Best of the Week #104

Today is my last day at work! I’m wrapping things up, writing an epic exit memo of instructions for the new me, cleaning the crumbs out of my desk drawers (in Mollie Land, office drawers are strictly for snack storage), and sending that final all-staff goodbye email. It’s been almost two years at Enough (go ahead, you know the end of that pun) and the Satellite Sentinel Project, and though I’m definitely ready to move on to my new and exciting things, I’ll miss my awesome co-workers!

I considered doing a Best of the Week strictly of goodbye gifs…but maybe we’ll save that for when I actually leave leave.

I started out just skimming this (as I do with most things on the interwebs), but it is fascinating and I definitely re-focused and read it all: "For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine."

• It began like this: We've made fun of Ford before for his bizarre pronouncements and nude pictures. Last week, we got a tip from someone claiming to have a videotape of Ford smoking crack. Would we like to buy it?
• And so here we are. The owner still hasn't found a buyer with pockets deep enough to meet his demands. But word is out around Toronto now that the tape exist, and Ford's circle knows about it courtesy a CNN reporter. So, with permission, I am laying out everything I know about the Rob Ford Crack Tape in the hopes that a) everyone knows that Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack, and b) this knowledge might hasten the arrival of the Rob Ford Crack Tape on the internet or broadcast television, because really, it is something to behold.

This dog. “Maddy On Things.”

Party Nose

I disagree with a lot of this, but parts are interesting: “The 5 Reasons Girls Type Like Thissss.” Or, correction, I don’t disagree with the fact that people do these things, I just don’t do most of them. I purposefully misspell in writing when I want it to reflect how I say things out loud – i.e. all caps to yell, “Baleful Os (nooo),”  and “celebratory vowels (yayyyyy).”

Again, I don’t exactly agree with all of this author’s conclusions, “Women Are Natural-Born Stalkers, and That Can Be a Good Thing.” Buuuut this sentence = me, 100%: And so women just want to know WHAT THE F*** IS UP, like all the time and with everyone.

• Not to be all gender essentialist about it, but there's something about borderline-obsessive curiosity that is more in line with the personality traits of women. Maybe it's a result of being raised in a world with implicit biases regarding our behavior as females. Generally considered as physically weaker, it only makes sense that we would develop our strength through social acumen and find power in trading information.

This is also me sometimes. Hungry corgi!

Witty and hilarious: “I Tried Gwyneth Paltrow’s Diet.”

• At $154.31, it is almost triple what I usually pay for food, and I haven’t even bought all the fish I will eventually buy! (The diet is really heavy on fish.) I bought at least ten dollars worth of kale and an eleven-dollar jar of honey. Do you know what raw honey is?  It is eleven dollars! And there are so many more ingredients than just those two. I actually had a mild panic attack while buying the food and I wasn't even having a dinner party.
• After breakfast I decided to do the first DVD of the Tracy Anderson method. It's difficult, actually. Essentially you hold tiny weights in your hand and then flap your arms wildly like a person in a Victorian insane asylum having an epileptic fit. You do this for an hour. At the end, I was so tired I lay on the floor.

Like:

Similarly, from the show Scandal, which I don't watch but my friends do: Kerry Washington's handsome Senator boyfriend in reference to a woman he dated awhile back: "She didn't read. As if that's a thing. Not reading. Can you believe that?"

“Mean Girls Meets The Great Gatsby.” I still haven’t seen Gatsby…fail.

Someday I will have nice things."10 Pretty Domed Cake Stands and Keepers."

Go NY Magazine…I should read it more often? “My Sloppy, Sad Adventure in ‘Pajama Dressing.’”

• New clothing is so hard to buy: You have to go to a store and try it on and then come to some sort of Socratic conclusion about it. Pajamas are less judgmental.
• So when Marc Jacobs paraded pajamas down the runway at Louis Vuitton and Rihanna and Sofia Coppola showed up at parties in pajamas like tiny Julian Schnabels, I was elated. If pajamas were fair game to wear to actual events in the day, my wardrobe actually became much larger and significantly more cutting-edge (I usually hew to the more classic side of the spectrum, not so-called “runway trends.” These designer pajamas were so cool, like better-cut, ultrafeminine suits that a very short person could wear. One problem: I had not seen any people that were not Rihanna actually wear pajamas out of the house. Am I Rihanna? I cannot wear a sweatshirt that well! Am I Sofia Coppola? Not at all! My eyebrows are terrible…But you never know who you are until you try.

