TikTok, don't fail me now! READ MORE...
I’m planning to make fish and chips and a lot of the recipes I’ve found usually call for beer but some say soda water. I know the batter won’t really have the “beer” flavor if I were to use soda water but would it still be relatively the same aside from the difference in flavor?? submitted by /u/averyuniqueuzername [link] [comments]
The winning method may shock you! READ MORE...
It’s so smart! READ MORE...
It’s a flavorful foundation. READ MORE...
A culinary scientist’s tips for safely refreezing meat, produce, soups, and more.
Like it or not, every '80s bedroom trend seems to be creeping back—John Hughes-esque pink walls, Laura Ashley florals, and now, bed skirts. Call it grand-millennial, cottagecore, or even a touch of maximalism, but modern takes on this nostalgic detail might be just what your bed is missing (plus, they’re great for hiding storage). And don’t just take it from us—designers and brands, alike, are witnessing elevated demand. Read More >>
I tried to make orange fluid gel by boiling orange juice, adding gellan gum, letting it boil for a min then letting it set. then id blend it to a gel. but it wouldnt set at all. At this point i poured it back into the pan just as a last ditch effort i boiled it again, added a lil bit more gellan, and a tiny bit of water. Didnt work. What went wrong? I used 1g of gellan for every 100ml of fluid. The orange juice was just 5 freshly squeezed oranges submitted by /u/Historical-Berry8162 [link] [comments]
“I’m so here for this,” one person commented. READ MORE...
Few buildings in Hamburg feature such a jarring contrast between hulking, Brutalist concrete and lush greenery. This bunker started life in 1942 as part of the eight Flak towers, built during World War II to defend major German cities. These were largely the initiative of Adolf Hitler himself, who provided input into the initial designs. The towers were considered such a priority that Germany's railways were ordered to prioritize necessary construction shipments. Built primarily for anti-aircraft defense, one tower could provide a rate of fire of 8,000 rounds per minute with an 360-degree range of 14 kilometers. They also contained retractable radar installations and could double as air raid bunkers with a capacity of 10,000 people. A staggering 30,000 civilians crammed inside one during the Battle of Berlin. Although the Flak towers did not prevent cities from being intensely bombed by the Allies, their 3.5-meter-thick walls were so impenetrable that even the largest Soviet guns could do little damage. Following the war, some towers were not demolished because of the difficulty of doing so. The required explosives could have caused damage as far as two kilometers away. In the case of the Feldstraße Bunker, the auxiliary L-Tower used for communication and fire control was eventually demolished but the main G-Tower remained. It is the only surviving intact G-Tower of the first-generation design, consisting of a castle-like structure with four octagonal turrets. Immediately after the war, this Flak tower was used as emergency housing, since most of the city's homes were damaged by bombing the tower failed to prevent. In the early 1950s, it continued to be used as temporary housing for victims of domestic abuse. It also continued to be used as a potential bomb shelter due to the Cold War. In the 1990s, the bunker was repurposed as a center for different media businesses, including a concert hall, advertisement agencies, nightclub, and a musical instrument store. The idea of "greening" the bunker by adding plants on the exterior was first proposed in 1992, however the idea did not get off the ground until architect Mathias Müller-Using managed to attract investors to it in the 2010s. They added five stories to the building, which would be used as a hotel with restaurants, and event hall, and a fitness club. Criticisms were initially levied because the greenery had to be scaled back due to fire codes and the land was leased at a discount. The "green bunker" was finally completed in 2024 after two years of delay. It is open to all and has a rooftop garden and a "mountain path" panoramic staircase on the side.
Because those kids aren’t going to feed themselves.
I bought a huge bag of fresh rice noodles. I'm going to break them down into 2 serving vacuum sealed bags. Do they HAVE to be refrigerated? I plan to use them within 2 days. Just wondering if they will be ok in the pantry, or if they need cold. Thanks in advance. :) submitted by /u/RedditSetitGoit [link] [comments]
I was prepping some ribs this afternoon to toss in my Traeger for dinner and I suddenly realized that I sort of just blindly follow the rules ive been told about seasoning. Is it always better to season overnight? Is there a such thing as too long? Is there some sort of sweet spot and is it the same for all meat or different depending on the cut (chuck vs ribeye) or type (chicken vs beef vs pork). submitted by /u/Catmanguy [link] [comments]
Just visited Florida for the first time, (i’m from Texas) and decided to eat at a BBQ place. Usually in Texas we put onion, pickles, and coleslaw on our sandwiches. We asked our waiter why and all she said was “I don’t know, i’ve eaten BBQ sandwiches like that my whole life” submitted by /u/KanyeFan47 [link] [comments]
Who would have thought a beer cake could look so sophisticated? READ MORE...
Not just for St. Patrick’s Day. READ MORE...
https://punchdrink.com/articles/stranger-stranger-spirits-bottles-cocktail-bars/
The Great Library of Alexandria was famously lost in a fire caused by Julius Caesar, then dwindled away in time, and nothing at all remains today. No ruins, no artifacts, no nothing. But grieve not, dear bibliophiles, for there is another. The ruins of a Library of Alexandria can be found at the Serapeum site, one of the top tourist attractions in the city known for the enormous Pompey’s Pillar flanked by a pair of sphinxes. Originally built during the reign of Ptolemy III (246–222 BC), it is home to an underground network of tunnels and storerooms, which once served as a satellite location of the Library of Alexandria, established as the original facility began to run out of room for storage. Often described as a “sister” or “daughter” to the Great Library, the subterranean repository of ancient knowledge has been reduced to ruins through the ages, but still shows signs of what it was many centuries ago. On the walls in these dark tunnels are rock-cut niches, which must have once held a collection of papyrus scrolls, and it goes on and on, offering a glimpse into a lost ancient wonder.
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, hear how John Ringling traded his wooden clown shoes for a life of luxury—then lost it all after transforming Sarasota, Florida into a circus capital. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Join us daily, Monday through Thursday, to explore a new wonder with cofounder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters.
Le Creuset and Staub are heavily marked down at Williams Sonoma’s sale, so we asked Serious Eats editors to pick their favorite deals. They’re eyeing Dutch ovens, baking dishes, and more for up to 47% off.
