#i am bougie and used organic cheese

[council-of-beetroot]

Took Eddy's advice and made myself an actual meal

I actually used the vegetables I bought from the store!

#i made spinach and cheese quesadillas #but with locally made healthier tortillas not filled with shit and are also whole wheat #i am bougie and used organic cheese #and i used some local grown spinach #cooked it in my lodge skillet and bam #food thats not takeout or frozen pizza or chicken tenders

[jasmineway]

Meteora // 10-7-23

My friend took me out for an occasion dinner, so we merged my love of bougie for his love of cooking and landed on Meteora, the mid-city offering from Jordan Kahn.

Vespertine has been on my fine dining list for years now, but COVID and controversy preceded that opportunity at the time. Thankfully for us, this more casual offering spared no expense in "vibes" and answered the question, "what if I were a genie in a lamp but the lamp was the embodiment of the fancy indoor plant annex of Anthropologie Century City?"

You will forget you're in LA for this one.

Why yes, that is a hole in the ceiling and you will enjoy vaguely vacationing-in-Morrocco-but-not-so-non-touristy-Morocco-that-there's-no-bougie-retreats energy throughout the meal.

Texture and Serveware:

r/wewantplates is a medium on this one. Our utensils were hand carved, light and on theme. Our menu was unpleasant to touch, but you'll only need it for a moment as the meal progresses at a steady pace after a few brief selections. A lot of things are earthenware, or earthling ware, as you're asked to eat it with your hand. It fits the aesthetic and we knew what we signed up for.

Course 1: Crudo of Wild Pacific Moonfish

"red maradol papaya, smoked oil, tomato seeds, ash tibuok"

Ah yes, fresh raw fish as deconstructed sushi. Except, the rice is popped into an organically-shaped rice cake. I found it a bit difficult to place using my wooden utensils but enjoyed the flavor textures and crunch.

Course 2: Sun Gold Tomatoes

"smoked almond cream, boiled peanuts, grilled shelling beans, gooseberries"

I'm not going to lie to you--there was a couple times during this meal where we thought "this tastes fine, but did it need these specific things all together?" The answer was often, possibly no. Was it what was advertised? Yes. Was it something groundbreaking? Debatable. Were we still having a delightful experience living as a plant hanging in a tropical yet unhumid paradise? Yes.

Course 3: "Risotto" of Job's Tears

"caramelized lettuce, aged sheep's milk cheese, macambo beans, serrano chili"

Don't get me wrong, I'm usually one to delight in the revenge of serving your enemy's tears in both metaphorical, or what I hoped for this case literal form, but that anticipation is almost equally quelled anytime quotes are used around an expected key component.

This dish, while tasty, came with two disappointments, neither of which was its own fault, itself. Firstly, Job's tears is an herb, and not, in fact, a seasoning made from the despair of Chef Jordan's naysayers. The second, was that "risotto" in this case was in fact Foam, the most cliche of fine dining states of matter.

It was crunchy foam, and tasty--but you would be better served with the economical alternative of the toffee topping on a Starbucks caramel latte. It will be the same functional mouthfeel.

Course 4: Beef Ribeye

"runner beans, smoked rhubarb sambal, tamarind"

This supplement was a strange one. Firstly, that regular beef was a supplement against an otherwise pork option, secondly, that your options were "Aged Dairy Cow - $35" or "Grass-Fed Wagyu - $60." I am all for minimizing waste in dining, but surely a dairy cow would be better purposed braised or in a dish slow-cooked rather than served as a "steak" against Actual Wagyu (though surely, without a listed grade, this will likely be an American or Australian Wagyu hybrid). Just offer prime and call it a day - I had chosen the dairy cow and the quality was not deserving of its place on the menu in line with my suspicions. Frankly, such stark contrast in the given options insults the diner.

Jason got the Acorn Fed Pork ("library of peppers, spiced prunes") and in all honestly both mains were interestingly served and unable to be consumed very easily with the tableware at hand.

Course 5: Rio Acara Wild Cacao

"amazon cacao 'cake,' light cucumber cream, fig leaf, jungle peanuts"

Why a meal needs two unavoidable servings of peanuts may be more of a meta commentary on the survival-of-the-fittest jungle-adventure Jumanji theming in here than a culinary necessity, but thankfully, both servings were inoffensive. This chocolate (just chocolate, not cake OR foam this time) was some of the most exceptionally rich yet bitter naturally-harvested cocoa I've ever tasted. It was the standout in an otherwise particular-yet-enjoyable meal. A reward for open minds and appetites.

Closer:

Finally, I was served a honeydew. Not a whole honeydew, just a single slice; that slice was cut in half and topped with seasoning for myself and my friend. It was served on ice and indeed you are to use your fingers despite cutlery and napkins having been cleared already.

It was made up for with the chance to meet Chef Jordan itself who was a welcoming host in an otherwise chaotic kitchen.

Overall Gist:

I'm not going to lie to you, the food here was 'weird,' or at least weird in a hipster/experimental dining sort of way vs. what you'd normally expect from high level dining. Our service was good but not exceptional, and there's a certain casualness to the serving that can't fully be written away by the ambiance and theme alone. It's good, great even, but not sufficiently at the level to overcome the combined benefit of novelty in favor of a revisit. Accept my bias in my own preferences and proceed accordingly. This is overall a nice Meal and a delightful Themed Experience but beyond the double-hitter, may not be on regular rotation.

Thank you Jason for indulging me in this positively bizarre yet amazing night of entertainment. Until next time!

#finedining #jasmineway #foodblog #Meteora #LosAngeles

[creativefiend19]

Could you write us some Adam Parrish birthday sex? Because I kinda just wanna read it like you see it

Anon, this is the most flattering Ask ever.

But I can’t just dash off ficlets (and am in awe of people who can) + I need to be in a certain headspace to write smut + I have a chapter coming up in my fic of Adam Parrish getting some A1 birthday sex. So, I’m afraid I won’t be able to write something Today for you for Adam’s bday.

Instead, I offer you a glimpse of an unedited WIP scene in In One Piece, where Adam is being taken care of. It becomes Hella NSFW in the actual fic, but this part is quite sweet (well, by my standards anyway). I hope you enjoy it (Adam and Ronan surely do). It’s under the cut.

***

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Don’t you trust me, Parrish?”

“I don’t trust you to not blast the Murder Squash Song in my working ear and think it’s a hilarious joke.”

“Fuck you, asshole. That was one time - with Gansey. You want your ice-cream or not?” 

Adam nodded. Yes, he wanted some ice-cream and Ronan’s sundaes were glorious. And Ronan was in a mood. So - fine.

“Then close your eyes and play.”

There was suddenly something cold touching his lips and Adam realised Ronan was holding a...he put his tongue out tentatively and licked. And then opened his mouth and Ronan popped the strawberry into it.

Adam bit into the fruit, the juice of it exploding and drowning his senses.

Tart and sweet and lush and full of summer. It was like tasting a strawberry for the very first time. 

“Did you like it?” Ronan asked, his voice very close. 

“Yes,” Adam smiled despite himself. “It was a very good strawberry.”

“Okay.” Ronan sounded smug. “Again.”

Adam obeyed, and something creamy and salty was placed on his tongue.

“Cheese,” Adam said, around the wedge. God, it was so good. Had cheese always been this delicious?

“Yes, cheese. Very good, Harvard-boy.” Adam could almost hear the rolling of Ronan’s eyes.

“What? I was right!”

“Yes, well, cheese can also be processed plastic,” Ronan snorted in disgust. “This is a mature organic cheddar.”

“Yeah, well, excuse me Farmer-Boy,” Adam sneered back, “for not being a bougie gourmet snob like you. And what's a 'mature' cheddar anyway?” 

“God, we really need to educate your taste buds, Parrish. You're a disgrace to me.”

“I’m going to be living in freshman dorms and eating from vending machines. Probably better that my taste buds aren’t educated.”

 ... 

“Okay, enough guessing. I want my ice-cream now,” Adam said, decidedly.

“What're you, seven?” Ronan echoed hollowly from the depths of the fridge.

“C'mon, you said you’d make me my sundae if I played your stupid game,” Adam’s voice had a whine to it that he was not proud of.

“Patience.” Ronan's fingers were at his mouth again. “You’ll like this.”

Adam put his tongue out and licked the tip of Ronan’s finger.

Nutella.

Adam's favourite.

He chased after the hazelnutty sweetness until he had taken Ronan’s entire finger into his mouth, holding his wrist steady. Was there actually some salt in it? How had he never tasted that before?

As he single-mindedly licked and sucked on the chocolate (whoever invented Nutella should've seriously gotten the Nobel prize - this was happiness in a bottle), he became aware of the total silence in the kitchen.

Aside from Ronan’s harsh breathing.

Oh.

Oh.

***

Happy Adam Parrish’s birthday, Anon. I hope you enjoyed this. It’s very much a WIP, so it may change in the final posting.

Stay tuned for the rest and for Adam’s bday present in upcoming chapters of my fic. And thanks for your Ask!

#TRC #The Raven Cycle #Adam Parrish #Ronan Lynch #Pynch #WIP excerpt #In One Piece #my fic #Teen and above #Anonymous #Answered Asks #mine

[augustheads]

i got a diptyque candle for christmas and while it's bougie af, i really do love it. also i love jo malone's peony and blush suede scent so i'm v tempted to splurge on that. my favorite skincare item is the witch hazel toner that smells like rose petals. i've been really digging colourpop highligher lately, it's so sparkly and makes me feel like a fairy. i love mojitos and moscow mules. pizza over everything. and macarons are my life.

oooo i just looked up diptyque and it looks so so amazing, please enjoy your bougie candle!!! if you want to save the glass after you’re done, i know how to remove wax!! its not super dangerous but its much better than other ways people do it.

i have an electric water kettle so i heat up some water and put it in whats left of the candle. i leave it overnight. usually, overnight, the wax melts bc of the hot water and a lot of the wax will rise to the top! sometimes candles need a little scrub or extra rounds of hot water to clean it out all the way but i love keeping the glass to organize with. makeup brishes, hair scrunchies, etc. just thought u would like to know as this is a good brand and you probably wanna keep the glass!! if you ever have questions dm me!

im gonna try and make this next part fast as i made this long lmaoo. that shade is so pretty i love it!! if you dont have many blushes you should treat yourself you’ll be excited ot use it every day. i am a big colourpop stan so i support! that toner sounds so lovely as well. i love tequila sunrise and vodka crans. and i love mac and cheese the most but pizza is second. cheesecakes 4 eva.

