friday five, no. 7 🍹

hello friends,

this week i stayed busy with work stuff and i think i cooked a lot more, which makes me happy, but you know what i hate? dishes. we have a dishwasher, which is a plus, but i really hate washing all of the bowls and spoons and things that i end up using whenever i bake or cook anything. cooking three meals a day would be immeasurably easier if there were no dishes to do after each one. first world problems. i also find that each week i tend to experiment with new dishes, which i like, but it also takes a lot of energy, so give me your quarantine staple recipes! anything that you make on a weekly basis that isn’t exhausting (the chickpea pasta i sent in my first newsletter is mine).

five things i loved this week:

asian mart (it’s difficult for me to get to chinatown and hmart at this time, but i found this amazing site that ships you things like boba, seasonings, sauces, and asian snacks, and i just got my first box this week; i’m super excited about it)

chrissy teigen’s famous banana bread (i’ve made a million and one banana bread recipes and this one is the best; it’s the vanilla pudding mix that makes the difference. a review from a party i once brought it to: “this banana bread...fucks”)

google is allowing tab grouping starting next week (as someone who always has at least 70 tabs open at a time, i am incredibly excited about this)

din tai fung-style cucumbers (i’ve made these twice in the past week and yes, they’re a lot of work, but they are 100% worth it and taste exactly like the ones at din tai fung)

diners, drive-in, and dives (don’t ask me why i’m rewatching this, but i genuinely love guy fieri; he’s so relentlessly positive, and i noticed that it’s really difficult to tell when he doesn’t like something, because he really makes an effort to say something good about it and give the restaurant positive exposure. pretty much all i do in my free time is rewatch food network shows—there’s something about them that calms me, even the stressful ones like chopped and cutthroat kitchen; it’s almost like white noise, and they’re perfect for when i don’t have the mental space to start a new show or movie. my mom and my sister are obsessed with criminal minds and it sounds like a show i’d really enjoy, and yet, i just...have no desire to learn the rules of a new universe. food network never disappoints me)

five things i read this week:

‘mad max: fury road’: the oral history of a modern action classic, the new york times (i wish this piece was longer; it was truly fascinating to read about the journey that it took to get this movie made, and seeing how beautifully it paid off. still one of my top three favorite movies of all time, i really can’t say enough good things about it, and i could probably spend three hours talking about all of the trivia, practical effects, and thematic elements that made it a perfect movie. also, hot tip that i just learned from reddit: if you keep getting blocked by the paywall, refresh it, and when the text appears for a brief second, hit the ‘escape’ key)

68 bits of unsolicited advice, the technium (so many good nuggets of wisdom here; many of them are things you’ve heard before, but written in such an articulate way that they’re memorable—i was going to quote one, but i don’t think i can pick a favorite)

the day the live concert returns, the atlantic (i promise i don’t always talk about dave grohl this much, but he captures the shared experience and energy of live music so beautifully. lately, i’ve felt very tenderly about places i normally don’t like—mostly crowded bars and clubs—and i think this is why. qotd: “i don’t know when it will be safe to return to singing arm in arm at the top of our lungs, hearts racing, bodies moving, souls bursting with life. but i do know that we will do it again, because we have to. it’s not a choice. we’re human. we need moments that reassure us that we are not alone. that we are understood. that we are imperfect. and, most important, that we need each other. i have shared my music, my words, my life with the people who come to our shows. and they have shared their voices with me. without that audience—that screaming, sweating audience—my songs would only be sound. but together, we are instruments in a sonic cathedral, one that we build together night after night. and one that we will surely build again.”)

‘the impossible has already happened’: what coronavirus can teach us about hope', the guardian (rebecca solnit is an incredibly gifted writer, and i was particularly enamored with the way she uses these really poignant metaphors to discuss disaster and rebirth)

yelp reviewers’ authenticity fetish is white supremacy in action, eater (i reread this piece after the alison roman and chrissy teigen drama—i’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, obviously—and while i’ve read a lot of these takes about the double-edged sword of “authenticity,” what i like about this one is that she identifies patterns using language from yelp reviews. she finds a negative correlation between star rating and how often reviewers use the word “authenticity” and notes that people talk more negatively about the service at “authentic” asian and latin restaurants vs. european ones, noting that this bias mimics patterns of white supremacy in other parts of society. it seems like a small thing, but it’s another way in which asian—and latinx—people are such a crucial part of the u.s. workforce but are continually “othered” and thus struggle with limited economic mobility. i’m writing a piece right now about cultural colonialism and the limits of “authenticity,” but trying to keep all of my petty thoughts toward alison roman out of it, so i’ll just say them here: what kills me about the “please to buy my cutting board” is that she defends herself by saying it was a reference to a russian cookbook and not an imitation of marie kondo. which is believable but not acceptable, because she’s still mocking a population of people that were historically discriminated against in the u.s., and it’s honestly really gross)

friday five: may 15th, 2020 🍹