A unique institution is located within a 13th-century church on the banks of the Thames in Lambeth: the Garden Museum. This deconsecrated medieval Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth has been restored as Britain's only museum dedicated to the art, history, and design of gardens. The story of the Garden Museum began in 1976 when John and Rosemary Nicholson discovered that the neglected churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth housed the tomb of the renowned 17th-century royal gardeners and plant hunters John Tradescant the Elder and the Younger. The church, slated for demolition after its deconsecration in 1972, was rescued from oblivion when the Nicholsons opened the world's first museum of garden history in 1977. The museum's collections offer a glimpse into the social history of gardening, from the practical to the kitsch and twee. Tools, art, and specimens sit alongside vintage slug-repellent tins, garden gnomes, and plastic flamingos as the museum aims to capture every aspect of gardens and gardening and provide a diverse tapestry of horticultural history. Some of the most curious artifacts include a plant pot made from a German Howitzer shell by First World War soldiers for use in a garden they had established in their trench, a miniature pot of tulips created for Queen Mary's Doll House, and a gnome of former prime minister Tony Blair. A highlight of the museum is the recreation of The Tradescant Ark. The museum's Tradescant Ark Gallery provides a taste of England’s first public museum. The original "Ark," belonging to the Tradescants, father and son, was housed nearby and showcased a remarkable collection of natural curiosities and cultural artifacts to its 17th-century visitors. These pioneering naturalists and collectors, serving as gardeners to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, traveled extensively, gathering not only plants for the royal gardens but also a fascinating array of craft, creatures, and crystals. Their travels took the gardeners across Europe and Russia to North Africa, while John the Younger even journeyed to Virginia, collecting specimens from the New World. The recreated gallery, with its dark wood cabinets meticulously reconstructed based on historical descriptions, evokes the spirit of the original Ark. Inside, visitors can marvel at a fascinating, sometimes unsettling, assortment of taxidermied animals, gleaming crystals, shimmering shells, and crafts from around the globe. While not all original items survive, the gallery showcases objects similar to those that would have been present, offering insights into the Tradescants' 17th-century worldview. The accompanying labels reveal the blend of scientific observation and imaginative storytelling that characterized the era. For example, the display of the Barometz, or 'Vegetable Lamb', in fact, a collection of carefully arranged fern roots, highlights the 17th-century belief that there was a species of sheep that grew on a stalk, consuming surrounding vegetation before dying. The Tradescant collection was ultimately passed to Elias Ashmole, a friend of the family, who donated it to Oxford University, helping to establish the Ashmolean Museum. One of the museum's two gardens contains the incredibly elaborate tombs of the Tradescants and Captain William Bligh, who was set adrift during the mutiny on the Bounty. A 131-step ascent of the building’s medieval church tower rewards visitors with a breathtaking panoramic view of the surrounding area, including a unique perspective of The Palace of Westminster across the Thames and of the museum’s neighbor, Lambeth Palace.
Plus, they come in a bunch of cute colors. READ MORE...
You'll want the sauce on everything. READ MORE...
Okinawa, the southernmost archipelagic prefecture of Japan, is home to many unique cultures utterly unknown in the mainland. Munchū is one such concept of genealogy, referring to communities of shared paternal ancestry. Though it is no longer as significant as it once was, it would often help establish a bond between strangers when they turn out to be distantly related. Traditionally, a munchū community consists of hundreds of people at once and funds local festivals, scholarships and funerals. When they pass away, its members are buried together in a mausoleum that their shared fund maintains. The largest example of such munchū gravesite can be found in the city of Itoman, belonging to the Kōchi clan as well as the Akahigi clan. Here, some 5,000 people have rested in peace for the past 300 years, all in a massive mausoleum that sprawls over a whole acre. The complex is composed of one main mausoleum called toshi and four sub-graves called shiruhirashi. The deceased are first buried in the latter for three years, and then their remains are washed after which they are relocated to the main mausoleum.
Kriston Jae Bethel/Bloomberg via Getty Images The COVID pandemic accelerated a labor shortage in the industry. Now, restaurant owners and chefs across the country say they’re still struggling to recruit and retain talent. In the spring of 2021, restaurants across the country were scrambling to find staff. After a calamitous year of intermittent closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many local governments were beginning to loosen indoor dining restrictions. As vaccine distribution widened, operators couldn’t keep pace with pent-up demand. Restaurant workers who’d been laid off during the height of the pandemic were reluctant to reunite with their former employers, many choosing to run out the clock on their unemployment benefits rather than return to work and risk getting sick. Many found other jobs — and stuck with them permanently; others retreated to their hometowns or migrated to new cities. Workers consistently noted how the forced time off made them realize the extent to which their labor was often undervalued in the industry, and chose to walk away. There were already labor shortages before the pandemic, but industry leaders were taken aback by the unprecedented shortfall. “Hiring is a nightmare,” Caroline Styne, co-founder of Lucques Group in Los Angeles, told AP in June 2021. “I’ve never been in a situation like this.” A New York Times article that year reported that some restaurants were shutting down for months at a time because they were having so much difficulty finding workers. “People aren’t even showing up for interviews these days,” Erick Williams, chef-owner of Chicago’s Virtue, said when asked about the staffing crisis. For many restaurateurs, the pandemic disrupted the normal inflows of talent to the industry. Now five years removed from the onset of the pandemic, the labor market in restaurants is still suffering lingering effects. A report published in February by the James Beard Foundation found that a majority of independent restaurant owners cited difficulty hiring and retaining high-quality staff as among their primary concerns. Those surveyed also expected staffing shortages to be “one of the top three trends affecting restaurant operations in 2025.” For many restaurateurs, the pandemic disrupted the normal inflows of talent to the industry. “At any given time before COVID, a third of the people were always on their way out — whether because they’re graduating school or are exhausted by the industry and wanted to change careers — but we always had people coming in,” says Ellen Yin, owner of the Philadelphia-based High Street Hospitality Group. “COVID not only resulted in a large exodus, but also a huge shrinkage in the number of people coming into the industry.” For aspiring young cooks, the cachet of working with a big-name chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant is no longer a sufficient draw into specific kitchens nor into the industry as a whole. “Using clout as payment for candidates is not sustainable anymore, and I think that the pandemic really exposed this tactic,” says Brooke Burton, a senior recruiting partner for the Madison Collective, a staffing agency that works with many fine dining clients. “It’s a crutch that award-winning chefs and restaurateurs now can’t use in hiring because candidates know they can do better.” Disruptions have extended beyond entry-level kitchen positions. The loss of so many career professionals with specific knowledge, like sommeliers and service directors, has left the industry starved for talent. “The qualified layer of restaurant workers with experience found other work, whether it’s in the industry, adjacent to the industry, or outside of the industry,” says Alice Cheng, the founder of Culinary Agents, a firm that specializes in job marketing and recruiting for restaurants nationwide. “The industry lost a lot of experience in five years.” For millions of spurned restaurant workers, the pandemic-induced hiatus was an introspective moment — a rare break from the daily grind that allowed many to reconsider the long-term viability of restaurant work. Carrie Strong walked away from a 20-year career as a sommelier in high-end restaurants in New York City, like Lever House and Aureole, choosing instead to pursue remote