heart, but Castle Park is the place that I went to as a kid. The course is basically the same. It’s just so fun to watch [our daughter] get better and better at golf; even though, recently she’s become obsessed with par.

If mini golf didn’t take up so much time, my daughter and I like to go on these little beauty walks where she gets on her scooter and puts her helmet on. We just walk around the neighborhood, and she can’t pick any flowers. But we can pick up little flowers or leaves off the ground. So anything that she sees that’s beautiful, she picks up, and we make a little bouquet. And what’s so amazing about it for me is to see what she finds beautiful on those walks.

1 p.m.: A chopped salad and fries for lunch
There’s a place called Angelini Osteria that has a salad that I really enjoy. It’s called the Alimentari Chopped Salad. It’s got avocado and chicken and bacon and currants and almonds. It comes with two dressings, but I usually just do the sort of lemony kind of oily dressing. And it is just so delicious. I am the only meat eater in my family. At some point, maybe my conscience will get the better of me, and I’ll switch over to their diet. Angelini also has very good french fries. When we’re on the road and the lunch that I’ve packed hasn’t been enough for [my daughter], french fries is one of those safe things that if we’re in a bind, we can pick them up from almost anywhere.

2 p.m.: Time for the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Another favorite thing that I would do is go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I just love that place. It’s so fascinating. It’s one of those places that if someone’s coming in from out of town, I love showing them. I love taking them there without telling them anything about it and just watch them kind of explore. And it’s just such a mysterious, magical place.

5 p.m.: Fresh escape room fun
Then I would see if I could get a bunch of my friends together, and we would go do an escape room somewhere in town. It’s just one of my favorite things to do, and they’re all over the place in Los Angeles. I would go to maybe 60out or Maze Rooms or one that I had never heard of. There’s an app called Morty that helps find escape rooms and keep track of the ones you did if your memory is poor like mine. If I can’t convince my friends to do another one right after in the same location, then we would be done by 6. It would be time to go back home and make our daughter’s dinner and get her through the entire dinner-bath time-bedtime phase.

9 p.m.: Dinner and “The Bachelor” before bed
My favorite thing is when Melanie and I order in from a place called Bulan Thai Vegetarian Kitchen. It has these incredibly delicious hot wings. Our daughter will be asleep in the other room. And we get to eat some delicious Thai food and watch some silly show or some serious show.

If our daughter has gone to sleep around 8, this will usually be maybe 9, 9:30 depending on if I’ve fallen asleep in the bed next door. This is also why sometimes it gets so late and bleeds into the next day. Because by the time we get to have our alone fun, dinner and watching time, it’s 9:30, 10, and some of those “Bachelor” episodes are two hours long.

And yes, I promise that somewhere in this day, I have showered. [Laughs] That is another very important element of our day. It’s the one that can go by the wayside. But we always try to check in with each other. Like, “Have you showered today? Have you showered? OK, you go and then I’ll go.”

From a terrifying cliff climb, to trekking in the Andes, and trying (and failing) to get a selfie with a llama, our writer Sara Wallis had an extreme adventure in Peru

Clinging on to the side of a vertical cliff, 980ft high, I tried desperately not to look too far up or down – either view was terrifying. I’d not been in Peru for very long before I found myself literally on the edge, with my comfort zone far away on solid ground (ideally at a hotel spa).

Just below me, the 69-year-old Canadian lady in my group mused out loud that her travel insurance probably didn’t cover a ­pensioner scaling an iron ladder up a rock face. But here we all were, nearly at the incredible glass pod ­restaurant hanging off the top of the mountain, and a very long way from the bottom.

Having arrived in the stunning ancient South American city of Cusco a couple of days earlier, I was on a G Adventures group tour with like-minded travellers, all keen to tick Peru and the Inca wonder of Machu Picchu off their bucket list. We had been lulled into a false sense of security on day one with a peaceful exploration of the Pisac ruins, taking in staggering scenery, a rich history and curious llamas. But there is nothing more bonding for strangers than the Sacred Valley’s Via Ferrata (iron path), which I assumed was a gentle incline but turned out to be a thigh-burning, stomach-churning lesson in “doing your activity research”.

Grasping for the fixed iron rungs and at one point having to wobble across a tight-rope “bridge”, attached by a carabiner to a steel life-line, it’s no wonder G Adventures lists this as Your OMG Day. Video footage was immediately sent to my shocked kids. As a reward, we enjoyed a dizzying culinary experience at Skylodge, a transparent 1,310ft-high dining capsule. Travellers can – if they have nerves of steel – sleep overnight, but lunch was enough for me.

And we still had the small matter of getting back down. “Zip line or rappel?” asked the tour guide, as if he was offering tea or coffee. Hmm, launch myself off the ­mountain at speed or descend backwards from a rope? Abseiling down turned out to be another heart-stopping ordeal, but one I don’t regret for a second… although I did kiss the ground at the end.

Ancient Inca vibes

Having spent weeks examining my packing list, complete with deep critical analysis of water bottles and hiking socks, it’s fair to say I was keen to be prepared for my three-day hike to Machu Picchu. Rather than join the backpacking masses on the Inca Trail, G Adventures also offers an alternative, lesser-known Lares Trek option.