“'Space Oddity' In Space: Yes, Astronauts Are Still The Coolest Humans”

• Yes, you will never do anything this cool. You could miniaturize Jay-Z and put him inside your iPod, inherit sixteen billion dollars, bring James Dean back to life, time-travel to 1968 to hip-nap Joan Holloway's hips, give birth to Miles Davis, and hire Stephen Hawking to help you develop the capability to spontaneously turn into a Corvette anytime you wanted, and you would not be this cool. Nothing is this cool.

Sister2, this one is for you! "Chubby Chipmunk Cheeks."

Watch this interesting video – “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.”

• The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table: Pay people enough so that they’re not thinking about money and they’re thinking about the work. Once you do that, it turns out there are three factors that the science shows lead to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Need an epic soundtrack for your life? THIS. I think that want that song to be playing as I get on my airplane to Nepal. And/or on repeat for the next week?

Can we talk about how excited I am about all the food on my travels!?! As LLC advises, eat all the things. "Laotian food in Honolulu at S&T Thai Cuisine."

• Laotian food, a friend says, is like "dirty Thai."

• - sup new mai (above left): a bamboo shoot salad, seasoned with bai yanang, what Bletter calls an "MSG plant" for its natural MSG content, released by massaging the plant in water. The crunch of thinly sliced bamboo and deep savory flavor of this dish makes it one of my favorites.
• - tam makhung (above right): a familiar green papaya salad, but in this dish, you can really taste the difference between Thai and Laotian food. The fish sauce for this dish is much more pungent and funkier than in the Thai version.

Me at 5pm today:

Let's celebrate everything! Have a great weekend!!!

Literary Bite: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, is one of my all-time favorite books.

It’s the story of an escaped Australian convict and former heroin addict, who makes his way to Bombay in the mid-1980s, lives and works as a doctor in a slum, spends three months in an Indian prison, gets involved with the local mafia, falls in and out of love, and fights the war in Afghanistan. And it’s based on the author's life – aka kinda TRUE!

I read Shantaram for the first time in summer 2008 (my first summer in DC!), and I knew almost immediately that it would become one of my most-loved books, due for multiple re-readings. Since then, I’ve recommended it a lot, thought about it sometimes, and finally got my hands on it again about a month ago. On a sunny warm evening, I sat down on my stoop, opened it up the 936-page block of gold, and immediately got SO excited to read it again!

Seriously, I challenge you to read the first page of this book and not want to read the whole thing. (You can read the first chapter here).

• I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler, and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them; better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

The NYT calls Shantaram “a gentle giant” and I agree. Despite its dark themes and depictions of crime and the worst of humanity, the novel remains light at heart, and is actually frequently laugh out loud funny. The dialog between Lin (aka Shantaram) and his friend Prabhakar the taxi driver is always hilarious, as is the relationship between Lin and the hit-man/best friend Abdullah.

And a lot of it is about love – some romantic (Lin and Karla), some filial (Lin and Khader), but mostly friendship (Prabhakar, Abdullah, Didier, etc. etc. etc.):

• “At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have and can’t give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.” 

Shantaram is a novel, but it is based on real events from Roberts’ life, which makes is that much cooler! And if you’ve read it, and therefore love Prabakar, you’ll be happy to learn that Prabhakar Kisan Khare was a real-life individual. Says the author:

• "With respect, Shantaram is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact.

It is supposedly a pretty accurate depiction of Bombay in the 1980s, as a city mid-urbanization being run my mafia councils and corrupt police as its population explodes. Says Lin of his first visit to a slum:

• "As the kilometers wound past, as the hundreds of people in those slums became thousands, and tens of thousands, my spirit writhed....Still, that first encounter with the ragged misery of the slum, heartbreak all the way to the horizon, cut into my eyes. For a time, I ran into the knives."

(That's a great quote, right?)

I'm a little bit torn right now, because I want to tell you everything, but I don’t want to give anything away…so I’ll stop myself and just say READ THIS NOW. The only downside is that the book in hard-cover is too big to fit in my purse.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today we celebrate the birth of mi padre!

That’s right, the good old daddy-o is one year more mature (his words, not mine), maybe (?) a few seconds-per-mile slower, but still running races, setting goals, and going for post-run pancakes like the champ he is (and he has raised me to be).