#ionlyseedaylight #long post #sorry yall i got excited #kat answers shit #asks

[hardeepcox]

The Chronicles of Hardeep Cox - Bangkok pt 1

Intro

Hi my name is Hardeep Cox, I may or may not be a guy born to an Indian mom and a white guy from Boston in the DMV area. Then again I may or may not be just an extremely immature adult with a ridiculous sense of humor. Quick warning: if you are easily offended then I suggest you just exit this shit right now and idk go watch cable tv or something.

I am writing this as we prepare for our first legit night out in Bangkok, as I and a dude named Paper awkwardly wait for my dad to finish showering so we can head out. Tonight’s destination is Above Eleven, but I’ll explain more later on. Let’s begin with our arrival.

Flight and Night 1

After about 20 hours of flying we met up with Paper, our guide/family friend (on my dad’s side). Paper picked us up from the airport and helped us hail a cab. My first impression of Bangkok when I stepped outside of the airport was that it seemed so similar to Los Angeles, I guess because of the weather and vegetation. Anyways, the cab dropped us off at the Doubletree where an enormous wooden figure of a football (soccer) sat in the lobby. To my unbelievable surprise, it turned out that Paper was actually going to be staying in the hotel room with us because he lives outside of the city (my dad of course manages to leave out important details like this when planning trips). Because of the timezone change we were hungry upon arrival, at 3 in the damn morning. So we did what any idiot American tourist would do, we went to 7 Eleven. I had to accept the fact that chili and cheese quarter pounders would no longer be an option, so I went with the spicy basil rice and fish sauce. I gotta say that it was pretty good, even though it was spicy as hell. After crushing my first meal in Thailand, we did our best to sleep for the next couple of hours.

Day 1

Sleep deprived but feeling ready to roll, we got ready and headed downstairs for breakfast. The buffet included the usual American stuff, sushi, dim sum, and some freshly made Thai dishes.The dim sum was by far my favorite, and today it was Chinese egg tarts.

We went to some Buddhist temples, hundreds of years old. There were so many Chinese tourists, and so many lame pictures being taken by them (sitting down in lotus position next to a statue of the Buddha, a chick looking dramatically and diagonally down at the floor while her boyfriend takes a picture for her instagram and you KNOW she’s gonna add some kind of bullshit philosophical caption to it). It was hard to get into the spiritual groove with all these tourists, and the only places where I could feel peace was in the praying rooms where I wish that I could have stayed longer. The best part was the Wat Phra Ram, literally the place where they filmed one of my favorite childhood movies Mortal Kombat. It was totally unexpected and spontaneous, the most interesting part about it was the dog that had managed to sneak up into the actual ruins and seemed to be searching for something at a calm pace. My pathetic attempts to whistle loud enough for the dog to hear me led me to run around the ruins hoping to catch a glimpse of it. I heard it howl a couple of times after that and I’ll always wonder why, maybe its spirit led it to the ruins to discover a link to a past life. Who knew I would have accidentally stepped into the Netherealm, but too bad I couldn't meet Raiden, Shang Tsung, and Liu Kang's dead brother (if you don't get this reference please find a time machine and go back in time to 1995, break into a Hollywood video, steal a copy of Mortal Kombat, watch it, go back into the time machine, return to the present time, and punch yourself in the fucking face).

Tired as hell we walked around markets near the Chao Phra Ya river, they were pretty generic developing country markets and I was extremely tired so I just wanted to go back to the hotel and pass out. We tried some sticky rice dessert that was pretty good so we bought some, and my dumbass ate my entire portion in the cab and felt even more like a piece of shit after. We made a stop for some roadside Pad Thai, it was delicious but again I was exhausted. Back in the cab again I pretty much passed out from exhaustion.

Night 2

I woke maybe 45 minutes later still in the cab but the sun was setting and the nocturnal city was coming alive. Suddenly it dawned on me that we had to be in Chinatown and my street-mode immediately turned on. After driving us through some beautifully sketchy streets, our cab driver dropped us off at a main road. All the lights made it look like it was an attempt at giving it a times square feel. I was now totally awake and ready for more exploring, and after walking for a bit we walked by a Chinese restaurant (Chinatown in Bangkok is an extremely fast-paced environment full of beautiful chaos, if you can’t keep up you might as well stay in your comfy apartment and drink lattes or something). The menu had so many choices, but no combination fried rice, general tso’s chicken, or lo mein (at this point I realized that I should just forget about these options because I’m not gonna find this delicious diabetes-maximus anymore). I got the egg noodles with roasted duck for $2, and the portion was just right for me since I was still full from that sticky rice and exhausted from the jetlag. Before the food coma took over, we took a tuk tuk to the nearest metro train station and made our way back to the hotel. The metro was actually very organized and technologically advanced, the DC metro could learn a thing or two from it. Because of the timezone change, the beers, sticky rice, and random stuff that I had eaten, I hadn’t really used the bathroom all day. Walking from the metro to the hotel at some point became truly difficult and I had tell myself just breathe man don’t shit yourself on your first night in Bangkok goddammit.

Now back at the hotel and totally relieved, our night actually began.

Nocturnal Adventure

We started out at the Queen Bee, a little bar across the street with shitty mojitos but a damn good blues band. From there we went to a place that my dad would not stop mentioning, Above Eleven, a local Peruvian restaurant. Probably one of the coolest restaurants that I’ve honestly ever been to. This was some upper class bougie shit as the kids say, but the view of the city was breathtaking and the food was absolutely delicious (and I am a picky fuck when it comes to flavors). The Peruvian food was authentic, the Pisco Sour was legit, and we got to meet Chef Omar Frank Maruy. Chef Maruy is the Japanese-Peruvian chef in charge of keeping the food quality at Above Eleven at its exquisite level. After downing a few Pisco sours, and devouring a few dishes (ceviche, jalea, and anticucho) we made our way to Havana Social. I could tell this place was throwing a good party as we walked to the entrance which was a random door in an alley with working girls in the corner. Too bad some of us were wearing shorts so we were ultimately denied entrance. Bummed out we walked to the nearest bar, Oskar, and had Lavender Pisco Sours. Seriously so creative and surprisingly delicious!

After downing these drinks we basically gave up and made our way back to the hotel. Maybe like 5 minutes away from the hotel we walked past a really sketchy alley and I shit you not, my dad says “let’s go into a small street shithole bar!” He’s already walking towards it so Paper and I say fuck it and we join him, plus I mean come on I gotta watch my dad’s back since hookers have been flirting with him for the past 25 minutes. We walk in and of course all these chicks are so psyched to see us, a very pretty hostess welcomes us so we sit at the bar and get some Tiger beers. With Youtube as our DJ, we start sipping on beers and my dad is just having a blast with these two chicks. They try to flirt with me but I’m like meh, I’ve honestly seen hotter escorts in Lima. Then one of them says, “I’m gonna bring my sister for you.” I’m like ok cool whatever, totally unimpressed as I watch my dad party at this little bar. This chick brings the pretty hostess over and introduces her as her “sister”, and I notice dude this girl is actually super cute and obviously not an actual escort. Me and her are both like uhh… hi? She’s not sure how to interact with idiot foreigners, but I can tell and I am just my usual super chill self with her. She gets a jack and coke, and I continue sipping on my Tiger. Her name is May, I was like “is it pronounced like the month May, or is it Mai like my?” She looked at me like if I was a dumbass but she was playful about it, and I start crushing on this chick because I mean duh I am a fucking idiot and I do shit like this. This all ended with a bill of almost $200 USD, an escort angry at us for not taking her back to our hotel, and me DJ’ing some old school reggaeton on their Youtube. As we made our way back to the hotel we ran into into girls selling booze on the sidewalk in what seemed like the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo but cut in half the long way, and the girls turned the bottom half of the car into a mini-bar. As I took a whiz on a street corner, Paper points out that dude there is a toilet at this mini-bar on the sidewalk! I look behind a little curtain next to the mini-bar and there is in fact a toilet there, I mean not connected to any plumbing or anything, just literally a tiny toilet placed on the sidewalk. Did I whiz into this tiny toilet like 20 minutes later? Yes. Did I drink a few too many rum and cokes at this sidewalk mini-bar? Yes. Did I have any idea of what the hell to expect the next day? Hell no.

Night 3 - Let’s try not to die tonight shall we?

I’m skipping to Night 3 because the highlight of Day 2 is just me holding a lemur (by the way lemurs are freakin adorable and they have actual fingers and thumbs!), and realizing that my dad should move to the Thai countryside cuz he is actually genuinely happy there (he greeted random people from a canoe, including a naked fat guy who was in the middle of a soapy bath in the river).