work as a consultant, wine educator, and brand ambassador. The pandemic hastened a long overdue epiphany — that her restaurant career was no longer tenable. “I can’t be on the floor full-time anymore,” says Strong. “My body can’t handle it. My ankles swell up. I have bad knees from all those years in restaurants.” Replacing tenured workers has proven to be difficult, particularly in critical back-of-house positions where there’s now a short supply of technical expertise. The pandemic hastened a long overdue epiphany — that her restaurant career was no longer tenable. “It’s still hard to find advanced cooks — specifically pasta cooks and butchers — people who can break down whole animals and cook proteins,” says Reneé Touponce, the executive chef and a partner in Port of Call and Oyster Club in Mystic, Connecticut. “You have your cooks that are very new and fresh or the ones who are in sous chef or CDC (chef de cuisine) positions that are looking for salaried jobs with benefits. But the in-between [roles] are the ones I’m finding most difficult to fill.” The widening qualification gap has presented new challenges that have made it difficult for chefs to keep their kitchens fully staffed. When new hires are inexperienced, it raises the expectations for other employees; Touponce says that her sous chefs have had to take on more responsibility behind the line, working shifts and handling more day-to-day cooking. The absence of tenured employees has also disrupted the way knowledge is traditionally disseminated from veteran leaders to new hires. This has impacted the industry’s more specialized sectors, like craft cocktail bars, even more acutely. “There was a huge exodus of mentors during the pandemic,” says Andre Sykes, the beverage director at Detroit City Distillery. “Those people were supposed to train the current generation of bartenders, which left a huge void of knowledge.” Looking forward after five tumultuous years, restaurants that survived the pandemic now face new challenges, including the reality of needing to offer higher wages and more benefits in order to attract workers from outside the industry. “We had something like 40 percent inflation of labor costs in Charleston on the kitchen side from March 2020 to March 2023,” says Michael Shemtov, whose company Honest to Goodness Hospitality has seven restaurants in Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville, including Butcher & Bee. But paying more doesn’t necessarily guarantee attracting more qualified applicants. “We’ve noticed new hires inflating their qualifications and demanding a higher starting wage,” says Grace Glennon, who along with her husband Kyle Spor owns Afternoon, Crybaby’s, and Baby J’s in Gainesville, Florida. “Then when they get into the actual job, many of them clearly don’t have the requisite skills. I never saw that happen before COVID.” “Our company has a much more extensive benefits structure now.” Yin says that restaurateurs are now incentivized to find other ways to attract talent. “Our company has a much more extensive benefits structure now,” she says. “We used to have only one health plan before COVID, now we offer three different tiers with dental and 401(k).” Shemtov’s restaurants began adding a “healthy hospitality” surcharge to every bill (currently 2.2 percent), which allows his company to pay 70 percent of every employee’s health plan (versus just 50 percent before the pandemic). His employees are also now auto-enrolled in a retirement savings plan and offered a maternity/paternity savings match. “My thesis is that if I can get them to save $4,000-5,000 in a retirement account, then they’re really going to think hard about leaving me for another job,” he says. But attracting talent can still be challenging in secondary and tertiary markets where offering comprehensive benefits packages may be too costly for many operators. Out of necessity, some have started to look beyond the traditional applicant pool to acquire capable help. “Because we can’t find a lot of cooks, we focus on bringing in interns from culinary school,” says Touponce. “It’s helpful for us because we’re busier in the summer months, which is when a lot of culinary students are available for internships. Prior to COVID, we didn’t really need interns.” Since many new hires arrive with a lower baseline of experience, restaurateurs have had to invest in developing more comprehensive training. “We’re taking it as a given that most new hires probably won’t have the skillset we need from the beginning,” says Shemtov. “Before the pandemic, they used to spend a few days or a week shadowing someone before they go live, now they go through a three-week training process.” The new normal can be frustrating, but Shemtov feels like the changes his company has implemented over the past five years will make it more resilient going forward. “People talk about wanting to get back to pre-COVID times, but I would say that if we could rewind, we would have the same issues,” he adds. “The good old days were never that good — we’re not going back there.” Touponce also sees the aftermath of the pandemic as an opportunity for the industry to learn from its mistakes and rehabilitate its broken work culture. “I think a lot of good things came out of the pandemic,” she says. “Cooks are being treated better and paid better, we’re being more mindful and supportive, and everyone has a clearer understanding about the relationship we have with our community. I think COVID really made us all more aware of what’s important.”
Please, please don’t get more knives than you need.
I've been asked (an hour ago) to provide corned beef for a dinner on Monday. I typically brine for 5-7 days. Is there an effective method for speeding up brining? submitted by /u/Fat_Dietitian [link] [comments]
If you see this pie, don't hesitate. READ MORE...
Most items aren’t actually $1. READ MORE...
You have to see how it turned out. READ MORE...
A free 7-day, flexible weight loss meal plan including breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas and a shopping list. All recipes include macros and Weight Watchers points. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Celebrate with a bit of Irish charm and tradition. As the saying goes, “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back.” Here’s to a day of […]
David Scott Holloway After years of assisting Mario Batali and then Anthony Bourdain, Woolever has written a memoir that’s tricky to classify and even harder to put down Laurie Woolever’s memoir Care and Feeding is many things: a workplace memoir, an addiction memoir, a chronicle of being young and a little bit lost in New York City, an account of working in close proximity to fame. Woolever is a longtime journalist and cookbook author who also worked as an assistant to Mario Batali and then Anthony Bourdain. While those two men are part of Woolever’s story, her book is, above all, a very funny and self-aware odyssey through the highs and lows of trying to find one’s place in a frequently mystifying, occasionally hostile world. Prior to writing Care and Feeding, Woolever authored Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography and co-wrote World Travel: An Irreverent Guide and Appetites: A Cookbook with Bourdain. We spoke with her about the process of turning memories into a book, working in the shadows of important men, and why this is not a culinary memoir. [This story mentions incidents of sexual harassment.] ecco How did you decide that you wanted to write a memoir? As I write about in the book, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. So in some ways, this is a project that I’ve kind of been writing in my head for a long time. I’m not sure that I always thought it would be a memoir, but I knew that I wanted to write about my experiences in New York, in kitchens, with high-profile people, traveling, all of the experiences that I’ve had since I graduated college. And there was always a good reason to not do it: the jobs that I had, or the other obligations on my time, or the people who I didn’t want to read it, like my mother, who’s no longer around — I’m not sure if I would have done it if she were still around. But I sort of cleared the decks at the end of 2021 with the oral biography and World Travel. I felt like I’d got some momentum as an author and thought, why don’t I give it a try? I wasn’t sure if I should do a memoir or maybe some autofiction or just a straight novel or a series of essays. And then for various reasons, memoir seemed to be the one that made the most sense and fit with the material and the time period that I wanted to write about. I’ve always been writing down my own story, but it wasn’t like I was always thinking someday I’ll write a memoir, because it feels, honestly, a little obnoxious to live that way. I was going to ask you about that because a lot of people want to write a memoir, and there have been a lot of culinary memoirs as well. I don’t know if you think of this as a culinary memoir, but I was wondering what your perception of memoirs was before you began writing, and if there was anything you wanted