i love taylor but she is the dove real beauty campaign of feminism

— Jessica Roy (@JessicaKRoy) July 22, 2015

Is it possible to not fully understand something 100% but still feel the righteousness of its essential truth? Because that may be what’s happening here, to me.

“By now, as shelter-magazine readers and Pottery Barn customers alike know, reclaimed wood — salvaged from sources that include bourbon tanks and mushroom farms — has gone mainstream. In the case of New York City, salvaging wood also means salvaging the city’s past…. Some of the trees were three centuries old. Dense, durable and saturated with resin that made it unusually resistant to rot and insects, the timber proved rough work for builders to mill. But in the decades before steel began to dominate, longleaf pine was the strongest material around.”

“Facebook Use Not Always Tied to Poor Body Image, Risky Dieting”

I am not sure that the Laurie Anderson classic needs to be covered but if it’s something that has to happen this is probably the best way to go about it. Enjoy. [Via]

“E. L. Doctorow, a leading figure in contemporary American letters whose popular, critically admired and award-winning novels — including ‘Ragtime,’ ‘Billy Bathgate’ and ‘The March’ — situated fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, among identifiable historical figures and often within unconventional narrative forms, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 84 and lived in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, N.Y.”

★ One man out on the morning street had put in the effort of a dapper blue-checked jacket and pink pincord trousers. Elsewhere were flip-flop sandals, loose dresses, a shirt unbuttoned vacation-style. The air conditioner on the 1 train seemed broken, but it was just defeated; between stations, cold air trickled down onto the closely packed heads of the commuters. It was clear the D train air conditioner was working because it was dripping not just onto the floor but into a seat. Nothing pleasant could be found on the streets. The afternoon on the Bowery was smothering. The late sun found peeling old paint high up on walls, and the peeling bits cast shadows that as the minutes stretched out seemed horologically meaningful. Somehow drinking water had failed to make it onto the agenda, the multiple agendas, and a headache began stabbing its way through the skull, back to front, making the face muscles wince against the glare at the end of each thrust. The train back uptown filled up and heated up along its way; a woman fanned herself with her hand. The usual fecal smell on Broadway below 63rd was at rare strength. Clouds piled up clean and white, a vision of some other world. There were caffeine and gas enough in their respective systems, but it was necessary to hit a Turnpike rest stop for a bottle of water. The sky by the ocean was thick with constellations unseeable in the city.

The trailer for Pixar’s new movie, The Good Dinosaur, is gorgeous.

It’s nearly photorealistic.

And the trailer spends a lot of time emphasizing it: close shots of piles of objects and textures, water. Water! Nobody’s quite nailed water, except maybe Pixar, now, in this dinosaur movie.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Wait.

Waiiiiit.

…

What is this muppet???

????????

!!!!!

😐

🙁

Orrr… 🙂 ???

Every Pixar movie has dealt with this a little bit: Toy Story made its human characters somewhat more cartoonish than the toys themselves. The first half of Wall-E was nearly photorealistic (within its narrow visual palette):

While the second was rendered in caricature:

This visual change tracked with Wall-E’s story somewhat, and it sounds like the choice to render dinosaurs in a way that evokes cartoons while placing them in environments that attempt faithful reproduction may claim a thematic basis as well:

Sohn said they are toying with the idea of what dinosaurs represent today — something anachronistic or resistant to change.

But who cares! The result is interesting and strange — a cartoon within a cartoon. The CGI has its own CGI! It’s sort of like Who Framed Roger Rabbit except the conceit is a little less in your face. So it’s… Howard the Duck? Or like Ted… squared? And anyway, the alternative is this (SPOILER ALERT):

Big questions abound regarding this new movie for children.

On days like today, and yesterday, and the day before, and tomorrow, when the streets of New York City seem only a degree or two from the melting point of steel beams, it makes sense to eat fresh, cold vegetables. Salads are an easy recommendation. (How about a chayote som tam? Or a broccoli stalk carpaccio? Or one of these?) Another is gazpacho, the Spanish soup, traditionally served cold, which has many many variations, but often includes tomato, cucumber, garlic, and bread. The gazpacho recipe I’ve settled on, which is not authentic partly because my soup actually exists and the concept of authenticity in cuisine is a figment of white people’s imaginations, does, unfortunately, require the use of an oven. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes you have to suffer for your soup.

Gazpacho is a soup from the Iberian peninsula, a melding of Spanish, Portuguese, Roman, Moorish, and Arab flavors and techniques. There are dozens of different recipes; most regions in Spain and Portugal have their own special versions, and then there are weirdo recipes like ajoblanco, sometimes referred to as white gazpacho, which is made with green grapes and almonds.

What never changes is that gazpacho is always a soup that is heavily reliant on vegetables, garlic, and olive oil, and that is always served cold. Because there are so many variations, it frees us up to not really care about tradition and just take those basic rules and play with them how we wish. You want to use peppers as the base? Sure, why not. Walnuts? Soaked stale sourdough bread? Yeah, try it! My favorite twist is to roast the vegetables first.

I have no qualms with raw fruits and vegetables, even some that normally are cooked, like summer squash and winter root vegetables. But tomatoes I generally prefer cooked. In some salads and sandwiches the acidic tang of a raw tomato is essential, but for soups, even cold soups, I think a cooked tomato has advantages over raw. Cooked over very high heat, broiled or grilled or just roasted at a high temperature, the skins of tomatoes char, adding bitterness; the sugars caramelize and deepen, bringing out the sweetness; and cooked tomatoes are more complex than raw tomatoes (if less bold), which is what I want in a gazpacho.

