Hi!
Hope you’re all doing well and staying healthy! I’m deviating from my standard introduction style this week because I want to share a story with you.
Picture this: a lone woman is seated at a table in a bustling cafe. The glow from her laptop casts a harsh glare on the ill-fitting pair of glasses that slide down her nose. Her brow is furrowed and she occasionally gives her head a disapproving shake. She looks very important and very (!) busy. A journalist, maybe. Or perhaps one of those high-flying lawyer types who says things like, “I’m really busy” and you think, “wow, that guy is really busy” and you’re instantly impressed despite not having any further details.
Now, let’s examine this woman more closely. She’s 26, but “looks about 12” according to most people who meet her (this is a sore point for her but she insists that she doesn’t care and thinks it’s “actually really funny” when strangers earnestly ask if it’s Bring Your Kid to Work Day whenever she walks into an office). Let’s take in her strained features - the brow, the head shaking? These are the mannerisms of a very (!) serious, no-nonsense individual. She is b-u-s-y with a capital B!
Upon closer inspection, however, we notice that the laptop screen is blank. That her fingers hovering above the keyboard are in fact, motionless. Why? Because it’s all an act. The woman is only trying to emulate the behaviour of a busy person, hoping to convince the other patrons of the cafe that she’s writing the next Pulitzer Prize-winning novel when in reality she just spent the better part of an hour typing nothing but for the sentence: “dreams are pretty neat, huh?” which was quickly deleted.
In spite of these setbacks, she perseveres like the #strong #brave #girlboss that she is. After a few more hours of fruitless contemplation, she calls it a day because the creative juices are running low and also because it’s getting close to her pre-dinner dinner, which she maintains is a valid daily ritual that doesn’t warrant such concerned looks from family and friends. After an entire day of brainstorming, this - this - is the introduction she lands on. She is mortified, but decides to use it anyway. Welcome to Spilt Milk. Please don’t unsubscribe.
RECS
In my last newsletter I joked about how criminally unimaginative it was to label this section “RECS.” I had secretly hoped that readers might send in suggestions, but no one responded. This is fair considering that I didn’t explicitly ask and also as someone who is “easily hurt” and could “bleed out from a piece of dental floss being flung at me” (quotes from mom), I probably would have gotten prickly hearing the feedback. Point is, the heading will remain unchanged until inspiration strikes. But as I mentioned previously, the ol’ creative juice tank (surely this is an expression?) is running on empty at present, so it might be a while yet. All I ask from you during this difficult time is a little patience, a bit of grace and also your social security number, date of birth and mother’s maiden name, which I’ll need for a super cool business idea I have. It’s not a pyramid scheme if we’re friends. Anyway! Please enjoy this eclectic collection of RECS.
Black & Highly Flavored
Calling all people who consume food and also breathe air! I have a podcast for you to listen to! Black & Highly Flavored is a new show from the Food52 podcast network that spotlights Black change makers and visionaries who are shaking up the food and beverage industry. Co-hosts Tamara Celeste and Derek Kirk (founders of soulPhoodie) plan to cover a lot of ground in this series, with a slate of guests ranging from small business owners and chefs to food writers and historians. In their first episode they speak to Lokelani Alabanza, owner of Saturated Ice Cream. Alabanza is a pastry chef and ice cream genius who takes a uniquely political approach to her work through - as Tamara put it - infusing Black history, culture and nostalgia into her flavours and business.Cherry Tomato Pasta
I’m clinging to the final weeks of tomato season with a white-knuckled panic that some would characterise as “unnecessarily dramatic.” I will be making this pasta dish on a weekly basis until the day the cherry toms shrivel up and lose their vibrancy and lustre (which is coincidentally what also happens to me from the month of November through to March).Blind Guy Travels
As I die a slow and painful death drowning in the sea of identical celebrity-helmed interview podcasts (see image below), it is so refreshing to encounter a show as original as this. Blind Guy Travels comes from the brilliant mind of Matthew Shifrin, a 23-year-old composer, accordionist and entrepreneur who takes listeners on a 6 episode journey into his life as a blind person. He’ll explain how he had to learn to use body language, what it’s like being on a dating app and how he collaborated with Lego to develop building instructions that were accessible to blind children. It’s an endearing and perspective-shifting listen that you won’t soon forget.Crying in H Mart
Genuinely every person I know who has read this book has found themselves profoundly moved by it. Crying in H Mart is a powerful memoir from Korean-American author and musician Michelle Zauner - who you might recognise from her band, Japanese Breakfast. What began as an essay of the same name for The New Yorker has since become a best-selling book and is now being adapted for film, which is to say that Zauner has touched many, many people with her words. Written with a directness and singularity quite unlike anything I’ve ever read, Zauner tells a story of identity, food, family and the kind of incapacitating grief that forever alters the course of one’s life. It’s an absolute treasure - go get your hands on a copy.Recycling! Is it BS?
