It’s hard to stay pure.

★★★ A man on the train, wearing a pocket square in his suit, blotted his brow with a cheap paper towel. Clouds were obstructing some of the sun, but the new crosstown walk to the new office was bleak and gray. In lieu of a center window, there was a sheet of translucent plastic taped up, the bottom loose and flapping. The clouds withdrew their protection. Up by the east corner of the Park, a stream of campers in green t-shirts and white visors was pouring across the street. Freed from his own day camp, the three-year-old decided he was too hot or tired to push his scooter the final block home. The daylight was still long enough to plan to go out after dinner, but short enough that its expiration made a plausible threat for dilly-dallying eaters. Sunbeams flooded the apartment in such quantity it was hard to tell which light fixtures had been turned off. Slicks of algae were growing in the persistent air-conditioner drips at the foot of an apartment building. The playground fountain was still going, but the concrete yard was almost empty. Now and then, another family’s hitting practice crossed over into the boys’ fielding practice, or vice versa — vice versa especially when the three-year-old uncorked a throw. A peachy glow suffused everything; the trees were a rich velvety green; the northeast sky was an hypnotic deep blue.

In her story about the looming earthquake that will obliterate practically all of the cool parts of the Pacific Northwest, Kathryn Schulz quoted Kenneth Murphy, the head of the FEMA division responsible for the region: “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” Alarming! Today, Schulz clarified what Murphy meant by toast, precisely:

What Murphy did not mean is that everyone west of I-5 will be injured or killed; FEMA’s casualty figures, while horrifying, amount to under one-half of one per cent of the population of the region. Nor did he mean that every structure west of the interstate will fail, although there the numbers are grimmer: region-wide, the agency expects to see seriously damaged or destroyed eighty-eight per cent of ports and potable water sources; seventy-seven per cent of fire stations and waste-water treatment plants; two-thirds of all airports, hospitals, railways, and schools; almost half of all highway bridges, police stations, and emergency command centers; plus almost three thousand miles of natural gas pipelines, seven hundred and forty-three electric power facilities, and nearly a million residential buildings.

… So a better analogy than toast is this: the Cascadia earthquake is going to hit the Pacific Northwest like a rock hitting safety glass, shattering the region into thousands of tiny areas, each isolated from one another and all extremely difficult to reach. That’s why Murphy’s plan involves, in his words, “leasing, buying, or stealing any helicopter I can get my hands on.” Helicopters can’t do everything, but they can, at least, get almost anywhere. (FEMA has also made arrangements with the U.S. Navy Third Fleet to conduct a massive sea-lift operation for those stranded on the coast — but, for logistical reasons, it will take the fleet seven days from the time of the quake to arrive.)

Hmm, have you considered moving to Farmington Hills, Michigan?

Photo by Stephen Kruso

For all the eye-rolling we do when we consider how children of a certain class are spoiled these days — kept at bay from the hazards of life in ways we never were, even when our own upbringings were considerably more cushioned than those of the generations before us — it’s probably not a terrible thing to do to take a step back and examine where this exasperation comes from: Are we envious? Angry at ourselves for wishing we were handled so delicately during our own youth? More importantly, we need to remember that however easy it is on these kids right now their future mostly involves running from fires. So if they get treated to a $150 spa day for their dolly is that really the worst thing in the world? At least it’ll be a pleasant memory for them when they’re hiding in the hole and trying to keep silent while the killer robot drones swarm overhead.

“So you go into your pod room, lock the door if you’re a weird paranoid person, get naked, take a quick shower (in the same room as the pod — shampoo, conditioner and body wash provided), and step into the approximately foot or so of water and pull the pod down over yourself and lay down on top of the water on your back. Then you press a button and the lights slowly go off as a cheesy female sci-fi voice welcomes you to the pod… Then it gets very dark, and you become, briefly, extremely self-aware: you are naked on the second floor of a building above a bar in the middle of a weekday, in complete darkness, floating weightlessly. If you’re me, you wonder if there are protocols in place in the event of a terrorist attack (or as I tamed it down when I spoke with David and Gina later, ‘a blackout’). Like, will they leave me in the pod? Will they bang on the door?”
 — New York has a new sensory deprivation tank for all your sensory deprivation needs, and it’s conveniently located in Brooklyn for the people who probably need it most. If you’d prefer to have your senses deprived in Manhattan, as God intended, that option still exists.

Crudités — raw vegetables for dipping — are, I think, a good example of the typical American meal’s grudging inclusion of vegetables. “Well, we have all the food we actually want to eat, but it feels like we should have some vegetables. How about some, I don’t know…celery. With ranch dressing to make it tolerable.” There’s nothing exactly wrong with celery dipped in ranch dressing — actually, it’s pretty good — but the usual array of carrots, celery, maybe some broccoli, and cherry tomatoes, pre-sliced and brought home from the grocery store in its own sectioned plastic container, has some serious room to grow.