to avoid. A good memoir is really compelling to me. Obviously there are some amazing culinary memoirs — Kitchen Confidential; and Blood Bones & Butter; and Black, White, and the Grey. I didn’t really want to write a culinary memoir; I wasn’t looking to do Garlic and Sapphires for my generation. Obviously food has been a big part of my career and my life. For me to have turned my back and say, “I’m not going to write about food at all,” would be sort of foolish from a marketing and business perspective, but also not true to my history. But that being said, I didn’t want to just pack it full of, I ate this and I ate that and I cooked this. I think sometimes there are ways that you can kind of overdo it and really torture a metaphor and try too hard to stitch together qualities of food or cooking and whatever’s going on in the narrative. And I wanted to avoid that. So there’s as much food in it as made sense for my story and as my editor requested. But I’m not M.F.K. Fisher. You write quite a bit about drinking and addiction; I don’t know if it was your intent or not, but as a reader I really got a sense of how exhausting it was to go through. Obviously you’ve been sober for several years, but what was it like to put yourself back there, where you were reliving it to a certain extent? It was strange and nice to be at a remove from it. It’s not something that I had a perspective on when I was in it. So, it was a little sad to go back and realize how much I was on a path of self-destruction. I was very much in denial about my behavior and where it was leading me. So, it was painful in some ways, just to look at all of the time I wasted and the damage that I did to myself and the people around me. But also, it was kind of reassuring; it reinforced for me that the choice that I made to stop drinking was the right choice. So it also feels like, wow, I can see now with some perspective that I’ve actually grown up and gotten healthier and all of the things you hope happen once you give up bad habits. Did writing Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography help you prepare for the process of writing about yourself? Yeah, for sure. I really developed my skills as an interviewer, as a listener. I think before I started the oral biography project I really believed that I knew everything about Tony, which was silly in retrospect. But I was just coming out of the fog of grief and coming out of this job working so closely with him. So I just was like, I know everything that’s going on, and of course that’s not true. And in doing all of those interviews, I learned something new from every single person that I talked to, which made me realize you can never fully know a person, probably yourself included. So then it was also like, I may not remember something correctly, somebody else might not remember something correctly. That sort of let me approach this project with a little more willingness to be wrong, or be proved wrong, or discover new things. So, it was definitely a useful exercise to have done the biography before the memoir. One thing I appreciated in your book was how vivid and complicated and ultimately quite damning a picture you paint of Mario [Batali]. What was it like to put yourself back there with him? I’m curious if it made you look differently at how you remembered your experience of him and his behavior. I want to be thoughtful and careful when I answer this. I mean, you’re at Eater, and Eater was one of the publications that did a story about Mario in 2017 that kind of changed everything. As I write in the book, I was talking to reporters for those stories, which was a very terrifying thing that I had a lot of mixed feelings about. I started writing the book in earnest in 2022, so I had already kind of gone back into that vault not too long ago and really tried to examine what it was like and what my part in it was, and what impact it had on me, if any. I had already given a lot of thought to what my working conditions were like, and how significant it was that I got my ass grabbed at work, and that I was made to sort of straddle him on an airplane. So, I already felt pretty resolved about my feelings. But then to go back and really write about it and, as one has to do in a memoir, to center myself in it, I uncovered maybe some deeper feelings or just greater understanding of all the forces at play. What I ultimately came to was that — and I’m not breaking news here by any means — there was an enormous power imbalance and that’s always what it is in these scenarios of workplace sexual harassment. I think I didn’t truly internalize and understand that until I started writing about it in this way. [When Mario was] outed as somebody who sexually harassed people, there was a lot of extremely black and white, you’re-with-us-or-against-us kind of discourse. Which is understandable; I think there was a lot of rage and a lot of disappointment. Again, I’m not breaking news here, but some of this stuff isn’t so black and white. And especially if you’ve benefited and chosen to work with people who are ultimately shown to be not great people, it can just feel complicated. I guess I would imagine it’s akin to having a family member who you find out is doing bad stuff — it’s complicated. So, I wanted to be careful to give some of that a little bit of oxygen without excusing any of Mario’s behavior or in any way discounting the experiences of people who were hurt by him. [I wanted] just to say, here’s why it’s complicated, and here’s a theory or a little bit of context to understand why people might not have complained or spoken up loudly enough or protected themselves or each other in that time period. Some of this came out in 2017, but it felt very precarious to say anything except, “This man is the devil and must disappear off the face of the earth.” I feel pretty confident in saying that there’s a contingent of people that are going to be like, “Who the fuck is she and why should I give a shit about her?” So I wanted to be honest that there were times when I had a lot of fun working for Mario and there were a lot of career benefits to me. He introduced me to Tony Bourdain. He gave me my first opportunity to work on a cookbook. Again, that doesn’t make it okay for him to hurt people, but this is why it felt complicated for me. Relatedly, one thing you write about is working a lot, as you say, in the shadow of important men. You spent a long part of your career working for Batali and then Bourdain and you’re very honest in the book about how you wouldn’t have had certain opportunities without them. But this memoir is entirely your own, so, I wonder what it was like to put yourself in the spotlight? I only now feel like I have a spotlight on me because [writing] is a largely solitary process. I mean, yeah, it’s a little scary. I feel pretty confident in saying that there’s a contingent of people that are going to be like, “Who the fuck is she and why should I give a shit about her? She was just the assistant.” And that’s kind of okay, I don’t intend to engage with that. Yeah, I’m not a celebrity. I don’t have a television show and I’m not a superstar. So, there’s that fear of being sort of questioned like, “Who do you think you are to write a memoir?” But I think that in my story there’s enough to grab on to that I think people can relate to, whether it’s addiction, sexual politics at work, being ambivalent about marriage or motherhood, or body anxiety stuff. I think I’ve had pretty common American-white-middle-class-lady experiences that are relatable to all kinds of people. So, yeah, it feels like I’m taking a risk, and there are things in the book, behaviors and decisions that I made, that I’m not proud of. There’s some concern that I’m going to be judged, but then it’s like, I’m 50 years old and my mom’s not around to judge me anymore. And, I’m going to probably curate the extent to parts of the book my dad reads. So, if not now, when? Bourdain is obviously a big part of the book, and I feel like so many people think they own him. So many people who never knew him, I should say. But they are very attached to their memories of him, and so when it came to writing about him, how did you want to approach that? I mean, I would push back on the idea that he’s a big part of the book. I know that is the angle [of the book] that gets the most attention — the tagline says, “New York Times bestselling author of Bourdain,” and that was a deliberate choice by the marketing people to put his name on the cover. Obviously there’s a lot of interest there, but I really tried to be careful. I didn’t want to write a book about Tony. I’ve already done that. But it would be really ridiculous for me to write a workplace memoir and not talk about him. I think I did the best I could to be honest and also to make it clear that we had a great working relationship. I loved him and respected him. He was a very, very private person and there were long periods of time where I wouldn’t see him in person. I’m sure that nobody thinks about this stuff even a fraction as much as I do, but sometimes — especially shortly after his