In my own old age, I have learned that I have learned a number of great things from my dad, mostly running related, but also life-related. So in honor of his awesomeness…

Things I have learned from my dad:

Win races, not workouts. A couple weeks into my freshman cross country season, my dad stopped by the track to watch us workout (totally normal for running nerds...). He saw me (and everyone else) sprinting at the end of each repeat like the silly 14-year-old I was, and afterwards sat me down: Don’t sprint at the end, don’t race your teammates. It really doesn’t matter who wins the interval – just run steady, even, at your own pace. Save the racing for meets! And then on race day, you race. Wise words, for serious!

He started the Greater San Francisco Track Club in 1979. (Bottom left)

Popcorn is the best snack in the world. Ask SpeedyKate, or any of my co-workers, I eat it every day. Homemade (none of that chemically bagged ickiness). Whole grain. Salty. Delicious.

No complaining, no excuses, no shortcuts. He and I totally agree on this. If you want to run faster, go out and do your workouts. And he KNOWS what hard work is  – the man has done 25 marathons, 13 of which were sub-2:30. That’s fast. That’s averaging under 5:30 minutes per mile pace for 26.2 miles kind of fast! His PR? 2:24:28. Again, that's fast.

How to fish. It has recently come to my attention that not everyone knows how to fish. And I’m sorry what??? I just assumed this was a major part of everyone else’s childhood, like riding a bike. Apparently it’s not. (A recent conversation – Me: I want to go fishing in Cambodia! Andy: Umm ok maybe. Do you even know how to fish? Me: OF COURSE I DO WELL DUH.) So, in order from easiest to most difficult, I have been: unknown fish fishing from the Petaluma River pier, trout fishing in the lakes at Mt. Tam, mackinaw fishing from a boat in Lake Tahoe, and striped bass fishing in Marin Creek.

Chocolate cake and oatmeal cookies can solve all the world's problems. As much as he loves his health food and Power Bars, my dad cannot resist certain desserts.

Shoes and insoles are IMPORTANT. From a blog I wrote a while back:

• To some people (i.e. my dad), running shoes are a religion. He orders boxes of shoes, testing them out, taking them for a run, seeing what he likes. Something hurts? New shoes. Feeling sore? New shoes. Tired? New shoes.
• And then there’s the insoles. I’ve always had orthodics, because I have example-on-the-training-room-wall weird feet. My dad loves insoles just as much as he loves shoes. Some people’s fathers tinker with tools in the garage – mine creates Frankenstein-like insoles on the back porch. 
• He cuts them up, super-glues them back together, and makes his own orthodics. Heel lifts, extra arch support, whatever you need can probably be solved with the proper adhesive and an assortment of extra insoles (leftover from all the shoes, obviously!). You’d think that an alternative insole was the answer to the world’s problems…who knows? Maybe it is. We all need a little extra support now and then.

Mustache, white shorts, on the right. I KNOW RIGHT???

Experiment! He taught high school science for 30(ish) years, which has taught me to question, come up with ways to test, then experiment and review what you've learned. This applies to everything, not just things that involve lab coats and Bunsen burners.

Run on soft surfaces whenever possible. My family has no problem whatsoever driving (up to an hour sometimes) to go running on trails. And until recently I never thought of trail running as a separate activity from regular running. It's just running but better and better for you. This no-concrete/asphault philosophy has been so ingrained in me that even when I'm running in DC, I always try to run as much as possible on the dirt/grass/trail on the edge of the sidewalk or road.

One of the best things about running is breakfast afterwards. When I was little, I distinctly remember going to cross country races in Golden Gate Park when my parents and/or their teammates were racing, being baby-sat by one of my dad’s students or a running friend, getting completely soaked by the foggy-wet grass, then everyone going out to breakfast afterwards. And now when I go home the first question is where are we running? And the second is where are we getting breakfast afterwards?

And finally: Work hard, play hard. He loves saying this. And as cheesy as it is, I agree!

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

[Thanks to adults on Facebook, I now I have quite the collection of old pictures that are HILARIOUS (though maybe only to me?).]

Cake of the Week: Banana Rum Bars

Drop everything and make these now!!!

For reals guys, I’m picturing a Venn diagram of all the banana things I’ve made, all the bars things I’ve made, and all the really really really good things I’ve made, and these Banana Rum Bars are smack-dab in the middle.