As for types of tomatoes, my favorites for gazpacho are the cherry and grape tomatoes. For one thing, we’re still a bit early for heirlooms. For another, the small tomatoes are a bit less precious. I always feel guilty cooking an heirloom tomato; they’re so beautiful and so expensive and so short-lived that it feels like the only way to eat them is raw. But cherry and grape tomatoes are well into their season, grow abundantly, and are pretty inexpensive, so you won’t be shaming the farmer by roasting and blending them with a bunch of other stuff.

The other key components of this gazpacho are cucumbers, vinegar, and fat. Because you’re roasting the tomatoes, you have to be careful to emphasize all three of these, or else the gazpacho will taste like cold tomato sauce. The cucumbers in particular are really important; you want almost as much cucumber as tomato. Any kind of cucumber will work, though I’d encourage you to try the weirder varieties that are only available during the summer. What’s the point of buying an English cucumber when you can get those in the middle of February? So try small Persian cucumbers, or, my favorite, the oblong, pale yellow lemon cucumbers. (Lemon cucumbers are so named because they look like, rather than taste like, lemons. They actually taste more melon-y than most cucumbers, a bit sweeter, and with a very thin skin. The thin skin is a benefit here, because we’ll be pureeing the cucumber and don’t need excess flecks of tough green cucumber skin floating around.)

As for vinegar, sherry is the most traditional; it has a certain depth and nuttiness that works really well with the flavors in gazpacho. But red wine vinegar works just as well, as does white wine or champagne vinegar. It won’t be the same, but it will be good, which is really all we care about. Don’t skimp here: this is a perfect place to use homemade red wine vinegar, if you have it, or some expensive store-bought stuff. As with a lot of Mediterranean recipes, the ingredients are so simple and limited in number that their quality matters a great deal.

The last key element of a gazpacho is fat. This is a dish made almost entirely of vegetables, and a major mistake a lot of people make is not including enough fat. (Without fat, gazpacho tastes like V8.) In Spain and Portugal, the fat almost invariably comes from olive oil and possibly nuts (almonds being the most common). But there are plenty of other options. My favorites are avocado and dairy, specifically Greek yogurt and its derivatives. If you feel like it, avocado sorbet (this is a good recipe) is a very fancy and delicious way to get cold fat into the dish. But I am very lazy, and avocado sorbet is kind of a pain to make, so I usually use Greek yogurt or, better yet, labneh.

So! Those are the key ingredients for one very particular gazpacho. Here’s how to make it.

Shopping list: Cherry or grape tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, olive oil, garlic (or garlic scapes), scallions, serrano chile peppers, vinegar (sherry, red wine, white wine, or champagne), Greek yogurt, sourdough bread, parsley, cilantro, almonds

The Day Before

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. In a glass baking container (like Pyrex), toss in a pound of tomatoes (you can use any color or shape), eight cloves of smashed garlic or three chopped garlic scapes, a few scallions chopped into one-inch lengths, and a quarter cup of olive oil. Toss and place in the oven for about thirty minutes until garlic is soft. Take it out of the oven.

Chop half a pound of cucumbers roughly. Chop one or two serranos finely. Throw these into a food processor along with the contents (including liquid! Do not waste the liquid!) from the baking container and a quarter cup of vinegar. Blend thoroughly. Blend it a little more. Keep blending. Okay, look good? Blend it some more. Taste and add whatever’s needed — a lot of salt, a little black pepper, and maybe some more vinegar or hot sauce or olive oil or even a touch of sugar.

When it tastes good, place in fridge overnight.

In your sink, place cheesecloth over a strainer and dump in a whole container of Greek yogurt. Of the mass-market ones, use Fage. God help you if I find Chobani in your kitchen. Let it sit for an hour or two until most of the water has strained out, then place in a container and put into the fridge as well.

The Day Of Eating

Take one lemon cucumber and chop it carefully into cubes, about a centimeter on each side. Finely chop a bunch of fresh parsley and cilantro. Chop almonds. Toast a few slices of sourdough.

Spoon the chilled soup into bowls. Place a scoop of the yogurt, which is now called labneh, in the middle. Scatter the chopped raw cucumber, herbs, and almonds all around the scoop of labneh. Drizzle just a touch more olive oil over the top. Eat with toasted bread.

This is not a hard recipe, nor does it require any expensive ingredients, but it is sort of elaborate and showy. Doing it over two days is essential; for one thing, you need the soup to chill completely, but also, the food processor will introduce a bit of foam that you want to subside. (Another way to avoid the foam would be to use a mortar and pestle but, like, no thank you to that kind of effort on a hot summer’s day.) It is also delicious, refreshing, and, because there are like eight kinds of fat in it, filling, which not all gazpachos are. And, after you’ve done the hard work the day before, it’s incredibly easy to make. You just put it together, like making a salad from a salad bar. It’s worth turning on your oven, even in what is so far the hottest global summer on record, I promise.

Photo by cyclonebill

“A Facebook exchange between the owner of a Maine diner and the mother of a screaming young girl brought the wildfire capabilities of social media to a classic — and divergent — debate over parenting in public.”

One of the worst things about the Internet is the ease it affords even the most compassionate among us to mock someone else’s discomfort when we judge their hurt to be lacking in merit or perspective. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else and it shames me to think of how frequently I have held someone else’s discomfort in disdain, particularly when you step back for a second and realize that often when someone complains about something it is not actually the specific incident about which they are expressing displeasure that bothers them; they are trying to convey a more profound pain that they cannot fully relate because it is so difficult to confront and the mere act of turning to words would prove too traumatic. All complaints are actually about a deeper wound, an existential ache about which we might never cease wailing were we able to accurately articulate it. That said, if you are currently pissing and moaning that your Twitter background disappeared you need to grow the fuck up and get a real problem. Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?