On Night 3 we make another attempt at Havana Social (if there ever is a place with reggaeton and Cuban rum then you’ll probably find me there). The entrance is the #1 coolest that I have seen in my life so far, some dude gives you a code and you punch it into an old phone-booth, this then unlocks an old door next to it which you push open and find a little piece of Havana hidden within Bangkok. So there I am doing my thing downing Cuba Libres, dancing, and laughing at tourists dancing like idiots when I notice three pretty cute chicks dancing near us. I am not the most extroverted dude, but when I hear Latin music the beast is then awakened and I just let it take me places. So I slither over to these girls and pull off some of my signature moves, including one borrowed from my grandpa which I call the Egyptian knife hands. One of the chicks starts dancing with me and my first thought is “wow my dad is watching me spit some legit game, now I AM THE MASTER!” But anyways yeah we dancin and shiet. Suddenly she asks if I wanna go with her and her friends to another club, I thought it was a bad idea but the rum and Daddy Yankee had me saying “yeah screw it let’s go.” The four of us leave the club and somehow fit into a tuk tuk that says VIP on the seat and one of the girls say it’s free! RED FLAG - free shit usually comes with a price later on, and these girls seemed way too excited to have me along. One of the girls pulls out a wrapper with a bunch of pills and puts one in my mouth, my first thought is oh fuck I’m about to get roofied, or flooried, dammit Zack Galifianakis! I pretend to swallow the pill, then I look over into the street and spit this shit out. The girl is like are you feeling okay? I’m like yeah I’m great (meanwhile internally trying to think of an escape plan without freaking out)! We get to this club called Mixx, and this party is poppin. Every tourist is dancing with a local, and I’m thinking wow is every girl at a club in Bangkok an escort… like every single damn one?! My phone only has internet if there is wifi, and I tell the girl that I wanna call my friends to come but I need the wifi password so she hooked me up with her hotspot. Instead of figuring out how to use the wifi to escape, I’m in the bathroom FB messaging my friends back in the states how I almost got roofied and that I’m probably gonna die cuz I mean that is a brilliant idea right? I go back out there and one of the girls goes “if you wanna hang out with me it’s gonna be 3000 baht (like almost $100 USD).” Since I don’t wanna die I go “okay sounds good, let’s hang out every day this week okay?” Her eyes brighten up and she has a huge smile on her face, she tells her friend who then makes a face like “we did it bitch!” I’m thinking okay thank god I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow in a tub full of ice with my internal organs missing because they wanna take all my money throughout the week. Suddenly the Thai DJ starts playing the cumbia song “Colegiala”, and it was at this exact moment that I knew that everything would be okay! I stopped freaking out and danced the night away, didn’t sleep that night, and somehow found a really nice cab driver to take me back to my hotel afterwards (he charged me 300 baht but had no change so I just gave him my 1000 baht bill, really nice guy and really grateful). Yep definitely not doing that again, from now on I will assume every chick at a club in Bangkok is an escort. If you are asking yourself if I hit up that girl again to hang out and continuously pay her $100 USD throughout the week, the answer is dude of course not wtf.

#bangkok #party #hangover #zack galifianikis

[dearrachell-blog]

Madrid, Spain

01/28-02/01

My stay in Madrid flew by to say the least, and it’s crazy to fathom how quickly I fell in love with the city especially in such short duration. The first night Katie, Val and I arrived several hours earlier than the rest of our group, so we checked into our Airbnb and found a nice, authentic restaurant to eat at. My rice dish tasted so good, I will definitely be missing rice throughout my stay as I don’t have a cooker here in Vienna and Asian white rice can rarely if even be found. At dinner, the employees sang feliz cumpleaños to one of their coworkers, and their loving, family-like interactions made my heart happy. Finished dinner off with complimentary palate-cleansing warm green juice shots that were so yummy! 

The next day was jam packed as our entire group woke up early to make the most of our precious time there. Breakfast at Pum Pum Cafe was so nice- would highly recommend the coffee, avocado toast, benedict, and desserts there! We trekked over 25,000 steps this day just walking through the entire city. A few destinations we stopped by were Plaza Mayor, the Royal Palace, Jardines de Sabatini, Mercado de San Miguel, and the Temple of Debod to watch the beautiful sunset. It was incredible to see these sights before my own eyes as I had only seen them through photos and snapchat videos before. Everything seemed to come to life and I fell silent during some parts of the day just in awe of my surroundings. At nighttime, while the rest of my group went to El Tigre, I decided to meet up with one of my friends from home. It was so nice being able to talk openly with Christine and not feel like I had to invent forced conversation every time I opened my mouth. It’s comforting to acknowledge that we’re in similar situations, social-wise, and I’m gradually accepting the fact that it’s alright if I don’t make lifelong friends while I’m here, granted I’ve only met half of our Vienna program thus far. What’s most important is that I make the most of my experience and accomplish all of the things that I want to do while abroad. I’m going to grow very comfortable spending time by myself this semester, and that is perfect okay. Anyways, together we walked around Centro and indulged in delicious gelato from Mistura and churros from Chocolatería San Gines. Will definitely revisit those places later on.

Our second full day in Madrid was also an adventure as we checked off Puerta Del Sol and row-boating through Buen Retiro Park. Having the liberty to go wherever whenever with no rigid agenda has been refreshing and I’m happy to have shared these moments with my new semi-friends. We’re getting there. One of my favorite activities while visiting a new location is just sight-seeting and walking into random stores and sparking conversations with strangers. There doesn’t have to be an exact activity involved, the exploration is enough. For breakfast we ate at La Libre and for lunch, TAKOS, both of which were well worth the wait! In the evening was our much awaited Tapas Crawl!!! Our tour guide, Raúl, was a blast and we were joined by another couple on their honeymoon. I learned that there are more than 2,000 beer taps just within Madrid, and I also learned how to properly test for good red wine. I looked at our second glass of red wine in front of a white napkin, and smelled the aroma of berries, chocolate, leather, nuts, and “bullshit” according to Val hahaha. After 3.5 hours and 5 stops of engorging in authentic tapas and wine, I felt utterly stuffed. My favorite dish would probably have to be the pork belly from our second stop. Ended the crawl with a nice buzz and full stomach. Following this, I wish we would have gone home to settle down and get ready, but we immediately went straight out to Dubliners, where I met up with Cho and Murph (brothers abroad!!!), and then to StarCoyote. I have to admit I was feeling a bit awkward because I didn’t know as many people as the others did I wasn’t dressed for the occasion. The fact that my roommate was much more drunk than I was and trampling all over me was also highkey annoying. The night ended with me and Madeleine sitting on the sidewalk partially sober waiting for our uber home while the others very drunkenly clambered into the first car. It was a memorable night without a doubt and I did meet a few new friends along the way, but I’m starting to recognize who I want to grow closer with and who I am ambivalent about. 

The next morning was sloooow as my Airbnb mates woke up in random intervals, many of whom were hungover messes. But I spent the morning in getting ready and getting my things together as a few others went out to breakfast. I needed the extra hour to spend organizing myself. Half the group left to fly to Seville and the rest of us grabbed lunch and checked into our hostel for the night. I learned that Menu Del Día is not a restaurant, but actually is a deal that various restaurants offer for 11 euro hahaha the more you know! But regardless, the cheese and paella that we shared for lunch that day was so tasty. I took my first siesta later that day after checking into our hostel. While Katie and Val went out to hang out around Centro, I happily hung out with Christine again!! Grabbed Walk to Wok because we were craving Asian food, tracked down the oldest restaurant in the world founded in 1725, Sobrino de Botín, and went shopping along Gran Vía. It felt so comfortable being around genuine company and I litttterally cannot wait until we travel together in the near future.

Note to self: Go to airports early even though in Europe, the check-in and security process isn’t as long as they are in the US. The morning was semi-stressful because we totally disregarded traffic and thought we were going to miss our flight back home to Vienna. But luckily we made it just in time woohoo. Another observation, 3 of the 4 ubers that we took during our stay were Teslas like what the heck bougie!! Apparently the cars aren’t the owners, but are provided by the company. 

There’s so much about Spain that intrigues me. The lifestyle there seems slower paced and the lifestyle surprisingly reminds me of that in Taipei where the convenience of walking everywhere and accessing little stores is evident. At the same time, there is so much preserved culture to be reminisced and explored. I’m unsure if I’m so excited because this was my first abroad trip to a different country, but I definitely plan on revisiting Madrid to tour its other features, from renowned museums to rooftop bars to other areas of the city. Maybe I should have chosen Madrid as my first rather than second choice of host country. But who knows, SEE YOU AGAIN ESPAÑA.

[arielleyoga-blog1]

5 Ways to Heal Your Gut

Everyone is talking about gut health these days, including myself, and when we type it into our search engines it can get really overwhelming. If you follow me on instagram, you know I coach 28 day programs where we heal our gut: but if you aren’t quite ready for that yet, or don’t even understand why GUT HEALTH is the hottest hashtag nowadays, I wanted to break it down and give you 5 fast things you can do NOW to help reduce the amount of inflammation that is in your body.

Western Medicine is JUST starting to catch up to the Eastern medical principle that “all disease starts in the gut” due to the rapid increase in auto-immune diseases over the last 30 years in our country: ranging from daily headaches to alzheimer’s disease. What’s the relation? Inflammation!

Inflammation is our bodies natural response to threat, and unfortunately, because of how food is made in the states, our bodies have felt like they’re under attack all day every day.

So, what can we do?

1. Reduce Gluten, Dairy, and Sugar

I know, I know...you KNOW. But you love your mother-in-law’s pasta salad she makes when you come home for Christmas, and who doesn’t dig a fancy charcuterie & cheese board? I don’t want you to stop eating those things forever...although, you can, and you’d survive...dare I say you’d THRIVE. But, also, you’d stop reading this right away if I told you to do that.

So, before you grab the free bread they leave on the table, it’s important you take a pause to remember just how inflammatory and, thus, damaging these foods are for our bodies: especially in America. The way conventional farmers process these foods trigger that immune response in our body which creates inflammation in our intestinal tract and other tissues: even if you’re not allergic.

So, cut back on them: and NEVER have conventional dairy. I don’t care how cheap the milk is: pay the extra $2 for the organic (this is definitely directed at my husband who gets so enraged by organic food prices), because the extra $2 now is a lot cheaper than the medical expenses later. Also: there are SO many amazing vegan cheese options if you want, and nutritional yeast is also cheesy and amazing! When you have that hankering for a bowl of spaghetti: explore amazing GF pasta items: Banza is a GREAT brand that makes GF pasta that is NOT sticky or gross, and most restaurants have a GF menu now because of the rise in people suffering from celiac’s disease.