These are in the top-whatever of bars I have ever made ever. They’re like lemon bars (i.e. have a graham cracker crust and fruity topping), but with browned butter and rum and banana. They are also pretty dense – there’s nothing banana pudding or jello-y about these. (Luckily! Blegghh I hate banana pudding.)

I made a batch (9x13 pan) for our party on Saturday and they were gone super-fast and for good reason. There’s kind of a lot of salt involved, which I think is what made them SO awesome – everyone loves salty and sweet (especially boys, why is that?). They also came out of the pan really easily (every time something doesn’t stick I high-five myself, heave a sigh of relief, and dance a happy dance of joy in my kitchen), and cut very neatly.

Banana Rum Bars

Printable recipe. 

For the crust

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 3 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 14 whole graham crackers, or 2 sleeves)
• 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the filling

• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 3 mashed, ripe, bananas 
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon rum (or vanilla)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 

For the glaze

• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon rum (you may need more or less rum, or more or less sugar depending on humidity/consistency)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease and/or line a 9x13-inch pan with parchment paper or foil. (I used oil to grease the pan, then used the paper wrappers from the butter to line the bottom…aka I never have parchment paper). 
2. Prepare the crust: In a large bowl (or in a food processer), combine the melted butter, graham cracker crumbs (put the graham crackers in a bag and crush away! Or food process them if you’re feeling less aggressive than my good self), brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Pulse or stir until the mixture resembles heavy, wet, sand. 
3. Press the sandy mixture onto the bottom of prepared pan. If it's too sticky, use the bottom of a measuring cup to press the crust down into an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and place the pan onto a cooling rack.
4. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. 
5. Prepare the filling: In a small saucepan, melt the 4 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. Increase the heat to medium and, stirring occasionally, cook the butter, stirring/swirling the pan occasionally, until it turns golden brown and develops a nutty aroma. Depending on the stove's heat, it can take 5-8 minutes for the butter to brown properly. Once is smells like AMAZING, remove the pan from the heat and let the butter cool to room temperature. 
6. In a separate large mixing bowl, mash the bananas (so many opportunities to smash things in this recipe!) and then mix in the eggs, brown sugar, and rum. Add the cool brown butter and whisk until well combined. Using a spatula or large spoon, fold in the flour and salt. 
7. Scrape the batter over the partially-baked crust and spread the batter into an even layer. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center comes up with only a few moist crumbs. (Start checking it at 35 minutes)
8. Remove the pan from the oven and place on a cooling rack. Cool completely before adding the glaze.
9. Prepare the glaze: In a large mixing bowl, whisk powdered sugar, rum, and salt. Whisk until smooth. If it's too thick to drizzle, add about 1 teaspoon of rum at a time until it’s thin enough.  Use a spoon or fork to drizzle the glaze over the cooled bars. Let them cool in the fridge completely, then cut and serve at room temperature. 

Printable recipe.

Weekend Report: Going Away Party

MONDAY!!!

Why I am I so excited about a day that is usually a downer? Well it’s my last Monday at work, I had a super-fun going away party this weekend, and I just went on a bike ride, and I’m breakfasting on a muffin and strong black coffee, and the sun is shining and pretty much everything is wonderful.

Saturday was rain-stormy and humid and muddy, but that didn’t stop me from spending the day out biking (per my recent non-running usual). Andy and I biked to Mt. Vernon and back, and let me tell you friends, those wooden bridges are SLIPPERY when wet. I was biking carefully, slowing down as I approached each bridge, until...

On the very last one, about a half-mile from Mt. Vernon, I heard Andy go down behind me. Of course I looked back, breaked, and my bike immediately slid out from under me and I hit the ground hard. There we were, two bikers on our backs on the bridge, bikes in varying stages of de-chained disarray around us, clutching our bruised knees and elbows and laughing hysterically. We got up, got back on, and were immediately warned by a passing biker, “Watch out, the ground is pretty slippery.” Thank you sir…we got it. 

[Andy: Why is it that every time I hang out with you I end up covered in mud? Dirt biking, the relay, and now today. Me: I don't know...apparently I have that effect on people?]

I was pretty tired after the biking, but I had a party to prep for! It was a joint John’s birthday/graduation and me-leaving celebration hosted at my apartment. I baked a flourless chocolate cake and banana blondies (recipes to come), SpeedyKate and I cleaned up and moved our furniture out of the way, John brought us a big bag of awesomeness from Chinatown Express for party snacks, and done! Party ready!

I completely failed at taking pictures, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say that everyone looked great and had a good time.

