Some thoughts
And clearing out my open tabs
Hi Friends,
It’s been awhile since I’ve written. Like most people, I’m horrified by the images coming out of Israel and Gaza, sad for the families of innocent civilians killed and suffering in both, and fed up that the same rhetoric has been thrown around for decades while nothing actually changes for people living in some of the worst conditions in the world.
When touring museums and monuments that remember genocide, like in Berlin, Siem Reap, Sulaymaniyah and elsewhere, I always think…”how did this happen?” How did the whole world sit there and allow this? This week, it seems we’re seeing how. We see photos of carnage and brutality. We register that it’s horrific. We talk about it with our friends and family, post something on social media, and go back to our zoom calls or scrolling Instagram. I’m not sure what else we can really do, to be honest, but it feels wrong to be witnessing atrocities in real-time then going to work or getting drinks with friends. I fear that in 30 years a younger generation will ask, “how did you let this happen?” And we won’t have much to say for ourselves. We were here. We knew what was happening. We were sad about it. And then we went about our days.
The ability to ignore genocide is nothing new, and even recent. (See: Uyghurs, Rohingya, etc.) Some differences here are that there are more images and more Americans with relatives in and emotions about both places. To watch it unfold then go back to scrolling feels especially bizarre.
Comfort foods
A few nights ago, we had barely anything in the fridge but were feeling extremely blah and did not want to go to the store (delivery is not available in our neighborhood after 7pm, a major shift from Chicago). We did have some cubes of roasted butternut squash, a shallot, and half an onion, and we always have pasta. The result—caramelized onions and shallot with roasted butternut squash cubes seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary, tossed with spaghetti (plus some pasta water), topped with chopped pecans and breadcrumbs (both sautéed in olive oil), and a generous grating of the last nub of parmesan—was one of the best things I’ve eaten all year.
We had an Island Orchard Cider Pomona in the fridge, saved from a trip to Door County this summer. The cider, with a viscosity more like a dessert wine, is aged in American oak for a year and sweet with just a tiny bit of tartness. We had been saving it for…I don’t know what. A special occasion? Now that it’s finally cooler in Louisiana it seemed as good a time as any, and it was the perfect pairing.
This morning it was downright chilly. It felt like fall! (And we now had groceries.) So I cut an apple in half and scooped out the seeds plus a little extra, then baked the apples for 20 minutes. I filled the holes in the halves with a mix of cinnamon, cardamom, brown sugar, melted butter and oats and baked another 20 minutes. Nathan made french toast and we spread baked apple goodness across the slices. What a treat.
Links on Israel/Palestine
Some history. And a chronology (Washington Post)
More background/context if you prefer audio (Pod Save the World)
What is Hamas, and what’s happening in Israel and Gaza? A simple guide. (BBC)
Questions and answers (Human Rights Watch)
We cannot cross until we carry each other (Jewish Currents)
Netanyahu bears responsibility for this war (Haaretz)
Explanations are not excuses (NY Mag)
Where the Palestinian project goes from here (New Yorker)
What does occupation look like?
U.S. response to Israel-Hamas war draws fury in the Middle East (NYT)
Any travel lover will identify with this boy:
Click through the slides below:
How to avoid spreading misinformation
And some lighter things
My delirious trip to the heart of Swiftiedom (NYT)
I’m no Taffy Brodesser-Akner, but I also wrote about Taylor for work (The Advocate)
How to create a new apple (Sporkful)
Is an all meat diet what nature intended? (New Yorker—I want to send this to so many people I know.)
Your sweaters are garbage. The quality of knitwear has cratered. (Atlantic)
China keeps trying to crush them. Their movement keeps going. (NYT)
This chef wants people to eat more invasive species (Times-Picayune)
I love her ⤵️
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
An oral history of Mamma Mia (Vogue)
Samuel L. Jackson in conversation (Vulture)
What would Jamal Khashoggi think of Saudi Arabia today? (Washington Post)
Jonathan Groff on coming out to his brother in Italy (CN Traveler)
Airbnb really is different now
Whenever IVF sets me back, I travel (CN Traveler)
To Andrés, this intensity is just part of the job description. "[Chefs and cooks] have one of the greatest responsibilities in the world," he says. "We touch everything: agriculture, labour, immigration, the environment, diplomacy, national security. If we are not using our voices to say something, to help make the world a better place, why are we here?" The man who created an army of culinary first responders (BBC)
The food industry pays influencer dieticians to shape your eating habits
Sitting all day increases your dementia risk, even if you exercise
Jimmy Buffett does not live the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle (NYT - from 2018. RIP. See also Paul McCartney’s remembrance of Buffett.)
How cooking videos took over the world
An update: Last time, we talked about how it was not a good time to visit Maui. That’s changed in some areas.
Coming soon: A trip to Martinique, an eater’s guide to Door County, and much more.
Thanks for reading.
–Rebecca 💛
The Washington Post link hardly mentions the sick ISIS-level massacre/pogrom on Israel - the journalist describes it as a "raid". Did this not strike you as being rather inaccurate and downplayed? No explanation is enough to explain what those bastard Palestinian terrorists did to those people. Plus there is no mention of the thousands of years connection of Jews to that area: Judea and then why they need it in today's world where it's been shown hundreds of times over they are safe in no single country in the entire world. So there's some of my thoughts!