(cough cough nudge nudge yet another disorder that’s exploded in this country in the last few decades)

2. Eat ORGANIC

Vegetables and fruits are not inflammatory in nature, and thus it’s easy to believe a plate of conventionally grown lettuce is a good choice. But, sadly, it is not.  Conventional produce is grown using synthetic chemicals: and when that’s what’s used in the soil and on the plants: that’s what your body is absorbing too. Heard of the Roundup lawsuits? Roundup (a weed killer people used around their homes) has been directly connected to causing cancer. So what do you think happens when we EAT food grown from soil that was sprayed with that? NO BUENO.

3. Drink MORE water

And no, coffee does not count.  We all can benefit from drinking more water because it helps with everything: not just inflammation.

I also know it’s a challenging thing to implement. Take my body for example: I take 4 sips of a water bottle and by the time I get to my yoga studio 20min later, I am SECONDS away from peeing myself. I race to the bathroom. During class when my students are flowing or in savasana, I race to the bathroom again because guess what? I’m sweating I have to pee so badly, and then before I get back in the car I go again because just the THOUGHT of going to the bathroom makes me have to pee. And that’s just form 4 sips!  As uncomfortable as that is: it’s important that we drink TONS of water every day: and if you’re one of those people that “hates” water…

Get bougie with it. Add some mint, cucumbers, or citrus into your water bottle. (Sorority Girls, if you didn’t like rush like some of us, you may not want to add lemon)

When you add these fun little treats, you’ll drink more of it, and you may even trick yourself into thinking you’re in the waiting room of some fancy spa when you’re actually sitting in traffic. Why MORE water for inflammation? Because it helps to flush out toxins and irritants that our body doesn’t need, and then we get to flush it down. :) See what I did there? 

4. Create a Sleep routine

Sleep and inflammation are regulated by the same biorhythms: Circadian rhythms. When the circadian rhythms are disrupted: so is normal immune function and then... hello inflammation!

Whatever time you “have” to officially wake up, take 8 hours off of that and shut of ALL devices: TVs, computers, phones. Spend that last hour unwinding: take a shower, stretch, free write (like with your hands on paper), read a book or a magazine (remember those), doodle, or just lay in the dark in your room. Even if you get woken up a few times (maybe you’ve got a new baby), you can at least create the routine for your body, and our bodies and our gut NEED routine to relax and settle.

I saved the most important tool for last:

5. Incorporate Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Digestive Enzymes

Think of your gut like a beautiful garden. Probiotics are the super cool plants you just picked up and instagrammed in your backseat as “precious cargo,”  and prebiotics are the ORGANIC fertilizer they need to grow big and strong. You can plant those new babies of yours, but they’re not going to flourish well without the fertilizer.

Our body doesn’t abosrb food, it absorbs nutrients. Or at least, it’s supposed to. Low-grade inflammation in the digestive tract (which guess what, we all have) leads to deficiencies in our bodies natural digestive enzymes, so even those of us that are healthy aren’t actually absorbing the good nutrition we are eating. Digestive enzymes are what encourage the roots of the plants to grow into the soil in our garden and allows them to absorb all the goodness and grow and like crazy creating that insta before and after of your dreams!

I used to buy 3 different bottles and spend  a lot of money on them, but thankfully I found an all organic pre & probiotic WITH digestive enzymes that I drink every morning when I wake up! It’s called Digestion Plus, and you can order it by clicking on this whole sentence!

Lots of these health fads are just that...fads, and I find them annoying. BUT GUT HEALTH IS NOT A FAD: it’s SO imperative for living your life in the most optimal state! I never knew I was walking through my life with brain fog until I did the 28 day gut detox I now coach: so if you have any questions about that, please DM me or shoot me an email or comment below! I’m on instagram at @arielle_yoga and my email is [email protected]! HAPPY DIGESTION, BABES! oxox

#guthealth #livewellwitharielle #arielleyoga #healthcoachblog #arbonne30 #quicktips #digestionmatters #healyourgut

[radiyum]

hi what’s up

i’m gonna vent about work under the cut

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHGHGGGGGGGGGHHHHHAHHRRRUUGUHHHHGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUUGHHAARGHHH

I AM SO ANNOYED

WHY WAS I OPTIMISTIC ABOUT A BEAUTY TEAM????? WHY THE FUCK??? WAS I JUST SUGARCOATING MY KNOWING FUTURE DISAPPOINTMENT??????

okay i have been the cosmetics/beauty brand by myself for nearly three years now, so YEAH i get it, i have been doing what i do for a long time so i totally understand that some things aren’t going to attach to new people easily

but like

what the fuck

i’m training the two new girls my store hired for the “““beauty team”““ but ohhh my fuckkinng CHEESE they don’t listen for shit and after two of three days of training i just don’t know how many more times i can reiterate or repeat something without sounding like a bitch

i explain to them how to properly organize the beauty department and how to scan for the out of stocks, i explain that the organizing has to come BEFORE the scanning and how important that is.... and yet they still did it. the aisles still looked so bad, i personally had to go through and fix things, and in their defense, my managers kept pulling me in all sorts of directions on the sales floor this morning so i couldn’t be with them completely directing them... but just one look at the aisles and i don;t know how they said they were done

i explain that since there are THREE of us, we were all gonna separate and tackle out own aisles because ONE, there will be more guest coverage, and TWO, this way i could also see what individually needs to be reexplained to them both, BUT i was called to another location in the store, and when i come back, they’re working in the same aisle..... and i was a dick and had to separate them

i explain they HAVE to walk up locked items to the front of the registers, or put them on hold for the guests. it would defeat the purpose of locking the item up to begin with if we just HAND them the $78 perfume that is locked. like cool, that’s great to trust people, but handing it to one guest you trust isn’t fair to all of the other honest guests that you deem isn’t trustworthy. and yet.... the security team told me they were handing the guests the locked items.

at first i thought i was being insecure about this next point, but two of my coworkers mentioned that they noticed one of the girls looks really irritated??? like everytime i’m talking to her directly she just stares at me with the most blank look in her eyes and taps her foot wildly and keeps nodding and sighing and it’s so annoying. and it’s been bugging me because she thinks she’s so cool and bougie because she used to work at nordstorms rack like dude i used to work at victoria’s secret and a $$$ clothing store on a sales goal and was the top sales associate there, and hey dude like tone your shit down, we both ended up at target

the thing is that when you hear beauty team member i have so many reactions of “OMGGG HOW FUN I WANT TO BE SURROUNDED BY MAKE UP AND SKINCARE ALL DAY :)))” and aesthetically it’s AWESOME i ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT, but it’s WWWWWAAAAAY MORE about the logistics. it’s about very deep detailed organizing, constantly scanning for the out of stocks, it’s cleaning and defecting, it’s preparing for sales and shit. it’s not easy. it’s not just mascara and lipstick. and i think they thought it WAS going to just be about make up. even some of the most hard working team members i work with hear what i have to do they go “omg no i could never do that/i don’t want to do what you do at all” and it’s cool and i understand

BBBBBBBBLLLEUGHHH, so honestly this whole episode has made me pretty stressed. i can tell they’re bored and disappointed by it so it’s really hard to talk to them and be excited by them joining "”my”““ department that i reworked from the ground up. LITERALLY. i put so much blood sweats and tears into making my department into what it is now and i’m just no longer excited about this beauty team. they don’t care. i’m going sound rude but i give them until the end of the year at the very very most. i don’t think they’re gonna last.

i already talked to my team lead and my hr about some of these points, so tomorrow they were planning on walking through it and discussing these things ambiguously, they were already going to give them training as well anyways so it’s extra icing on top. maybe they’ll listen to them.

okay sorry, i’m going to wash up and online browse and maybe finally catch up on the summer anime on my list.

#documentation #stupid work things

[ilyashrayber]

The Mission

  When I first entered high school, I knew absolutely nothing. No work ethic, no plans, and perhaps most alarming, almost no friends to speak of. I was so young, and yet, it felt like the world was already closing in around me, as if some metaphorical caution tape was already cropping up on things I wanted to do and people I wanted to meet. I had no knowledge of what was around me, and even more so, it felt like I never would. But as you get older, things start to change, and you feel more and more doors open up, one after the other, in a way that could only make sense with the passage of time. If I’m coming off as vague, it is because it’s hard for someone like myself to specify exact moments when you feel validated, satisfied, and as if you’ve broken away from an almost self-imposed mental barrier. But if there was a place that embodied the transition from the timid, smelly, and raggedy boy I was to the slightly less timid, smelly, and raggedy man (by Jewish law) I am today, it would be the Mission District.

I would be remiss to bring up the Mission without addressing the growing, all-encompassing wave of change that is hitting it right now. What used to be a primarily Latinx community comprised of families, artists, and blue collar workers has been all but washed away by white software engineers in search of some strange, exoticized concept of ‘urban grit’ and ‘authenticity’. Where there once were family owned groceries, optometrists, and photo studios, I now see exorbitant pre-fixe menus, ‘organic’ clothing stores, and the occasional (read: extremely common) misuse of local history to sell me something. I am exhausted, and I don’t even live there. Additionally, the privilege of being a cis, white man is something that makes me just at fault when I do not speak up as those who are actively destroying a piece of what makes this city so dynamic. It is a tricky tightrope to walk on, and the best thing people like myself can do is listen, and help when asked, whether that is giving our time, money, or a mix of the two to help preserve the integrity, and magic, of the Mission.