Recycling may not be the sexiest topic out there (all of my sustainability-minded friends about to send me a passive aggressive “yes it is” text right now), but it sure is an important one! I loved this episode from the climate podcast How To Save a Planet, which busts some of the biggest myths and reveals shocking truths about recycling. I’d say it should be required listening, but I don’t want to come off as preachy. So I’m just - uh - suggesting that it should be… required (oh good, that reads well).Reservation Dogs
I don’t typically recommend TV shows here on Spilt Milk, but when you find something this good it’s a sin not to share. Reservation Dogs is the brainchild of filmmakers Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi that follows four Indigenous teens growing up in rural Oklahoma. Everything about this show is stellar, including their clever subversion of the many toxic tropes about Indigenous people that have plagued cinema and television for decades. This series does what very few (if any?) have ever done: creating an unflinching, laugh-out-loud comedy about the daily realities of life for young Indigenous people. If you’re planning to kick up your feet and watch something tonight please let it be this.9/12
This is a new podcast about 9/11 that unpacks how “9/11 the day” became “9/11 the idea.” Now, 20 years on, the show explores how the story of 9/11 has been told and how this has shaped politics, America’s sense of self and its place in the world. I mentioned this on my Instagram recently, but I can’t decide if the show is quietly brilliant or if the unusual approach it takes simply lacks delicacy. I suppose I’ll have to wait for more episodes to be released, but in the meantime drop me a line with your thoughts!Dr. Death: Miracle Man
Earlier this year I launched into an impassioned tirade about why Wondery podcasts are overrated. The crux of my argument was that they tend to produce shows that are formulaic and often rely on gratuitous violence to carry a story. And yet, here I am recommending a Wondery podcast and having to eat my own words because apparently my dwindling personal supply of dignity can in fact take one final hit. Anyway, Dr. Death has recently released a third season that tells the macabre true story of an Italian surgeon who fooled the medical community and the woman closest too him, (I feel like I’ve just written a pitch for a soap opera). I suppose it’s good for an escape, which is why I’m recommending it. But I also feel like I’m compromising my internal ethical code by suggesting this kind of show and now I feel gross and grimy. Be right back, just have to go rinse my mouth out with bleach real quick.Lemon Pound Cake
Having some difficulty writing a seamless transition between “bleach ingestion” to “baked goods,” so I’m not going to bother trying. I’ve been adding a couple of teaspoons of ground cardamom and some decorative rose petals to this simple lemon pound cake recipe and everyone who tastes it thinks I’m a part-time magician/ miracle worker and honestly I am okay with them believing that.
Well, I’d say this newsletter is a textbook definition of “mixed bag.” I’m using the term “mixed bag” over “erratic” or “unhinged” because sometimes lying to yourself is healthy. Like when a person asks how you endured lockdown and makes a quip about whether or not you cut yourself a set of pandemic bangs or baked banana bread and you laugh and say that you did not do either of those things even though you most certainly did. And you know what? You lied to that person and to yourself for the sake of your HEALTH and THAT is what SELF CARE is all about. Thanks to GOOP for sponsoring today’s NEWSLETTER.
Sending love,
Arielle