Sunday was pretty post-party lazy. I puttered around until it was time for an hour and a half of heated flow yoga, which oommmmggggg Edwin, you kill me every time. I wish I could report that I’m getting better at non-bikram yoga…but I don’t think I am. I can do chataranga now though, and I hate my life a little bit less in downward-facing dog, so I guess those are wins!

Then my friends and I tried to see The Great Gatsby, but turns out arriving 20 minutes before the movie starts on opening weekend does not go so well. So we got fro-yo instead and called it a night.

Best of the Week #103

I seriously thought this day would never come, but it came all the same!!! Today is my second to last Friday at work. Please, everyone, take a moment and join me in a happy dance.

For those of you confused/not caught up on my news, read this: “Big News: Grad School and Travel!”

So I’ve been living it up in DC quite a bit recently, since there are so many fun things to do before I leave!
Last night I went to bluegrass at The Argonaut. The band was called Only Lonesome and they were so good – aka a lot of banjo and mandolin (Excuse me sir, what is that tiny guitar you’re playing?) and fiddle! The room is super-small, which is cool but also reeeeaaaaly loud.

And on Wednesday night I tried a new ramen place, Daikaya, by Chinatown. It’s not quite as good as Toki (it’s a different kind of ramen, and has a shorter wait which is nice), but I recommend the Mugi-Miso Ramen (add an egg). Also, the bar/restaurant next door, Izakaya Seki, is really cool!

Mmmmk now let’s celebrate this most glorious of mornings with some Best of the Week links.

Best read of the week: "Out in the Great Alone." Seriously, sit down and read the whole thing it is SO well-written and you will love it. Random things I learned from this excellent piece: Denali and Mt McKinley are the same thing! Also, the novelist Gary Paulsen, ran the Iditarod twice. My favorite sentences:

• I don’t know how you roll, emotionally, with respect to population-density tables. Personally I find this haunting."
• If you stood Mount McKinley, which Alaskans call “Denali,” next to Mount Everest on level ground, McKinley would tower over it, thousands of feet higher; Everest is taller only because it rests on an elevated plateau.
• They’d grown up together in the Lower 48, then lost touch before reconnecting as adults in Alaska, having in the meantime become a bush aviator and a professional dog musher, respectively, because obviously that is life.
• Jay was a Vermont kid, raised in a small town, and there was a mordant New England pluck in the way he gazed into the abyss and said: “I see what you’re trying to do there, abyss.”
• “gracious, I’m about to fireball.”
• Also rural Alaska accommodations, Arctic-survival knowhow, and (speaking only about the rear cabin of Nugget, here, but) trail mix. Good stuff, possibly homemade. It had the little M&Ms in it.
• He’d come to Alaska 40-plus years ago to work oil but gave it up because it meant spending months away from “her,” not specifying who that was. My heart felt like a helium balloon when he said that. Just reporting.
• I’d take my glove off to adjust a zipper and lose feeling in my hand almost immediately and instead of thinking Holy no I need to get my glove back on right this second I’d sort of pause and go My, how interesting that my hand feels as though it’s visibly translucent. Then my brain’s inbox would gently ding. PLEASE DON’T DIE.

“The Coolest Earth Houses around the World”

A quote for my runners:

• "There's no secret to it. It's just a lot of years and a lot of getting up, putting on the shoes and getting out the door on those days when it doesn't feel good and when it's not all that fun and still putting in the work." - Jenny Simpson, 1500m gold medalist at the 2011 World Championships

A whole new perspective on Babar, from “Book Reviews II” by The Honest Toddler.

• Check out that lean. That suit. That bling. Babar don’t care. Before today I didn’t know animals could have swagger. This book was basically an episode of Cribs for Babar and his rich elephant family. I didn’t pay attention to the moral of the story but I think it was “too much rim make the ride too hard.”

For tech/web people: how to create a good user interface, called “The User is Drunk”


These all amuse me far more than they should. It's almost time for me to "Alpacas Pack Your Bag For Vacation!"

SpeedyKate send me this list of "34 Ways To Eat Carrot Cake For Every Meal," suggesting, your last week in DC...we eat all of these? OMG YES PLEASE.

Philosoraptor, on it as always:

• If guns don't kill people, people kill people. Does that mean that toasters don't toast toast, toast toast toast?

"Real Life Mowgli: Girl Who Grew Up in the African Wildlife."