death, but even now — people will say in an interview, “You were closer to him than anyone.” Just because I was his assistant. I mean, I knew where he was all the time and what was going on in his business life, but there were things I didn’t know about. So, I wanted to be really, really honest about the ways in which he was supportive to me, the ways in which it was so great to work for him, the things that I learned from him, the examples that he set, and my own feelings of sort of wanting to be like him in some ways. I didn’t want to break any news about him. There’s a lot of his story that has come out since he died, and I didn’t want to be a part of that. Of course, I included the text message that we had shortly before he died. It’s pretty short and really didn’t say much, but that’s gotten a lot of [press] attention because I think it just speaks to the love that people have for him, and the hold he has on people’s imaginations. It’s almost seven years that he’s been gone, and there’s just such a hunger. I think when you leave the world the way he did, there’s so many unanswered questions, and so any little piece of information that people can find to try and make sense of the decision that he made to end his life, I totally understand that. But my goal was definitely not to blow open the mystery of Tony Bourdain. Something you mention in the book is that when Anthony was encouraging you to come forward about Mario, it briefly crossed your mind “that he was using the Mario situation, and me, to perform his allyship and secure a place in Asia’s [Argento, Bourdain’s then-girlfriend] increasingly fickle heart.” Was it hard to be honest about that kind of stuff? My observation is that he rejected this sort of canonization of him as a person. I think it was embarrassing to him. Yes and no. I mean, it’s the truth. It’s a thought that I had. I guess the question is, do you feel like you need to be loyal and protect the deified version — I guess that’s part of the needle that I’m threading. I love that people care so much about him and still watch the shows and talk about him, and all the evident love for him in the world is really comforting and wonderful and I hope that continues forever. I do not wish in any way to erode that. But at what point do you get to be honest about your own experience? I think that he was a human being, like we all are. He was very quick to say, “I’m not perfect. I don’t know everything. I make mistakes.” My observation is that he rejected this sort of canonization of him as a person. I think it was embarrassing to him. So, I think I was gentle but honest. My overwhelming sense, or my experience with him, was quite positive. But this was a sensitive time around the #MeToo stuff, and if I wasn’t working for Tony, I’m quite sure I never would have spoken to anyone because that felt complicated. One other thing that really came through to me in your book is just how surreal working around fame and power can be. I was struck by the scene where you’re having an abortion and the doctor wants to talk to you about Anthony; I almost screamed reading it. I’m curious what your perception of fame was before you started working for famous people, and how that changed for you? I’m 50, so I was a kid in the ’80s. The song and the show Fame sort of loomed large in the culture. I was kind of a show-offy little kid and wanted to be famous, for the sake of fame. And maybe that’s a very common thing. At some point I kind of came to my senses, but I was from a young age kind of captivated by the idea of fame, and maybe that sort of subsided a bit when I got to be, like, a teenage hippie. Then once I got to New York, it was like, “Here’s a place where there’s all kinds of wealth and fame and power and opportunity and if I can get up close to it, that’s pretty interesting to me.” Famous people are in some ways just like us. And then in some ways they’re probably not. I think there is kind of a ruthlessness that you have to have to get up to a certain level in any field where there’s a measure of fame. I’m not sure that that’s something I knew at the time. I mean, that’s something that I feel like I’ve heard more recently and it makes sense to me now. Anyone who’s so good at what they do has had to be a little bit of a sociopathic monster, and disregard the needs and feelings of others in order to get to the top. So, yeah, I guess I would say I’m a little disillusioned by fame because I see that it’s temporary. I mean, how many people have really sustained a level of fame for a very long time versus how many have had flashes of it and then tried to chase that high for the rest of their lives? I do not desire to be famous. I do desire for my book to do incredibly well. I do desire to feel financially secure in the way that fame sometimes lends itself to, but I saw with Tony that privacy became a very rare commodity for him and that seemed terrible to me. I really value just being an anonymous person in the world and I think that’s something that I would hate to give up. I don’t think I’m in any danger of it, but yeah, from what I’ve seen and the sort of relative levels of happiness of the people that I’ve known who are famous, I think it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What do a great bartender and a great priest have in common? We ask a Catholic priest who moonlights as a mixologist. Plus, Dan revisits a beloved pub from his past to find out what makes a great bar. This episode originally aired on March 6, 2016, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo, Kameel Stanley, and Jared O'Connell. This update was produced by Gianna Palmer. Publishing by Shantel Holder. Every other Friday, we reach into our deep freezer and reheat an episode to serve up to you. We're calling these our Reheats. If you have a show you want reheated, send us an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com, and include your name, your location, which episode, and why. Transcript available at www.sporkful.com. Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Get all your favorite podcasts, more than 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, and live sports coverage with the SiriusXM app.
The nostalgia-laden packaged treat has inspired creative interpretations at restaurants and bakeries across the country.
Located in a classic red-brick row house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the Museum of the Palestinian People is easy to miss. It began in 2015 as a traveling exhibit named the Nakba Museum Project. Its founder and director, Bshara Nassar, hails from a Christian Palestinian family that runs an educational farm near Bethlehem. Inspired by D.C.’s many great museums, as well as his family’s work in cultural exchange, Nassar thought this city would be an excellent place for an American museum of Palestinian history and culture. In 2019, the traveling exhibit laid roots in Washington, the place where it began. Information panels tell the story of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and the Jews, Muslims, and Christians who are all indigenous to that land. There are also several historic artifacts, such as a few of the distinctive black and white keffiyeh, and a right-of-return key—a symbol of homes lost during forced relocation programs. Rather than being divided into discrete sections, the museum is laid out in a kind of mosaic. The displays of Palestinian history are interspaced with the artwork, demonstrating that the story of a people and its culture are inextricably tied together. The story of Palestinians today is marked by conflict with the state of Israel. As a result, much of modern Palestinian artwork features themes of war and resistance to occupation. As the cultural heritage of a people is destroyed through dispossession, demolition, or even genocide, it is important to have places that gives those people a voice. The Museum of the Palestinian People fosters a dialogue between Palestinians in Palestine, the Palestinian diaspora, and visitors to the museum, in the hope of that voice being heard.
You know those lucky people who win all-expenses-paid trips just by being the hundredth caller or having their raffle ticket drawn? By some stroke of fate, I became one of them. Well, technically, my mom did—but I was lucky enough to reap the benefits. Back in 2019, my dad and I wouldn’t shut up about going to Iceland. We had our sights set on the Northern Lights, and my college graduation lined up perfectly with peak solar activity. It was all just talk until a fateful night at the Colorado Automotive Hall of Fame induction ceremony. My dad swears he looked away for just a second, and suddenly, they were announcing my mom’s name as the winner of an Iceland Adventure trip. Read More >>
I'm sorry I know this is a stupid question but, I only want to eat like 4 strips of bacon, how do I store the leftover bacon in the fridge? submitted by /u/Business-Run-5825 [link] [comments]
After years of use, the Ratio Six coffee maker still produces incredible drip coffee. Here’s why we highly recommend it.
Plus, how to make it more inviting. READ MORE...