Because, really, there’s nothing about crudités that would stop them from being delicious and impressive, especially now, in the peak of summer produce (“peak peach,” I call it), when crisp summer fruits and vegetables are so good that sometimes you just want to eat them raw, or prepared as simply as possible.

Many, many cultures have their own variations on the vegetable platter; some, especially in northern climes like Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, lean heavily on pickled vegetables. In the Middle East, especially Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, and Syria, the mezze platter is an intensely laborious, complex collection of mini-dishes, from salads and stuffed vegetables to breads, cheeses, and dips.

But because American cuisine is so indebted to western European cuisine, especially that of France and Italy, our conception of the vegetable platter tends to be very French, and come with a French name: Crudités. There are basically no recipes for crudités in any classic French or Franco-American cookbook; neither Escoffier nor Julia Child saw fit to write down instructions for serving raw vegetables, though Julia was known to serve it. I do see fit, though. In this way I am better than Escoffier.

For the purposes of this column, I’m going to restrict the concept of the vegetable platter to the very simple “raw vegetables with a dip.” Partly that’s so I don’t run out of things to write about, and partly because there’s plenty to deal with right there.

The most important step in constructing a crudités platter is choosing the vegetables. Summer, especially here in the Northeast, is entirely too brief, and the seasons of individual items of produce is sometimes limited to mere weeks. Given that we’re going to be eating these items raw, unassisted by the powers of heat and acid and oil, we have no choice but to get the highest quality produce available. That means that you should never, ever make a shopping list of vegetables; the entire game here is to buy the absolute best stuff you can find that day, and eat it as quickly as possible.

But there are also many fruits and vegetables that are not, in my opinion, really suitable for crudités. This is a dipping dish, so we have to think of structural integrity: we will be looking for produce that can stand up to being dragged through a thick dip without breaking. Tomatoes are wholly unsuitable for crudités. Members of the cucurbit family (including cucumbers, melons, squash, and gourds) must be chosen exceedingly carefully; many are too delicate.

My favorites are tougher vegetables and fruits. Carrots are perfect. Radishes. Green beans. Sugar snap peas. Mild sweet peppers like bells (which I do not really like in any other context). Jicama. Fennel. Root vegetables like kohlrabi, turnips, and raw beets (opt for golden or chioggia/candy cane, so they won’t bleed into your dip). Cauliflower is nice. And some of the best, oddly, are leaves, provided they have a thick backbone: romaine, endive, radicchio.

Some vegetables are suitable only in very few forms. I don’t much like raw broccoli; I find the florets kind of dry and crumbly. But broccoli stalks are perfect for this. Summer squash is fantastic raw, but there are only a few kinds that are really dippable. Opt for either baby versions that can be eaten whole (they’re a little less fragile whole than cut up) or the tougher gourd-like varieties, which are usually ridged. Cucumbers, same thing: If you can find really small ones that can be eaten whole, great. The problem with cucumbers is that the insides, where the seeds are, are very watery and tend to fall apart. But some varieties have minimal seeds and work well for this. If you can find an Armenian (ridged, curved, weird-looking) or Persian (small, slender, cute) cucumber, grab it.

As far as preparation, you want to make it as easy as possible to dip, which means, frankly, you want something that’s shaped vaguely like a french fry. That’s easy to do for green beans, sugar snap peas, and carrots, which are already kind of shaped the right way. Peppers are pretty easy, too — just slice into narrow strips. For radishes, try to get oblong varieties like French breakfast radishes, which you can either serve whole or, if they seem too big, slice in half length-wise, right through the root. Other root vegetables will take more preparation. Jicama needs to be peeled, and kohlrabi does too, sometimes (though it may not, given that we’re eating them in the summer when the plants are young and tender). Otherwise you want to slice into thick slices, and then laterally into french-fry-like batons.

Storage is another element that people tend to take for granted. Ideally, your crudités should be purchased, prepared, and served within no more than a few hours. Certainly they should not be cut and left overnight; this will cause them to wilt, which will make them both less tasty and harder to dip. If you have to store them, use a ziploc bag with a lightly damp paper towel inside, and press as much of the air as possible out of the bag before sealing it. They’ll last for a good half day like that, maybe even as long as a day.

The other important element for crudités is, obviously, the dip. French crudités are sometimes served with a vinaigrette, which I like in theory but not in practice, because I am a tremendously sloppy eater and it is, like, really hard to get olive oil stains out of clothes. I like thick dips for crudités, because they stick to the vegetable and can be safely transported from dip container to mouth. There’s an infinite number of dips that fulfill this requirement, but my go-to dips are either yogurt-based or some sort of puree. Here are a couple.