 I remember the first time I ever had a sleepover. It wasn’t with the kid next door to me, or at a birthday party, or even in the first 14 years of my life. Instead, my first sleepover happened in my freshman year of high school. This isn’t super uncommon among children of immigrants, but nonetheless, I felt like I was missing a key piece of the American experience. When it came to mind, before I actually went to one, I had, like most things, romanticized each and every single aspect of a sleepover. I had imagined a world where we would get to the house, only to be greeted by plates of fresh grapes, served to us on priceless marble while enjoying French brut in tall glasses. Instead, we made eggs at midnight and drank Tropicana Orange Peach Mango (henceforth known as ‘OPM’) straight from the carton. In place of sampling liquors from around the world and discussing literature, we downed Kirin Ichiban and talked about girls from our high school we would definitely want to go out with but definitely would have no idea what we would even begin to do if we ever did. Usually crouched down, in the basement, trying to stealthily sip our brew while an adult was upstairs. All this happened in a Victorian on the corner of 27th and Guerrero, a house purchased by my friend’s father for $70,000 right when he got out of the Navy in the 1970’s. It had four bedrooms, an insane kitchen leading out into the backyard, and a circular top floor window, one situated right above the bed of my friend who would always invite me over. It was through this window that I had witnessed car break-ins, smelled the waft of burritos only a couple blocks over, and totally messed with other people trying to get in at the front door. They are good, sacred memories that put a smile on my face when I remember them, both in their quality and the sheer quantity that I have of them.

 The Victorian sat on the cusp of Noe Valley and the Mission, leaning more to the former when you went east and more to the latter when you went west. And boy, did we go west a lot. We would often leave the house at night, with no plan at all, burnt out from playing video games, and simply walk down Mission Street trying to process what it was we were seeing as little baby birds sprouting their wings for the first time. People were out drinking and dancing, the air had a palpable energy to it, and it seemed as if everything was right with the world. It was a sensation I knew I wouldn’t have for a long time, but I wanted it anyway. Street vendors, taquerias, and the only CEX in the city were the main draws, but it was the friendly faces, life experience, and exposure to cultures outside our own that really made us want to stay.

  The stretch of 24th Street that begins on Mission and ends on Potrero is perhaps my favorite dozen or so blocks in the city. It has everything anyone could need, ever. Casa Lucas is the exclusive grocery store I shop at when my folks are out of town and I’m calling the shots, and believe me, it’s worth every penny of the Muni fare I feel disillusioned to pay. The fruits and veggies there taste better than any trustfund soulcycle hayes valley bullshit they’re trying to feed you over at Whole Foods, and at a fraction of the price. Plus, they’re the only grocery in the city I’ve found that stocks the very specific kind of kola I’ve become dependant on, imported all the way from Oaxaca. When I say that this kola fucked up my world, I am being modest in the effect it had on me.. I don’t even know the name of it, but I reach for the stuff everytime I’m on 24th because it has that kind of hold on me. Days get brighter, and nights get longer, whenever I feel the sweet, smooth liquid gold pass through me. Anyways. Moving on. Not only does 24th have the most kick-ass grocery in the entire world, they also have maybe the best cheap seafood ever, in the form of Basa Express. Ignore the sign that was made in Microsoft Paint. Appreciate the fact that this is a no frills, what you see is what you get kind of seafood place where you can grab a freshly made California roll for 5 dollars. With ceviche and sashimi being just a little bit more than that, it’s a refreshing change of pace from the recent increase of trendy seafood places with exposed wood and vintage buoys hanging everywhere. There is no exposed wood here. There is no old photo of a ship captain the owner bought on eBay. There is no lengthy description of how the fish lived and died along with a short obituary. It is just good, cheap seafood that you can feel good about eating.

 Walk up and down 24th and you’ll realize the plethora of people and places that feel like hidden gems, but have been there all along. I stand by Humphry Slocombe as the best ice cream in the city, while the vast majority of my friends cry out in support of Mitchell’s, another place that is very good but in no way a competitor to Humphry and his offerings. The classic at Humphry’s is to walk in, have no idea what you want, and then have the young college kids behind the counter begrudgingly ask if you want a sample. That is just the way it works. If I can just be bougie for one second here; they have a Wine & Cheese flavor. And it’s delicious. If this is the hill I die on, so be it. After a nice little ice cream break, I like to peruse the various cultural offerings, in the forms of records and books that 24th has to offer. I always have to walk into Pyramid Records, which, dare I say, is the most finely curated selection of wax in the entire Bay Area. Is there a huge selection? No. Do they have deep discounts and unbeatable prices? Not really. But is there a dude behind the counter who compliments my sneakers everytime I’m there? Yes. There is. For myself, Pyramid has a beautiful mix of international, lounge, and soundtracks on vinyl, which just so happen to be some of my favorite genres in music. It’s all designed in a super clean, minimalist-but-nowhere-near-boring type of aesthetic. I feel like I’m in a music video for a bedroom pop artist when I’m in there, and that’s all I could ever ask for. When talking about literature however, it’s hard to beat Alley Cat, a big bookstore with a gallery and event space in the back. I’ve picked up some of my favorite graphic novels from this spot, and their mystery section makes me feel good. Adobe Books a few blocks up is great too, and it sports a much more intimate setting for falling in love with any number of books, local or not. I’ve seen many a performance inside of Adobe, ranging from Chicana poetry, all the way to a solo performance from the bassist for Real Estate. Great books, great vibe, and it always feels nice to support a place that feels like an institution. For any bookstore, that should be a slam dunk. And it is. Usually directly into my wallet.

  There are tons of other great places on 24th, especially if you’re into just sitting down and having a good time. There’s the OG Philz, a coffee shop with perhaps the comfiest furniture in any cafe, and Haus, half a block down, where I may or may not have a crush on every single female barista that works there. Again, this is unconfirmed. I would really love to recommend Wise Son’s, a jewish deli with an insane breakfast salad, but every since I took edibles right before I ate there and thought I was in 1920s New Orleans, it has been a tough sell. They have a very nice restroom, however, that they’ll let you use if you ask nicely. St. Francis Fountain, a diner nearing the very end of 24th, has the best pancakes in the city. I am sorry but everyone got together and voted on it, and there will be no recount. Whether chocolate chip, banana, or even, dare I say, vegan, these guys are a home run every. Single. Time. It is almost uncanny how good they are, and are the definition of a food that is ‘good for the soul and not so much the love hips.’ Lastly, when you come up on Mission, you’ll no doubt see a line going out the door for the much beloved El Farolito. If you ask me? It’s good, but it’s definitely not my favorite. I try to explain it in terms of ice cream flavors. When you take your kid to go get ice cream, you always start with vanilla. There’s a reason it’s the default, you know? Well rounded, satisfying, and very inoffensive. I feel the exact same about El Farolito. (Cue the thinkpieces attacking me.) It is the vanilla ice cream of taquerias. My favorite, however, is also in fact on 24th, and it goes by the name of Taqueria Guadalajara. More salsa options, less rice, and juicier meat is what drives me to make this almost sacrilegious decision. Plus, there’s never a line. And that in and of itself should be celebrated.

   The Mission is so, so many things. But most of all, it is not mine. And it’s probably not yours, either. I simply play, and for a little bit, worked there. There is so much to celebrate about this neighborhood, and so, so much that we as a city should try to preserve, even if it considered by many to be ground zero for gentrification. Be respectful. Think about your actions. How will this affect others? If you live there, try broadening it to a macro level. How will this affect my community, one that is already going through an incredible amount of change, and the heartbreak that comes with that? What can I do to make things better? Always say thank you, and respect those that came before you. These seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget with everything going on. At the end of the day, I like to hang out in the Mission, and I bet you, the reader, probably do too. So let’s just try and not be complete asshats about what we choose to do in a community that is experiencing an immense shift, both culturally and economically. Let’s just try and be a little better next time we’re there.

[fromtheeleventh-blog]

Meet Alijah Webb

A few weeks ago I messaged my dear friend Alijah about completing a virtual interview and curating a playlist for this blog. I think the first time I officially met Alijah was sometime in the fall of 2016, I walked into our college’s DIY venue tasked with turning on Twin Peaks for the weekly viewing I organized but instead I was crying inconsolably. I like to think my second impression (which I can’t now recall) was better since we’re friends now. Alijah and I especially got to know one another better sitting at each other’s radio shows and so I was curious about where she got her musical start and how she relates to her various communities. Read her interview below to learn more about Alijah, zines, music, and Roanoke. Listen to her awesome playlist here. 

What is your first musical memory?

Alijah Webb: My first musical memory is from elementary school. Ever since I was little I had always been heavily involved in the church community through my mother’s side of the family which meant I was a member of the children’s choir. I remember I got my first solo when I was in the first grade or so. They let me sing “This Little Light of Mine” by myself. I think that was the moment my ego grew three sizes.

How are you involved in your music community?

AW: I am only tangentially involved in my music community since moving to Williamsburg, VA. In high school, my friends and I would spend our friday nights “gallery hopping” downtown and then we would go to shows at The Bazaar. The Bazaar was a record and vintage shop with a venue in the basement. It featured a lot of local bands as well as some smaller touring ones. The basement had an old tv with a nintendo 64, some stringy lights, and records everywhere. Tea was sold for $1 and there was always a bin with free miscellaneous items from the shop. I was always too afraid to talk to anyone, so I would just stand next to whatever friend I was with while they were smoking outside in between sets.

What do you love about your music community?

AW: I love how authentic the Roanoke music scene is. Nobody is really trying to get famous, they are just doing what they love because they love it. One the most important experiences I’ve had with music thus far is my involvement with the Southwest Virginia Punk History project. During my senior year of high school there was a semester-long archival project that finished with a gallery opening. Three groups of students were involved: the Punk and Politics class, the Curation class, and Zine club. This project was so important to me because I was sifting through original cassettes, show posters, zines, and other relics from the buzzing punk scene of Southern Virginia. This project gave me a new outlook on my community as well as my feelings toward music. It was so inspiring to see that so many people were shaped by this community, and how so many people had grown and learned from their experience. All that to say, I love the authenticity of my music community and how it disproves the notion that southern people are not politically involved and that southwest Virginia is boring.

How would you improve your music community?

AW: I think that it is important to me is the knowledge that music is not something that belongs to the privileged. Music is not “good” because some WASP said it is. :’) The music community I identify with is deeply rooted in perseverance and not a bunch of white boys trying to make their parents mad……. Lol

What is your first artistic memory? 