Elena Veselova/Shutterstock My five-day journey of brining and braising the St. Patrick’s Day staple yielded delicious results I don’t know why I find making corned beef from scratch so intimidating. Perhaps it’s the fact that the project requires almost a week — which means a lot of time for things to go wrong. Maybe it’s because it involves raw meat sitting around for an extended period of time. Or put both together, and I’m worried this giant hunk of raw beef won’t cure properly (even though it ultimately needs to be cooked anyway). All my anxieties were put to rest after I actually corned my own beef, which proved to be easy, delicious, and more impressive than anything that comes from a can. To tackle this cooking project with confidence, I enlisted the help of Stephen Rodriguez, the executive chef of Tam O’Shanter in Los Angeles. On St. Patrick’s Day alone, Tam O’Shanter serves more than 600 pounds of corned beef. “[Making] corned beef is fun,” Rodriguez says. “There’s a lost art to some of the stuff we do in the cook, like pickling and brining, which is unfortunate, because it’s really easy.” To start, I needed to make a brine. For Rodriguez, the brine represents a choose-your-own-adventure moment — just don’t forget the pink salt, or curing salt. “The curing salt really drives in that [pink] color,” Rodriguez says. “From there, you can do sugar, garlic cloves, peppercorns, and whatever pickling spice.” I looked at a few different recipes online for inspiration and winged my brine, adding mustard seed, black peppercorn, bay leaves, garlic, sugar, fennel seeds, and of course, the pink curing salt. Each recipe had a different ratio for how much water to pickling spices was needed; I ensured I made enough to fit the Ziploc bag the beef was going to corn in, which was roughly two cups of boiled brine mixture added to six cups of ice water, eight cups total. I felt like a witch brewing a potion as the mixture came up to a boil. The steam from the cure smelled peppery and sweet; I just hoped it’d be enough to penetrate my two-and-a-half pound brisket. I opted for a flat cut of brisket: It’s leaner with a more compact shape, making it easier to slice once finished. But whole briskets or point cuts can be used as well if you prefer your corned beef shredded — and if you have the space to accommodate all that meat. Lack of fridge space is often the biggest challenge for those corning beef at home. (At Tam’s, Rodriguez has a dedicated shelf in the restaurant’s walk-in for the task.) My fridge isn’t particularly big, either, but because I recently cleared it out following the fires in Los Angeles, I had enough room for this endeavor. If you have a particularly large brisket slab, Rodriguez suggests breaking it down into smaller pieces to save room. “You can also vacuum pack it and it will take less space,” he advises. The brine finished steeping after 10 minutes at a boil. I combined the hot mixture with ice water to bring it down in temperature and also ensure the salty pickling liquid wasn’t too concentrated. I placed my brisket into a Ziploc bag and poured the liquid in. If you’re scared of leakage, place the Ziploc in a cake pan or brine your meat in a container with a lid: If you go with the latter option, ensure you completely submerge the brisket in the brine. After setting the meat-and-brine bag in the fridge, the hard part is over. “Corned beef is really a set-it-and-forget-it project,” Rodriguez says. And forget it I did — aside from turning the bag over every other day to ensure it was curing evenly. Rodriguez suggests curing for five to seven days. I’m impatient, so I pulled the beef out on the fifth day. I expected it to be pinker; it was a little grey and the meat felt tight, like it had shrunk in on itself. I rinsed the brine from the brisket with cold water and placed it in a Dutch oven with 10 cups of water and fresh peppercorns, bay leaves, and a sprinkling of allspice. From there, I turned the heat up on the stovetop to boil, skimming off any scummy, foamy bits. After 10 minutes, I put the entire Dutch oven in a 300 degree oven, where it was time for the second setting and forgetting. Thanks to the allspice, my house honestly smelled like a cozy pie shop as the corned beef cooked. Three-and-a-half hours later, it was ready. Kat Thompson The first thing I noticed was that the beef was pink! A welcome contrast to the raw beef’s unsettling grey shade, this was a good reminder to trust the process. As I tried to fish the meat slab out of the cooking juices, I also could see how tender the brisket had become. It shredded as I grasped it with a pair of tongs. I set it on a cutting board and cut myself a slice; the meat fell apart so beautifully that a chef’s knife was only really necessary to get through the fat cap. It was everything you want corned beef to be: juicy, tender, and undoubtedly salty. To serve, Rodriguez encourages going the traditional route by pairing corned beef with braised cabbage. “At the restaurant, we cook the cabbage in the brining liquid,” he explains. I’d already made a pickled cabbage slaw days prior; the acid in that cut through the fatty beef nicely. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a true corned beef plate without potatoes, which also function as a reprieve from the overwhelming salt. When I do this again — this cooking project feels worth it, given that it’s surprisingly simple and hands off — I think I’ll trim off more fat from the brisket and use slightly less salt, as my corned beef tasted pretty salty. But I’m sold on the idea that everyone should try corning beef at home. Rodriguez agrees. “Once you make something like this from scratch, you have an appreciation for the artisan [nature] of it,” he says. “It takes you back to the origins of how and why we cook.”
Seafood season offerings from Wendy’s McDonald’s and Popeyes. Why fast-food restaurants observe seafood season — and not other religious holidays According to Wendy’s, it’s “seafood season.” That means the chain’s limited-time-only Crispy Panko Fish Sandwich is widely available from now until April 20. Wendy’s can hedge, but you might have figured out that since its final day on the menu is Easter Sunday, this is a sandwich designed to cater to those celebrating Lent, a Christian observance — mostly but not exclusively practiced by Catholics — in which many practitioners abstain from meat (which in Catholicism includes mammals and poultry, though not fish), among other things. Ever since Lou Groen created the Filet-O-Fish in 1962 to ensure the heavily Catholic clientele at his Cincinnati McDonald’s had something to eat during Lent, many beef-centric fast-food restaurants have offered some sort of limited edition seafood option to cater to Americans who observe. This year, Del Taco is offering three seafood specials through April 23, which Del Taco president Tom Rose calls “the perfect combo for Lent season.” Arby’s has a “limited time” menu of crispy fish sandwiches. And though Popeye’s serves seafood year round, it’s offering a shrimp tacklebox and a fried flounder sandwich for Lent. While fast-food restaurants may offer spider-shaped doughnuts for Halloween or pink drinks for Valentine’s Day, Lent specials stand apart in that they revolve around the traditional dietary restrictions of the observance. Many practitioners either eat fish on Fridays during Lent, or replace meat with fish for the entire time. Lent does not involve an outright fast, nor is it a one-day-only observance, which allows restaurants to design a specific menu around the food observers eat throughout the weeks-long period. It’s difficult to estimate just how many Americans observe Lent. A 2021 YouGov survey reported 16 percent, but it could be closer to a quarter. A recent Gallup poll says that while church attendance and membership is declining, 68 percent of Americans identify as Christians. Only 22 percent are Catholic, which is the same number of Americans who say they don’t identify with a religion at all. About 7 percent of Americans identify as all other religions, including Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist. And a 2015 poll says that of practicing Catholics, only 47 percent gave up something for Lent. But culturally — even the Mardi Gras excess of Fat Tuesday is traditionally a last hurrah for the upcoming season of moderation — the spectre of Lent seems to extend beyond the devout practitioners. According to Chowhound, of the 300 million Filet-O-Fish sandwiches McDonald’s sells every year, about 75 million are sold during the 40 days of Lent. It’s enough for fast-food restaurants to take notice. “We started serving seafood to expand our menu offerings beyond chicken, cater to regional tastes, and appeal to guests looking for alternative protein options, especially during Lent, when many people avoid eating meat,” Popeyes told Eater. Shrimp and catfish were also “a natural fit, aligning with our brand’s Southern-inspired flavors and heritage.” Of course, not everyone observes Lent by eating fast-food flounder, or by giving up meat, either on Fridays or altogether. The Washington Post reported in 2020 that many millennials are giving up things like social media or alcohol, starting a workout challenge, or trying to cultivate more socially-conscious habits. “There is a tendency to think about Lent in terms of ‘giving up’ things, and at its worst this can just be a religious gloss on American diet