While it isn’t the exact route of the Incas, the Lares Trek takes in ­spectacular scenery and weaves through remote Andean communities. And this is the best bit – no one else was there… Mostly alone in this incredible landscape – unless you count alpacas, llamas and the odd sheep – we barely saw another human, let alone a backpacker. And which tourist wants to see another tourist? Not me.

Hiking past misty mountains, lagoons, valleys, waterfalls and glaciers, with falcons and condors flying overhead, this spectacular 20.5-mile trek is a hidden gem. Only me and Aussie traveller Biljana had chosen the Lares Trek, so for a few days it was just us and our guide Paulo – a man with the patience of a saint. “How many miles to go, Paulo? Please can you adjust my walking poles? Can we stop for another photo? Is it lunch time yet…” Ad infinitum.

Setting off from Ollantaytambo, the trek is shorter than the Inca Trail, but much higher, reaching the Pachacutec pass at 15,350ft on day two. You can’t help but feel the altitude, which makes the steep ascents even more challenging (the word breathtaking takes on a whole new meaning). But it’s worth the slow and steady climb to admire the snowy peak of Colquecruz at the top. Reaching the Lares Hot Springs at the end of the final day was a heavenly incentive – medicinal, mineral waters for those aching muscles.

The next day came the grand finale as we toured Machu Picchu, the 15th century Lost City of the Incas, perched majestically on a mountain ridge. Arriving on a scenic train from the town of Aguas Calientes, we wandered the site’s temples and terraces and saw the iconic Sun Gate. Spiritual, magical, historical – ­whatever you might make of it, the impact of the Unesco world heritage site is awe-inspiring.

Talk about in-tents…

If you’re going to do something, do it right and if that means a few home comforts, I’m here for it. Part of G Adventure’s Geluxe Collection, this premium tour offers intrepid adventure, but with a five-star twist. Have you still hiked to Machu Picchu if you’ve slept in a posh tent and eaten nothing but four-course restaurant-standard meals? Yes you have. Can anyone turn down a hot water bottle when you’re wearing five fleeces at night in the freezing Andes? I nearly cried with gratitude.

My hiking pal Biljana won’t mind me saying but neither of us are natural campers (hotels with walls and a bed, please). So our jaws dropped open when we saw our trek “digs”. Cots with air mattress, sleeping bag and blankets, with portable toilets and showers along the way, meant a proper rest to focus on the task at hand. Thoughtful touches included a little bag of hotel-style amenities, including shampoo and bug spray, while a team of porters (along with mules and donkeys) carried all our camping gear.

Chef Marco whipped up incredible meals along the way, from hearty porridge and soups to fresh fish, meats, salads and exquisite desserts including a celebration cake at the end. There was a glass of champagne waiting at the top of the highest peak, snacks on tap and hot coca tea to tackle the altitude and warm the spirits. The team would pack up our camp every morning, skip past us easily on the trail (cool as you like, hands in pockets, while we were puffing and panting), unload it all at the next location and create another oasis of luxury. On one occasion a mule did a runner and a porter went off in hot pursuit at dawn for several miles to lure it back. Heroes, legends, icons… and us? Happy campers.

Sweet potato

Mashed, spiced, baked, boiled, no matter what you’re eating in Peru, it will likely involve a potato, possibly even in your breakfast or dessert. Peru is renowned for potato diversity (more than 4,000 varieties) with a long history of cultivating the crop that goes all the way back to the Incas.

Quinoa, corn and trout are also Peruvian staples, while guinea pigs, or “cuy”, (cover your ears, pet lovers) are bred to be eaten as a delicacy on special and sacred occasions. OK, I bailed out of tasting a guinea pig wearing a crown at King Cuy, but I did get the chance to make my own empanada, a bit like a pasty, with a community in the rural village of Cuyo Chico in the Sacred Valley. By the time you’ve washed it down with a chicha morada, a spiced purple corn drink, you’re practically a local.

Drama llama

Llamas and alpacas have become the poster animals of the Andes. Commonly spotted on the trails, these iconic, gentle creatures will ­occasionally bother to turn their heads in your direction. Then, utterly bored, they will wander off just in time to ruin your selfie. By day four I could just about tell the difference – llamas are bigger, pack animals, while alpacas are fluffier, with a face like a teddy bear.

Speaking of which, a little footnote on that famous Peruvian bear, since everyone’s first question to me was: “Did you meet Paddington?” I did spot him waiting patiently by the train to Machu Picchu. I couldn’t tell you if he had a marmalade sandwich under his hat, but I was very glad to see this modest nod to the beloved bear, and not (yet) some awful tacky Paddington Land. Respect.

Book the holiday

• Several airlines, including Iberia and British Airways, operate flights from London to Cusco via Lima with fares from £650 return.
• G Adventures offers a nine-day Peru and Machu Picchu: Comfortable Camping on the Inca Trail (Lares Trek option), part of the Geluxe Collection, from £2,999pp with accommodation, meals, transport and guided tours. Flights extra. gadventures.com
• More info at peru.travel

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