AW: (gallery hopping in high school hehe). 

We would leave school, get dinner, and walk into random galleries. We would look pensively at the art for three minutes, make our way around the room, and eventually end up at the table with free cheese, crackers, and grapes. The cheese cubes were always our endgame.

How are you involved in your arts community?

AW: I always make the joke that I peaked in high school, but I think that there is some truth to that joke. During my senior year of high school I created a zine called “Phosphene Zine,” dedicated to young female artists in the Roanoke Valley. I was just so frustrated with the lack of representation of female youth. As a seventeen year old, I did the only thing I could think of: I made a zine. I had been reaching out to other Roanoke teenagers via Facebook and finally all of a sudden it came together. I asked all of the participants a central question about the romanticization of sadness and how that relates to female intelligence. This is still one of my favorite projects, two years later. 

How would you improve your arts community?

AW: I want to become a curator specifically because I have an interest in marginalized communities. I hope to bring more attention to diversity in Roanoke’s professional art scene. As it stands now, the Roanoke arts community is mostly represented by artists who are either old, white, or male (or a combination of the three). The arts scene does not accurately represent the talent within the community.

Favorite song?

AW: Shake it Off - Mariah Carey -- this song never EVER fails to get me in a good mood. My first CD player was a pink and white Barbie 2-in-1 CD player and karaoke machine. Along with it my mother gifted me with two of her very own CDs: India Arie’s “Acoustic Soul” and Mariah Carey’s “Emancipation of Mimi.” I think these CDs shaped how I see the world and myself. My favorite song from Acoustic Soul was “Brown Skin” which really made me appreciate myself as a black woman, learning to love my brown skin was not always easy but my mother was passionate about making sure that I knew that I was beautiful and worthy of love. My brown skin and curly hair was and is not only acceptable but beautiful. Mariah Carey just taught me to be a bougie bitch and to always go after what I want. (Or maybe that was my Leo mother)

How has your sense of place, your home, etc. impacted the way you think about the arts, music, or justice work?

AW: My sense of home impacts the way I think about everything. Being in college surrounded by a lot of people who either hate where they grew up and also hate where I grew up forced me to defend Roanoke and southwest Virginia. Through defending it, I developed a deep appreciation for it that I never had before. I realized that the giant neon star on top of a mountain means a lot to me and I am grateful for the thoughtful mentors I had throughout my life. The way I think about art and music is a direct result of the fact that I had incredibly loving parents who were willing to cultivate all of my artistic interests. From ballet, to piano, to going to college for Art History. Growing up, my father was a DJ and used to make beats in our living room, so I always had an appreciation for music. 

Something that I think about a lot is something my dad said to me when I was very young: 

“Every time you listen to a song you can hear something different if you listen.” That really stuck with me, and I find myself stopping and focusing to listen to a song.

[corinnelitchfield]

Day 17, Arlon

(Tried posting this from my phone at least 3 times between last night and tonight and I finally gave up. Hoping it works this time.)

A decent night's sleep was just what I needed. I wake the girls around 7:15 per their request - this will help them readjust once day camp starts on Tuesday at 8:45 am. As I'm putting on makeup, I hear them arguing downstairs, then I hear Suzanne crying. I don't rush down, but instead wait to hear for heavy wailing, thuds on the floor, yelling. Nothing. Once I get downstairs, they are both sitting in the family room quietly reading. The vibe seems tense but I don't say anything, just watch as Charlotte pushes the drawer on the coffee table with her foot and Su pushes it back. I may not have siblings or kids, but I know thinly veiled hostility when I see it, so I convince Char that now is a perfect time to practice flute for 30 minutes before we leave for art. She leaves the room and Su keeps reading, then gets restless and I convince her to finish up her April Fools joke stand (or whatever she is calling it).

On the way to art they try to walk on either side of me, but the sidewalks are narrow and it's slowing us down. I make them pick a number and Su gets it, so she has to walk in front and Charlotte will be at the back. Cue the complaining. They snipe at each other a bit more en route, and I'm thinking this could be some misplaced stress on Char's part, considering what she told me last night. Or it's just the usual sibling BS. As we walk we are damn near constantly dodging dog poop. It's on the sidewalk, in the gutter, everywhere. Here's where Europeans could learn something from Americans because by and large our dog owners are pretty good about picking up after their dogs...except in Baltimore. Do not ask me how I know this.

We get to art and the projects begin. I've brought the pen case, which just needs some hand stitching before it's complete, so I finish that up while the girls work on making pendants, brooches, keychains with this foamy clay type product...the clay is very soft and I decide to make a little pin, too. Sarah preps a few plaster eggs for painting at tomorrow's session. The girls move on to another project involving metal charms with baked-on metallic powder. Sarah's son, who has shown up unexpectedly due to a little mishap while out with his dad, is working on projects and making a mess, which irritates Sarah. She repeatedly says "tu me fatigues" (you wear me out). Comment dit-on [how do you say] "Sister, you ain't never lied"?

We head home with several completed projects in hand and get lunch together. I tell them the story of locking my grandmother in the basement when I was little because she was paying more attention to my sick cousin Lara than to me, and how I got spanked for it later. We talk about what hackers are, why the word "Luxembourgeois" [for the language that's spoken in Luxembourg] makes me laugh (which involves me explaining what it means in the US when we call someone "bougie"), and then they play a quick round of news story, which involves Su asking Char the 5 Ws - they learned this from reading Anastasia Krupnik books. I tell them my journalist friends including Jan Haag, Krista Minard and Rachel Leibrock will love this.

After lunch they go outside for a bit and work on some sort of dance routine, but when it gets cloudy and starts raining, they head inside and upstairs for what turns out to be a binge watch of "Ocean Girl." This gives me an opportunity to work on Easter basket items that Carolyn set aside. There are quite a few empty plastic eggs, so I decide to write down some inside jokes from our past week plus some positive things like "you are special" and "be brave and strong" and put them in the eggs, then stick them in their baskets. They can hunt for the toy ones and the ones with the fancy chocolate eggs in them. When in Belgium, eat the chocolate - and the waffles, too.

Jean-Philippe emails me some information for Charlotte regarding a group project she organized in honor of her teacher, who went on maternity leave at the break. Char doesn't know how to access her school email from home, which she needs to do in order to get the project finalized, but through some detective work on both our parts and a link from her dad, we figure it out. Once that's done, she heads back upstairs to continue the binge watch with her sister.

I take the time to poke around and do random stuff, like visit the pond and check on the frogs. Dinah the cat supervises my visit. She loves to sit by the pond and lap at the water...and snack on les grenouilles. I really hope I don't witness that while I'm here. We head back inside and after a bit, I spy the black neighborhood cat up close. He cuts through the garden to go...wherever he goes. I go out on the veranda and he's sitting in the gutter, staring at me. I talk to him for a minute and he just stares, but when I finally say "Qu'est-ce que tu fais? [what are you doing]" he looks startled and leaves. Ahh, bien sûr, le chat ne parle pas anglais.

After three calls to the girls for dinner, they finally come downstairs. They have 2 meal options: try the chili their mom got at the store and have that with rice and tortilla chips, or have baked chicken and rice. "And tortilla chips?" Char asks. "No chips if you don't have the chili," I say. They both try tasting spoons of the chili, and as I expected both turn it down. But the rule still applies re: make your own food & clean up after yourself if you don't like what's being served, so Char opts for grilled cheese.

The pre-bedtime activity is Easter projects: dyeing eggs, decorating little wax egg candles, and painting egg cups. The girls set up stations for each activity and we rotate around. It's quite fun, even if our dye options ended up being red, orangey-red, deep red, light orange and yellow, because it turned out most of the dye from the previous year had been used up and I could only find red food coloring in the kitchen. They were still happy with the results, and when Su ended up cracking an egg in the process of coloring it, she simply peeled and ate it. An egg fitted with a decorative sleeve looked like deodorant, so more laughing and goofing around.

At bedtime, Char gives the day a 9. "I'm still stressed about Mommy," she says, "and I didn't have as good of a flute practice as I should have, but we got to watch that show and do other fun stuff." Indeed we did.

#mdgirlineurope #Arlon #Belgium #jeunesfilles

[klutzinmypants]

One of the things I love about European cities is walking along in what appears to be a normal neighborhood and suddenly coming upon what appears to be a castle.

And, looking more closely to see what appears to be a swastika at the top of the spire.

Turns out this was my destination, Carlsberg Brewery. The swastika is actually not the Nazi kind. It’s the East Asia prosperity and luck kind. It was there before the Nazis made it a symbol of Aryan pride and although Carlsberg removed the symbol from their labels after the war, they kept it on their buildings because they hate Jews. According to the tour guide it’s actually because they don’t mean it in the Nazi way and want to take back the original meaning – not sure how well that’s going for them considering the tour guide had to spend a solid 10 minutes explaining that they were not anti-semites.

Before my guided tour started, I was invited to walk around a self-guided tour. Two minutes in I realized I had accidentally ended up in a beer museum. One thing I love to do is not walk through a museum – especially a history one. Yeah, I get it, things used to be different and now we are in 2017 so we don’t have to treat humans like shit to get work done and we can control temperature better so our beer takes less time to make. And look, here’s a bottle room with all the beers we have collected for hundreds of years. Why is that a museum?

This was the mood I was in when the tour guide took over – so I am putting that into perspective as my patience started wearing thin. He started telling the story of Carlsberg brewery and the family drama that ensued. It was an interesting story. Also, I think men should go back to dressing like this. Andrew, let’s go shopping.

But, it took me the whole tour to warm up to the 20 year old. He was trying so hard to be likable – it reminded me of my fleeting and failed attempt at stand-up comedy 8 years ago. The audience can totally tell the difference between being genuine and acting genuine. Every time he peppered in an F bomb it was like someone doing an impression of what they think an American talks like. Finally, he admitted he was a history nerd and started getting super nerdy about history and the smarm fell off of him and he was just a geeky and adorable kid. It also helped that we ended the tour in the horse stables.