culture,” says Mark Popham, who grew up eating fried fish during Lent at Moby Dick. Now, he attends Episcopalian church, and continues to observe Lent by doing things like carrying Narcan or cash to give out to those who might need it. However, he does still eat fast-food fried fish when it’s on offer, which he says feels like part of the overall goal of reconsidering the choices one makes in everyday life. “It doesn’t change much to have a Filet-O-Fish instead of a Big Mac, but it reminds you of the other changes you could be making.” Though not every Christian or Catholic observes Lent, most polls don’t take into account those who were raised observing who may still culturally enjoy more springtime seafood offerings even if they’re not active members of the church, the same way it might feel nice to eat turkey around Thanksgiving even if you want no part in celebrating colonialism. Pat Murphy describes themself as a “very lapsed Catholic,” and lives in Wisconsin where fish fries are a year-round occurrence, though they certainly become more popular during Lent. “I have a definite affinity for fish on Fridays which is heightened by the fact that it’s no longer a weird-feeling moral obligation. It feels kind of nostalgic to get fish on Fridays. Like visiting home when you don’t have to live there anymore and haven’t for a long while.” You also don’t have to grow up with fried fish Fridays to enjoy the fast-food specials this time of year. Zach Knowlton grew up relatively secular in a heavily Catholic town, but began observing a version of Lent in his 20s. “It’s a cultural connection thing, doing it makes me feel a little closer to home, despite not growing up with the practice,” he says. But mostly, he just loves fast-food fish sandwiches, and looks forward to “seafood season” every year. “We as a society don’t get enough chances to consume tartar sauce! They have such a different texture from a burger or chicken sandwich,” he says. “Plus, aside from McDonald’s, they are an LTO [Limited Time Offer], and I am the world’s biggest sucker for a fast-food LTO.” Who isn’t? Americans love pumpkin spice latte season and when the McRib is back. Lent is now just another limited time. But if limited-time opportunities can be fueled by religious-fueled family memories, where are the Dunkin’ Rosh Hashanah menus full of honey and apples, or Starbucks’ Durga Puja drinks? Murphy says that during Lent, it “feels weird that no one meaningfully acknowledges that it’s a religious, or at least religion-adjacent thing.” And watching everyone pack into fast-food restaurants for fried fish just makes them realize how few other holidays or cultures are given the same treatment. “I feel excited about it every year, but also melancholy that we’re only shining a spotlight on this one corner of our rich tapestry of community,” they say. When you do see specials for other holidays, it’s usually from chains that are part of those communities. Moka & Co., a Yemeni coffee shop with locations in New York, Michigan, and Kentucky, keeps special hours for Ramadan, so customers can enjoy their drinks after fasting. Halal Guys also offers discounts during Ramadan for family meals. And this past winter, Krispy Kreme partnered with Lodge Bread to create sufganiyot for Hannukah, though only at Lodge locations in California. It’s not like one needs to derive validation of one’s identity from the business decisions of fast-food restaurants, who are more likely to serve pink and green snacks in honor of Wicked than anything else. But it would be nice if a wider variety of cultures were celebrated. However, Wendy’s insistence on calling it “seafood season” over Lent may be a sign that things may, too slowly, be changing. “Seafood season” is something everyone can participate in, not just Christians. “I think after 1700 years of cultural hegemony Christians could do with taking the back seat for a few millennia,” says Popham. Still, Dunkin’ is missing a real opportunity to run some Eid specials.
On a pleasant December morning, Tarun Nayar was at a mangrove reserve in Mumbai, where he plugged his synthesizer into a thick leaf. The sound that emerged was hypnotic and otherworldly, blending a sense of the future with nostalgic echoes of 1980s synthwave. It felt like something right out of Stranger Things. Nayar is not your traditional musician—he’s a fungi whisperer. By connecting cables from his custom-built modular synthesizers to mushrooms, fruits, and leaves, he transforms their natural bioelectric signals into captivating sounds. During his performances, he works with focused precision, adjusting the knobs and buttons to fine-tune the rhythmic and peculiar sounds that are created. Over the last five years, Nayar has jammed with myriad types of fungi, including trumpet-shaped chanterelles and the glorious, red-roofed fly agaric mushrooms. He has also collaborated with a giant ficus tree, clumps of bamboo, sword ferns, a pineapple, and even the odd-looking citrus fruit called Buddha’s Hand. “It’s an intoxicating feeling to be able to make all these crazy sounds and program really interesting melodies, many of which will probably be impossible to play on a traditional instrument,” he muses. Music has always been central to Nayar’s life. Born to a Punjabi father and a Canadian mother, he was immersed in Indian classical music from an early age, particularly through his training in tabla, a type of hand drum. But for the past four years, the former biologist, who is based in Montreal, has been experimenting with what one may describe as plant music. Nayar’s journey into this experimental soundscape began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was living on a tiny island north of Vancouver, surrounded by nature. That’s when he began “messing around” with flora. He recalls plugging a software synthesizer into a salmonberry bush. “All of a sudden, the synthesizer started playing a piano patch,” he says. “I could actually ‘listen’ to the salmonberry bush.” Nayar was immediately hooked by the idea of transforming biological data into music. “To me, it was the coolest thing ever,” he recalls. “I knew I would be spending the next 10 years of my life exploring this.” In 2021, Nayar started posting videos of his “little experiments” on the internet under the stage name Modern Biology. While initially his videos on TikTok received only three to four views, slowly they gained momentum and worldwide attention, leading to tens of thousands of people appreciating his work. “To be honest, I was quite surprised that people were interested in this relatively niche practice. It really gave me a feeling of community during the pandemic when my bubble was quite small,” admits Nayar. Today, he has over 379,000 followers on Instagram alone. To be clear, fruits, fungi, and trees don’t make music. They don’t even produce sounds that lie within the audible range of human hearing. But as Nayar explains, “almost every behavior in plants and fungi is mediated by electrical impulses, just like in humans. Every thought, every movement, every little cellular division is associated with an electrical activity. These signals or processes are all reflected in the conductivity of the organism’s body. All I’m doing is tapping into these fluctuating electrical fields and translating the electrical signals into musical notes.” Nayar sometimes enhances the biofeedback by layering subtle, ethereal sound effects that help to amplify the soundscape. His interest in sound synthesis began several years before the pandemic, sparking a deep fascination that eventually led him to build his own analog synthesizers at home. He pursued courses focused on DIY synthesizers made out of breadboards—versatile plastic boards with perforated holes, designed for assembling electronic circuits by plugging in jumper cables. “It’s a way to rough out basic circuits,” he explains. One of the first exercises in the online course involved the humble orange. “We had to use it in a circuit as a resistor,” Nayar recalls. “Everything has electrical resistance, but some materials are so resistant that current can’t even pass through them. Fruits and vegetables, however, are effective conductors, allowing electrical current to flow through them.” When Nayar squeezed the orange, he realized that its conductivity changed, and the sound changed with it. “The pitch of the oscillator went up or down depending on whether you were squeezing it or not,” he says, adding with a hint of amusement, “you can actually play the synthesizer just by squeezing the orange!” From holding festivals in parks to conducting intimate gatherings at restaurants, Nayar has been gaining attention for his experimental music. His goal is to encourage people to reconnect with nature. “For the most part, as human beings we kind of forget that the world is alive,” he says. At many of his performances, guests are invited to engage with the natural world by foraging for mushrooms and plants, which Nayar then links to his synthesizer. With headphones on, attendees can immerse themselves in the unique sounds produced by the fungi, whether they’re relaxing on the grass or swaying to the rhythm. Mumbai-based ecological designer Gautam Muralidharan, who has known Nayar since 2009, describes the experience as “trippy.” “It’s like listening to the planet,” Muralidharan explains. “There’s something profound about connecting with the underground—the hidden, mysterious