• Riding a five-ton elephant, whom she called ‘my brother’, chilling with a cheetah or hugging a giant bullfrog as if it were a Teddy bear. The childhood of a French girl Tippi Degre sounds more like a newer version of Mowgli, rather than something real. A white child, she was born in Namibia to French wildlife photographer parents, and grew up in Africa. Tippi spent her whole childhood playing with wild animals including lion cubs, a mongoose, a snake, a cheetah, baby zebra, giraffes and crocodiles.
• “It was magical to be able to be free in this nature with this child. She was a very lucky little girl – she was born and raised until the age of 10 totally in the wild.” said Sylvie.

We’re coming up on summertime, i.e. tank tops and shorts! So in light of that:  “The History of Shaving.”

• As far as armpits are concerned, we can pinpoint it almost to the day. In May of 1915, the upscale magazine Harper’s Bazaar ran an ad featuring a young model in a sleeveless, slip-like dress posing with both arms over her head.
• Then World War II erupted, and that iconic pin-up picture of Betty Grable became part of popular culture almost overnight. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the women of America have been shaving their legs ever since. Why, you ask? Because Betty’s legs looked amazing, and to emulate that look, you had to wear a short skirt and sheer stockings. You also had to shave your legs, as nothing killed the effect you were trying to create more than leg hair poking through your silky stockings.

Ender’s Game!!! Note to self: must re-read soon.


“The Only Major League Baseball Player to Openly Admit He was Gay During His Career Also May Have 'Invented' the High-Five”

• Besides being the first MLB player to come out during his playing career, at least with teammates and management, Glenn Burke is also often credited with being the guy who invented the high-five. To be clear, “low-fives” had been around for several decades at this point, particularly within the African American community, and there are a few people who claim to have “invented” the high-five.  Perhaps they really did perform a high-five first at some point- it being not exactly a complicated extension of the already popular low-five.  The reason Burke is so often given credit is there is substantial documented evidence of his first high-five, unlike so many other claimants. Further, after he started doing this, it caught on with the Dodgers and later throughout baseball and the world.  So even if he was not really the first person to have the bright idea to convert the low-five to a high-five (which seems likely), he at least was integral in popularizing the switch.

Random world fact:

I have somehow never read The Great Gatsby, so I don’t know if I agree with this, "Schulz: Why I Despise The Great Gatsby," but who knows I might...

• I know how I’m supposed to feel about Gatsby: In the words of the critic Jonathan Yardley, “that it is the American masterwork.” Malcolm Cowley admired its “moral permanence.” T. S. Eliot called it “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.” Lionel Trilling thought Fitzgerald had achieved in it “the ideal voice of the novelist.” That’s the received Gatsby: a linguistically elegant, intellectually bold, morally acute parable of our nation.
• I am in thoroughgoing disagreement with all of this. I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; I think we kid ourselves about the lessons it contains. None of this would matter much to me if Gatsby were not also sacrosanct. Books being borderline irrelevant in America, one is generally free to dislike them—but not this book. So since we find ourselves, as we cyclically do here, in the middle of another massive Gatsby-recrudescence, allow me to file a minority report.

A beautifully done and definitely worth exploring website: “Too Young to Wed.”

• “Child marriage is an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of education, health and long-term prospects. A girl who is married as a child is one whose potential will not be fulfilled. Since many parents and communities also want the best for their daughters, we must work together to end child marriage.” – Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director, UNFPA

Read this story (about soccer), for this line: "That was one weird burrito bowl."

This is literally an animated short about a joke about chips.

  "Two Chips" / An Animated Short from Adam Patch on Vimeo.
Who’s about to go to Nepal? This girl!!! So my friends now send me articles like this: "'ONE MISTAKE, GAME OVER’  - DRIVING NEPAL'S HIGHWAY TO HELL.”

• “One mistake, game over” reads a bumper sticker on an old, worn truck. You couldn’t put it better. Here, to make it alive, you have to use your horn – as you would a foghorn – to forewarn cars, motorcyclists, chickens, goatherds, or suicidal pedestrians – like these two men who are rolling oil drums in the middle of the road, or these three men who are pushing a tree trunk to the other side of the highway. It’s one of those roads that you find in every poor country, a heroic feat that covers your face in dust, sweat and diesel oil.

And finally (since it's kinda long), Jimmy Fallon's "Lip Sync-Off with John Krasinski."