You can bet I risked it.

The tour was approximately $22.00 and with that came two beers. 

This was my second of a total of four beers that day. This will be the last time I drink beer in my life. If you ever see me contemplating a beer please remind me that I don’t like having the kind of pain in my body that feels like organs are trying to escape through my uterus.

I went and played some more improv with my new best friends at ICC and wandered off to the karaoke bar.

Sam’s is small, crowded and smokey. The crowd was super appreciative and my ego made me stay a lot longer than I had intended.

Question for my men friends out there: If you buy a stranger (who is likely almost twice your age) a beer in a bar after she hypothetically kills it with some Adele, on a scale of butt-hurt to well-it-was-worth-a-shot-and-no-one-asked-me-to-buy-them-a-beer, where do you land when you find out she has a boyfriend? Considering that we still had a fun time together and I sat with him and his friends as they regaled me with stories of the Guns & Roses concert that I hadn’t known was going on the day before, I don’t think he was that annoyed, but I was just wondering.

I think I second-hand smoked about a carton of cigarettes – time to restart the countdown on healthy lungs. Also, the first order of business for the next day would be washing everything to get the smoke smell out. I went home and curled into the fetal position to let the waves of beer-birthing pass.

To a certain extent, I feel like when I travel I don’t actually vacation. I am so busy trying to see things and tourist that I forget to just take it easy and vacation. The next day, Thursday (Torsdag), became just the day for that.

At home, I have someone that cleans and does laundry for me, and Andrew and I also hire someone to do that every other week (speaking of which, she just got another job – anyone know of anyone interested in coming once a week to do some housecleaning and laundry?). The last time I had been in a laundromat – not the kind that is in the apartment complex I was living in – but an actual laundromat was maybe almost 20 years ago. I had no idea how advanced they are now. Maybe they should make a museum about it. Now, instead of paying at the machine you pay for machines and soap at one station and then go use that machine and collect that soap. They also had centrifuges so that you could spin the water out before drying and to cut down on drying time. I chatted up a Korean couple getting ready to head back home and then read a book as my clothes went through the cycles. I washed everything that I had worn – including my smoke clothes from the night before, my coffee infused backpack, and my third pair of Beats headphones in two months. Looks like I am going to need to find a Radio Shack equivalent (only one that is still in business) in Copenhagen.

I went back to my apartment and read some more while lounging in bed all day. I had not eaten anything because that night was my reservations to Kong Hans Kælder.

The experience was magical. I won’t bore you with too many details, suffice it to say: the atmosphere was cozy and elegant without feeling bougie, my purse had its own chair, the wine pairings were surprising and delightful and if butter were whipped into a cake-bread that would be the brioche. I loved not only the food, but the artistry of the theater of the experience. Me and the sommelier became instant friends as she walked me through her pairings. There were only three downsides – the cheese course was done by a different waiter and he hasn’t got his flavor pairings down – at all; the dessert wine was too sweet with the dessert and did not go well.

Finally, the chef left early because he wasn’t feeling well, which makes me more than a little bit curious about my waking up at 3AM feeling nauseated for an hour. Here I won’t go into detail for sure.

Looks like another vacationy vacation day is in order.

  Getting Some Fresh Aryan One of the things I love about European cities is walking along in what appears to be a normal neighborhood and suddenly coming upon what appears to be a castle.And, looking more closely to see what appears to be a swastika at the top of the spire.

[czechthisshitout]

Vienna Trip Recap: 3.30.17-4.2.17

We arrived back in Prague late last night, after a pam-jacked three day trip to Vienna. But, it is only after a long day of unpacking, grocery shopping, laundry, writing an ad hoc application and struggling to write a concise reflection paper, that I am finally able to document my first study-abroad, trip abroad! (Try saying that ten times fast...)

We arrived to Vienna around noon on Thursday, checked into our hostel and grabbed some quick falafel at the outdoor market. Before hopping on the metro (a.k.a.) the subway and going on a walking tour of the historic Ringstrasse, the ring shaped boulevard that that serves as the barrier of the historic district at the center of the city. The Ringstrasse district is incredibly beautiful, with its large 17th and 18th Neo-classicial buildings that house many theaters, museums and ministries. It was honestly a bit overwhelming, the large scale, high cleanliness and the nearly perfect symmetry, was enough to make anyone feel insignificant and a bit unnerved. As part of the walking tour we also viewed the Jewish memorial, an imposing concrete structure in the middle of a small plaza, that look like a locked library with all the books turned inward, so that the titles are unreadable. Me and most of my peers actually missed the monument until Vera pointed it out to us,  I felt a little guilty for not noticing it on my own. This also raises interesting questions about how the Austrian government views the importance of the Jewish holocaust in the public’s memory. On a lighter note, we also briefly toured St Stephen’s Cathedral (though we didn’t have to tour the spire =/ ). The Cathedral is gorgeous and ornate, thought a bit overwhelmed with tours and tour guides dressed like Mozart, which was distracting. After the working tour, we got the opportunity to tour the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and received a talk from a State department official. They gave us fancy bottled water, which was a bit bougie but nice. The talk was informative, but overly niche in someplace, considering there are only a few JSIS and poli-sci majors, you can tell the official was trying very hard not to bad mouth Trump. Following the OSCE tour, we went for a group dinner at the Cafe Central, a historic cafe in ornate Art Nouveau style, where Hitler, Freud, Tolstoy and Lenin all were regulars (though not interacting with each other). It was really nice to just talk and bond with everybody on the trip in a more relaxed context, the food was really good and I ate my self silly. Dinner went rather late, and we didn’t return to the Hostel until 10:00ish. Me and all my roommates were all exhausting, so we had an earlier night, turning in around 11ish. 

Next morning, after drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee, curtsey of the free hostel breakfast, we had start our day at a very reasonable 9:30am, before hoping on the tram to the city’s outskirt to visit, the Schoebrunn Palace and Gardens, which served as the summer palace for the Habsburg empire. I had an audio guide for the museum, and since I fucking love museums I spent too long in the interior of the museum looking at the beautiful parlors, dining rooms and personal rooms of the Habsburgs, so I was late to arrive at our group meeting point. The meeting point was the Gloriette, a structure composed of Classical styles arches at the top of the hill in the gardens behind the palace, so in the 75 degree weather, I had to run up this giant hill in converse and skinny jeans. Needless to say, I nearly died. Luckily, Kieran, another dude in our group was actually 30 minutes later than I was, so my lateness slipped by relatively unnoticed. We spent some time walking through the sprawling gardens and parks surrounding the palace, filled with antique fountains, before catching a tram, grabbing a quick lunch of spanakopita, and then after, another metro ride, we arrived at the Vienna United Nations. It was breathtaking to see the circle of flags fluttering in the breeze. The tour was interesting, we got to see various offices, meeting rooms, learning about diplomacy goals for 2030 and see a moon rock, though I think our perky tour guide was disappointed in us for not asking enough questions.... oh, well. We were done with the tour in the late afternoon and then had the rest of day free. Me, Francesca, Courtney and Maddy, walked down by the canal, just people watching and looking at the diverse street art and graffiti (also taking some photos like the obnoxious American tourists we are). We also discovered a ‘beach’ bar, equipped with fake sand and enjoyed a drink as watch the sun set over the city. Later in the evening, we ventured to the outdoor market to grab some dinner, we actually found a very decent “Pan-Asian�� place, and I had some pretty good miso noodle soup (as well as all the mushroom from Kristina’s curry, since somehow she hates mushrooms). Later that evening a lot of the us went out and enjoyed the local night life for a bit, before navigating the metro without the aid of google maps, and returning back to the hostel. 

Saturday morning, we met promptly at 10am and metroed to Hofburg Palace, which included the Sisi Museum (commemorating the tragic and mysterious Empress Elizabeth). The first part of the Hofburg was the ‘Royal Silver Collection’ and I was fascinated by the sheer amount of cutlery, plates and other settings, made of painted porcelain, bronze, silver and gold. It was an impossible amount to take in. The second part of the museum was very similar to the Schoebrunn Palace, with private living quarters of the royals laid out, apparently Franz Joseph I lived a very “spartan” lifestyle, yet have a personal servant help dress him every day... Interesting. The Sisi Museum went very deep into the life and personal struggles of Empress Sophia, it was equal parts fascinating, sympathetic and dramatic, with lots of dramatic poetry quotes and dark lighting. Yet again I was a few minutes late to the meet-up point, which everyone arrived to 20 minutes early, so Mike had to come and retrieve me like a small child. Really, I am 21, I swear. Afterward we went to the Kunsthaus Wien, a building designed by and serving as a memorial to Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a Viennan artist who art is bright, childlike and oddly capturing. We were lucky to have a tour, but really I just wanted to wander around and stare at the pieces at my own pace, I grabbed a few postcards of my favorite pieces in the gift shop. Then I grabbed some surprisingly good spinach pizza at a food stand, before we head to a bike rental down by the river for our three hour bike trip. I was a little nervous, as I hadn’t really ridden in the last year or so, and they gave one of the tallest types of bike, but after a wobbly start I recovered quickly. During the bike tour lead by Vera, we stop by Freud’s house, the Church where Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth got married in, and a Soviet memorial the Red Army. But that short list fails to capture the magnitude of the city we traveled, including many of the small public parks and much of the canal (which were very crowded and thus a real challenge to pick through). It was simply amazing. After the bike ride, which went to 6:30pm, me and a few others went to the nearby fairgrounds where I actually enjoyed a beer and few over-priced rides (included one that flung you into the sky like slingshot, needless to say, I screamed “FUCK” the whole time). After returning to the hostel, me, Fran, Courtney, Maddy and Kristina met up with Kristina’s friend Ann who’s a nanny in Vienna, at a board-game cafe, before calling it a night at 11pm. (I did wander into the hostel bar and was goaded into playing beer pong, which I royally blew at). 