part of the Earth that we rarely interact with. What fascinates me is how Tarun blends technology, nature, and music in a way that’s both communicative and accessible to people.” As part of the Conscious Collective, an initiative created by the Godrej Design Lab that explores green design solutions in India, Nayar spent a few days experimenting with flora at a mangrove reserve in Mumbai in December 2024. “There were a couple of local fishermen over there, and when I encouraged them to listen to the mangroves, their response was very moving. One of them said that he felt the mangroves were asking him to ‘keep on watching over them, to keep taking care of them’,” recalls Nayar. Do the sounds shift in tone or feedback depending on the kind of plant? “Essentially, there is a large amount of variability even within the same organism over the course of a day,” responds Nayar. “As plants orient towards the sun, move water through their tissues, and photosynthesize, their conductivity changes dramatically. What I've noticed, anecdotally, is that plants tend to be a little more consistent in how their bioelectric fields change. Fungi, on the other hand, are unpredictable. I think it's within the realm of possibility that different species or groups of organisms have different bioelectric 'signatures' but this science is quite new, and we may be years and years away from knowing that for certain.” Nayar isn’t stopping with sound alone. He’s also exploring multisensory experiences, which led him to the food world. A couple of years ago, Portuguese chef Rui Mota learned about Nayar’s work and encouraged him to explore the visceral relationship between taste and sound. Intrigued, Nayar delved into scientific research and found that high frequencies can bring out sweeter flavors in food, while lower frequencies accentuate bitterness. He began hosting experimental events in San Diego, Salt Spring Island, and Los Angeles. “That’s when I witnessed how people could truly feel in their bodies how sound changes taste,” he explains. The first major iteration of an immersive dinner came in 2024 at Burdock & Co, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Vancouver. Nayar plugged the ingredients into his synthesizer, and dinner guests wore silent disco headsets so they could “hear” their lavish four-course meal as they were eating it. “We tried the food without the music and then with the music,” he explains. “And the guests used an app, which allowed them to give numerical scores to the sweetness and bitterness of food, before and after we heard the music. The experience was really interesting because we confirmed the scientific evidence that tastes change in certain ways when certain sounds are experienced.” The biggest takeaway for Nayar was how meditative the dining experience became, offering diners a profound somatic connection with their meal through sound. One of the guests, Eli Wener noted, “The meal was exceptional, but tasting the sound elevated the food beyond anything I've ever experienced before. You really have to live it to believe it.” Modern Biology stemmed from Nayar’s quest to understand what lies at the root of many people’s disconnect with the natural world. “I realized that we have lost our connection to our homes, to our land,” he notes. “As human beings, can we truly feel like we belong? Can we reconnect with the fact that our bodies are made of earth, our blood is made of water, and our lungs are filled with the exhalation of plants? Because when we’re in a state of connection, we won’t make destructive decisions. We won’t cut down virgin rainforests and we won’t hurt each other. We’ll realize that we’re all connected, just like the mycelium beneath the ground.”
Sat upon the exterior of Chelmsford Cathedral is a sculpture of St. Peter. Located on the southeast corner of the South Transept, this modern carving of the saint, produced by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, blends traditional symbolism with a few subtly contemporary touches. Officially ‘The Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin, St Peter, and St Cedd’, it is unsurprising that the church depicts the significant saint. St. Peter, traditionally recognized as the first Pope, is often depicted holding the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven in recognition of the authority bestowed upon him by Jesus. While the carving remains faithful to traditional symbolism, its style is distinctly modern. For example, in his carving, Huxley-Jones stayed true to this iconic key imagery with a twist, portraying St. Peter with an enlarged Yale key in his hand. Additionally, in a further modernized symbolic feature, St. Peter is dressed in fisherman's boots, a nod to the disciple's humble origins as a fisherman and his connection to the everyday lives of ordinary people. Its position is no coincidence, this depiction of St. Peter faces towards Bradwell and (the chapel) St. Cedd established upon arriving in Essex, connecting the cathedral to the roots of the faith in Essex.
This easy Reuben Sandwich recipe is made from crispy rye bread, tender corned beef, tangy sauerkraut, melty Swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing. The post Reuben Sandwiches appeared first on Budget Bytes.
So I can’t provide pictures but I have Morton All-Natural Himalayan Pink Salt (fine) shaker 17.6 oz bottle like container. Used some yesterday and it was perfectly fine. Was able to use it like regular salt. This morning I found my salt super moist and clumped together. When I grab some out of the container, rubbing it in between my hands it feels oily. I live in a house full of ppl so I’m not really sure how this could’ve happened? Am I just dumb and this is regular clumping or did someone put something in there? I also keep my salt in the back of my spice cabinet. I’ve left the lid open before and this has never happened so I ruled that out as well. Any info helps💛 TIA ETA: salted my potatoes before they were put on the burner,housemate said when she used the salt last night it was already like that. So only a few hours between me using it and my housemate using it. submitted by /u/RealityOne2716 [link] [comments]
I'm making recipie 1967, Roast Hare, from Auguste Escoffier's The Escoffier Cookbook and Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery, english translation, 79th printing. The recipe for roast hare states it is best accompanied by "(102) poivrade sauce", however recipe number 102 is for ravigote sauce. Poivrade sauce is in the cookbook, but is recipe number 49. I'm wondering if this was a misprint in my specific version. Does anyone know if Escoffier intended for the hare to be served with poivrade or ravigote? submitted by /u/CozyPastel [link] [comments]
I tried pestle and motor since the batch was tiny. I added some salt and lemon. It tasted amazing but the water and flesh of the berries were separate. From my experience with similar ingredients (tomatoes) even when using a machine, while the flesh and water combines, it splits fast. I tried adding flour, starch, honey, and glucose like corn syrup in the pantry separately. While flour was the most effective in thickening it, it affected the flavor integrity of the cherries even though it wasn't as much as other trials. I also tried putting it on the heat. But the cherries lost their flavor ridiculously fast when i put them on the heat. How can i preserve their marvelous flavor while making the sauce homogenious? Thanks in advance! submitted by /u/supersondos [link] [comments]
Didn’t really know where to post this so I’m posting it here. Every time that I have milk in my cereal it ends up getting stringy. I’ve tried buying milk from different places, we recently got a new fridge, and I am still having the same problem. It has made me afraid of having milk in cereal, which is a problem because cereal is a really cheap breakfast and basically one of the only things we have right now other than sometimes toast. The stringyness has happened most of the time three days after the milk is bought, but sometimes immediately after, and I usually see it about 5-10 minutes after the cereal has been out. It usually looks like a tiny little strand that attaches to my spoon when I lift it up, it kind of looks like a single strand of a spider web, with little milk droplets attached to it. If anyone can please help me solve this problem or figure out what is happening it would be greatly appreciated. If it needs to be known the fridge where the milk is stored is set at around 32 degrees. submitted by /u/Pruitttt [link] [comments]
I made panna cotta with agar agar as a setting agent. It has cooled and set overnight but it is still too soft. So I haven't added enough agar agar. Can I reheat the whole thing and add more agar agar? And will the original added agar agar work for a second time or do I need to add even more (the total of what I should have added the first time) to compensate for it not working anymore after reheating? Thanks in advance! submitted by /u/crazy_lady_cat [link] [comments]
Happy Friday Steamy Kitchen! We are here to help you out with some extra cash to go grocery shopping! We’re giving away ten gift cards worth $10 each to FIVE lucky winners. Play for a chance to win and earn bonus spins on this giveaway. Enter to win below to be our winners of the […] The post $10 Grocery Gift Card Instant Win appeared first on Steamy Kitchen Recipes Giveaways.