Tzatziki-Type Thing

Shopping list: Greek yogurt, garlic, lemon, cucumber, olive oil, fresh herbs (dill, parsley, mint, and/or oregano)

Using a microplane, grate one small clove of garlic. Chop up a cucumber into cubes about a centimeter on each side. Chop herbs finely, and use a lot of them. In a big mixing bowl, mix one of the large containers of Fage yogurt, herbs, garlic, cucumber. Squeeze half a lemon’s worth of lemon juice in, and a few tablespoons of olive oil. Mix thoroughly and (this is very important) let sit for a few hours. If you don’t, the garlic will taste overpoweringly spicy and raw. If you don’t have a few hours, skip the garlic. Season to taste with salt and black pepper.

Yucatecan Pepita Thing

Shopping list: Pumpkin seeds, orange, lime, cherry tomatoes, garlic, jalapeno or serrano, scallions, cilantro

In a dry cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, throw in ten cherry tomatoes, a few cloves of garlic (separated but not peeled; you want each individual clove to still be in its papery husk), a scallion (chopped into inch-long pieces), and a chile pepper to taste (I usually use about half a jalapeno or a whole serrano). Turn occasionally until each item is a little charred and soft — the tomatoes, scallions, and pepper will be done fairly quickly, the garlic may take fifteen minutes — and remove when done. Peel garlic and toss, along with pepper and tomatoes, into a food processor.

In the same skillet, throw in about a cup of pumpkin seeds and let toast, tossing occasionally, until fragrant and a little bit browned, which will take about five minutes. Toss those in the food processor as well, and add a squeeze of orange, a squeeze of lime, and a lot of cilantro. Blend thoroughly and season to taste with salt and pepper. It may need more lime.

Quick Hummus

Shopping list: Can of chickpeas, lemon, olive oil, garlic, parsley

Drain can of chickpeas. With a microplane, finely grate one small clove of garlic. Throw chickpeas, garlic, and chopped parsley into food processor; add a couple glugs of olive oil and a lot of lemon juice, probably a whole lemon. Blend, adding water as needed to smooth things out. Chill immediately.

A really good platter of crudités is one of my favorite party tricks; it’s something everyone is familiar with and nobody is really scared of, but if you put in a little bit of extra work in selecting your vegetables and making a nice dip, it’s something people will keep going back to. It also happens to be my favorite thing to bring to a park picnic: a ziploc bag of vegetables, a container of dip, and you have one of the best ways to taste the real freshness of summer produce.

Photo by krista

“Seagulls left a young man with a black eye when they swooped down and attacked him for his bacon sandwich…. The latest attack in Cornwall comes just days after a four year old boy James Bryce was left bleeding in St Ives after a gull tried to pinch his sausage roll, and left him terrified of birds. He nearly lost a finger after it was bitten while on holiday with his family…. There has also been a string of attacks on animals in the county which have left a pet Yorkshire Terrier in Newquay and a tortoise in Liskeard dead.”
 — Maybe they could pit the birds against the badgers.

“Carly Rae Jepsen doesn’t write love songs; she writes about what lives before and lingers after love, what pulses beneath it, the swarming galaxies of desire which do not originate from the longed-for body any more than the rays of the sun emanate from our open eyes.”

While we’re on the subject, a young person tells me that she believes “Run Away With Me” is locked in a pitched battle with Demi Lovato’s “Cool For The Summer” to see what will emerge as this year’s seasonal pop diamond, but I firmly reject that on the grounds that using the word “summer” in the title of your bid for summer songdom is just blatant cheating.

Also this video makes me feel uncomfortable in an old person way (if you’re looking for a man to unfollow this is probably as good a reason as any to pick me), but fortunately my vote no longer counts in these things. Anyway, do read that Singles Jukebox colloquy, it’ll make you realize the kids are okay and even though death can’t come soon enough they’ll be just fine until the fires start.

It’s nice to be surprised, so it is an absolute pleasure to find an accurate appraisal of late period Led Zeppelin from the people Pitchfork and a completely credible assessment of Max Beerbohm’s genius from Adam Gopnik. Do bear in mind that my effusion for both of these pieces is based on the fact that they tend to agree almost completely with my own estimate on the subjects, but don’t let that stop you from investigating further because they are so totally worthwhile. Related: I am super-old.

How hot will it be today? It will be so hot today that you will stand there stunned, looking at the sun and wondering why it is doing this to you. It will be so hot today that the winter in your soul will go quiet and seek to stay hidden because it cannot win an argument right now. It will be so hot today that tomorrow, when it is actually warmer, you will lack even the energy required to roll your eyes at anyone who tries to talk you about how hot it is. It will be so hot today that you will consider wearing shorts and then, if you are a man, realize you can’t because the price you pay for all the privilege is having to adhere to a standard of sartorial behavior which, however stultifying or disagreeable, is a worthwhile trade-off for walking around feeling like you have the answers to everything and are being asked for them anytime someone looks your way and stops speaking for a second. It’s going to be hot, is what I’m saying. The only advice I can give you is to listen to this track and think cool thoughts. Enjoy.