Sunday morning I woke up early, well 8ish, to pack up my stuff and enjoy a leisurely breakfast. The group met up at 10:40, metroed, then bused to the hills on the outskirts of the city, to explore the Viennese countryside and go to a wine tasting at the Grinzing Vineyard. (We also briefly stopped at the Karl Marx Hox, a notable public housing development). The 20 minutes bus-ride up the hill was very crowded, but I managed not to elbow anybody in the face, so it was a success. We spent a 30 minutes at the lookout point at the top of the hills, and I got a really good apple cake, the apple was super fresh and cake was super light. We then spent a little over an hour hiking through the Viennese countryside, which was beautiful, I felt that I stumbled into somewhere far removed from 2017. Unfortunately the hills were rather steep, and it was rather hot, so I was ‘glistening’ by the end of the hike, to say the least. We arrived at the Grinzing Vineyards, which is small winery that has been family owned for 4 generations, at around 1:30pm. In the afternoon flew by in a haze of delicious wine, bread, fancy cheese, much laughter and many selfies. We sadly left the Winery, after struggling to figure out to split the bill, grabbed our bags at the hostel and arrived at the train-station with 5 minutes to spare before our train left. I spend the train ride back discussing an ad hoc project with Vera, getting a head start on the week’s reading and watching Francesca and Mike tease each other over the rival Olympia high schools they attended. 

And that, is the end of my *brief* stay in Vienna, I may add another post with more details on the last two days if I have time/energy to do so, but I will definitely add a post with pictures in the next day or so. 

Czeching out, 

                -Kate 

#ramblings

[sportsandfitnessinfo]

New Post has been published on http://fitnessandhealthpros.com/foods/what-to-consider-when-deciding-what-to-spend-on-food/

What to Consider When Deciding What to Spend on Food

Farmers market it Portland, OR

Money is a touchy subject. Even without bringing up finances directly, people like me who encourage others to eat Real Food often get branded as elitist out of hand.

I get it. Finding and affording fresh food can be difficult or impossible for some people, and that is heartbreaking. But I don’t think that should make the entire subject off limits.

Food is a complex topic that includes issues related to health, economics, culture, human rights, animal welfare and the environment/sustainability. We also need to make food decisions multiple times a day in order to survive.

I consider all these things when deciding what to purchase for myself and my family, and know first hand what kinds of tradeoffs come up when choosing what to eat. Over the years both my priorities and financial means have changed dramatically, and ultimately evolved into the system I use today.

Here I’ll take you through my thought process in making food decisions, including how I’ve adapted to lower and higher income levels.

Of course none of this is intended as a judgement or condemnation on anyone else’s decisions. Everyone’s values are personal and equally valid, and obviously you need to do what works for you and your family.

My goal here is to shed some light on a difficult subject and hope it provides some clarity for those who are trying to make heads or tails of these issues.

But first a bit about me

For context you should know that I don’t come from money, and even calling my family middle class is a stretch. While I grew up in a decent suburban neighborhood, my family sometimes needed help from our church putting food on the table. My dad lived his entire adult life without owning a bank account, let alone a savings account. We did our best, but often had to sell things to make rent.

When I got to college (paid for by scraping together scholarships, student loans and a few jobs), money was really tight. My dad would send me fifty bucks when he could, but there was never any real safety net. It wasn’t unusual for me to live on eggs and canned tuna for the last week of the month. The dieter in me found this to be only moderately inconvenient.

At the time my main priority in food shopping was low price. I shopped at Costco and Trader Joe’s and thought organics were a scam to take money from chemophobic hippies (I know! LOL). I ate a lot of cheap takeout, which in Berkeley was still pretty good, if only moderately healthy.

In grad school things changed a lot. I started becoming a foodist, learned about Real Food and discovered the farmers market. I was a recipient of a fancy NSF graduate fellowship grant that afforded me a luxurious salary of $ 30,000/year, but because I was living in San Francisco I was still spending over 30% of my income on rent.

Still I ate pretty great. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in SF is one of the best farmers markets in the US, if not the world. I know a lot of people who consider it ludicrously expensive, but that was not my experience at all.

Yes, it’s possible to pay $ 4.50 for a peach, but it will be the best peach you’ve ever eaten. More important is that I could pack a bag full of kale, radishes, squash, onions, carrots, herbs and other incredible seasonal produce for $ 30. Fruit, especially ripe seasonal fruit, is expensive. Vegetables are cheap. I actually saved money during this period by cooking way more at home and cutting down on how often I ate meat. I also felt amazing and lost 12 lbs.

Things really changed after I graduated, wrote Foodist and got married. Suddenly I could afford steak and sit-down restaurants whenever I wanted, but by then my priorities had shifted as well.

I had never had to worry much about the ethics of eating before I had disposable income. I mostly bought produce from local organic farmers, a convenient luxury that was a byproduct of where I lived. I knew that industrial meat and dairy production were terrible for the environment and a disgusting form of cruelty to animals, but I couldn’t afford it anyway so there wasn’t any conflict. My biggest splurges were an occasional wedge of fancy cheese and wild Alaskan smoked salmon.

Now that more animal products were literally and figuratively back on the table for me, I wanted to make the most responsible choices I could.

There’s no way around it, ethical food costs more money.

Conventional produce is cheaper because big industrial farms exploit workers (sometimes as literal slave laborers) and demolish the environment with cheap petroleum-based fertilizers and Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides. Smaller organic farmers must spend the time and energy tending to the soil to keep it healthy, and diversify their fields to prevent weed and bug infestations. More time and resources means more money to produce the same amount of food, and higher prices at the market.

Farmers market fruit tastes better because it is grown in season and picked while ripe, making losses due to bruising much more common. Organic certifications are also expensive. Even more cost.

Grass-fed beef and pasture-raised poultry and eggs require more (higher-quality) land, better feed, and sanitary living conditions. Farmers also face more difficulty and expense in processing these products, because they lack economies of scale. Again, these all cost more.

When I was a brokeass grad student I cared about these issues, but opting out was easy because I couldn’t afford it. Now that I can afford higher-quality, ethically produced products I’m happy to pay extra for the farmers who care enough to grow the best crops and for the animals I eat to live a decent life.

I’m also willing to spend a little extra time sourcing those products, which are not always easy to find.

San Francisco makes a foodist’s life easy, but I’ve found it much more difficult to eat to these standards in New York. Restaurants and grocers that source sustainable, ethically-raised food exist, but it isn’t the default like it is in the Bay Area and I often have to take looooong extra trips to find what I want. And I live in bougie Williamsburg.

I find myself preferring to cook at home even more in NYC than I did in SF, largely because I’m unsure of where restaurants sources their ingredients and it’s kind of obvious they aren’t amazing. A lot of the time I end up eating vegetarian so I don’t have to worry about it.

These experiences have led to me to create a mental hierarchy for my priorities when choosing what to eat. It isn’t perfect, and I make exceptions often, but it helps me to have a framework to think about these issues since I eat pretty darn often.

My priorities when buying food

1. Health

My personal energy (and I’d bet yours too) is highly dependent on how I fuel my body. If I’m not eating a wide array of different kinds of vegetables, legumes, grains and seafood/meats I feel lethargic and foggy, and will usually get sick.

Since feeling crappy impacts 100% of my other responsibilities in life, eating a diverse assortment of Real Foods is my number one priority when it comes to grocery and meal selection.

This has some implications. If I’m traveling or even very busy I don’t always eat local/seasonal/organic/sustainable. I try to avoid these scenarios, but when it comes down to it I’ll take what I can get.

It also means that sometimes I pay stupid prices for room service salads if greens have been hard to come by.

2. Quality

Quality is a very close second to health, largely because they are often related. As someone who prioritizes health to the point where my daily nutrition is almost always well-balanced, quality is often the deciding factor in choosing a specific meal.

What I mean by quality is close to what I mean by Real Food. To me, quality food has been crafted with care and fashioned from real ingredients, rather than mass produced in a factory. However, quality doesn’t always correlate with the healthiest choice.

If I’m traveling in Texas and have a choice between an artisan brisket sandwich from a world class family owned restaurant or a salad from Starbucks, I’ll take the sandwich on most days and hope there isn’t too much sugar in the coleslaw. That said, I wouldn’t make a choice like that two meals in a row, so health still wins down the stretch.

On the ethics side I am not going to repeatedly buy bad tasting chocolate just because it is fair trade. Ideally I’d find a delicious fair trade chocolate, but if I’m bothering with chocolate at all it had better be tasty.

3. Ethics/sustainability

I want to live in a world where the people who grow our food are respected and earn a living wage, and where we don’t pretend animals raised for food are less sentient than pets we keep at home. There are people who raise food this way, and I consider it an honor (not a luxury) to support their work.

I understand that it is not practical to demand this standard for 100% of the food I eat. Ethical and sustainable food is still sadly hard to find in most locations, and can be prohibitively expensive for many people.

That said, I would encourage anyone who does have the means to consider supporting ethical and sustainable food whenever possible. Our support is they only way these practices will be able to grow and reach more people.

I hope to see a day where sustainable food is ubiquitous enough that I can move it to #2 or #1 on this list.

4. Price

When it comes down to it I don’t want low-quality, unhealthy or unsustainable food, so even at a super low price it isn’t worth buying.

That said, it also drives me bonkers when restaurants and grocery stores try to sell mediocre food at artisan prices. I can tell the difference you jerks!

For me, as long as pricing seems fair (or I’m completely desperate for something green) I’m willing to pay for food that fuels my body and soul, and supports my values. I don’t consider stores like Whole Foods a rip off, because they are working so hard to offer transparency where nobody else will. In fact, I’m happy to support their mission.

It’s unfortunate that so many of us need to make such tough decisions in order to feed ourselves and our families. As always, all we can do is our best.

What factors do you consider when deciding what to spend your food dollars on?

Originally at :Summer Tomato Written By : Darya Rose

#Consider #Deciding #Food #Spend