Have a great weekend and HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

Cake of the Week: 6x6’s Dark Chocolate Truffles

This is a guest post by our dear 6x6 WHOM I MISS COME BACK TO ME. 

As regular readers of Mollie’s blog will remember, I moved from Washington, DC to Cape Town, South Africa at the end of last year to attend grad school. Aside from the distance, my life has not changed much. I’m still running, but up to Rhodes Memorial instead of on the Georgetown Canal. I’m still reading, but it’s books left behind in my student housing instead of recommendations and loaners from Mollie.

Chapman's Peak

Also, gratefully, I am still cooking! While the African grocery shopping experience has been less than pleasant (Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have clearly spoiled me. When I’m back in the States, those will be the first places I go!), I still have been able to cook some delicious, albeit simple, desserts.

This dessert, Dark Chocolate Truffles, I have cooked already several times since moving to Cape Town. I have two roommates – one French and one German – and the truffles were a huge hit with them. The German even experimented with her own variations on the recipe, and for a while our house had two plates of truffles perpetually in the fridge. [Umm hello flight to Cape Town, can I come over???]

Hike to Rhodes Memorial.

The French roommate, who is prone to hyperbole, likened the truffles to the “best, most refreshing chocolate ice cream in the whole world.” I encourage you to try!

6x6’s Dark Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound good bittersweet chocolate such as Lindt (or whatever you can get, depending on the country. In South Africa, Cadbury is equally delicious)
• 1/2 pound good semisweet chocolate such as Ghiradelli
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon prepared coffee
• 1/2 teaspoon good vanilla extract
• Cocoa powder

Directions:

1. Chop the chocolates finely with a sharp knife. Place them in a heat-proof mixing bowl.
2. Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it just boils. Turn off the heat and allow the cream to sit for 20 seconds. With a wire whisk, slowly stir the cream into the chocolates until the chocolate is completely melted. Whisk in coffee, and vanilla. Set aside at room temperature for 1 hour.
3. With 2 teaspoons, spoon round balls of the chocolate mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, until firm. 
4. Roll each dollop of chocolate in your hands to roughly make a round ball. Roll in cocoa powder. These will keep refrigerated for weeks, but serve them at room temperature.

Cake of the Week: Peanut Butter and Jam Muffins

Peanut butter. Jam. Muffins. These are literally three of my favorite things and I don’t know why it took so long for this recipe to make an appearance in my life.

I don’t eat peanut butter in large quantities, but I do eat it constantly. So that means that I open up my jar at least twice a day, but it takes me about a month to finish it off. I’ve always preferred crunchy, natural, salted (oh hello Trader Joe’s!), but when desperate (i.e. I just finished mine and all there is in the house is some Skippy/Jif leftover from someone else; I’m in a relay van with six other people and we bought food together; Soviet Safeway was out of the good kind; etc.), any peanut butter will do.

It is the universal condiment. Chocolate sauce goes well with most sweet things, and ketchup goes well with most savory things, but peanut butter is the one that can cross the line and work with both! Think about it – peanut butter cookies are great, as is Thai peanut sauce.  (The only flaw in this argument is citrus…peanut butter and citrus is not ok.) (And clearly I’ve thought too much about this – what can I say? Condiments = accessories for food = yum!)

And jam. I feel strongly about jam. People always look at me quizzically when I say I’m having a "peanut butter and jam sandwich," because you’re supposed to say "peanut butter and jelly." But they are not the same thing! Jelly is made out of fruit juice and has no seeds or chunks of fruit. Jam (aka “preserves”) has all the good stuff still in it. And I have always been on team jam, so yes I would like a peanut butter and jam sandwich thank you very much.

Ok back to these muffins. They’re barely sweet and pretty dense, i.e. definitely muffins and not cupcakes sans frosting. They’re not terribly unhealthy, since the only butter is the peanut butter. You can use any jam you like – I started with raspberry, and when I ran out I switched to fig. And they’re pretty awesome straight out of the oven or warmed up in a toaster oven the next morning for breakfast.

I adapted this recipe, using a combination of plain yogurt and water instead of milk. The dough is super-thick, but they turned out well so don’t worry!

Peanut Butter and Jam Muffins

Printable recipe.
Yield: 12 muffins (I tend to make littler muffins, so I got about 18 out of this recipe)
Ingredients:

• 2 all-purpose flour
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy
• 1 large egg
• ½ cup plain yogurt
• 1 cup water
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• Jam of your choice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard muffin pan with paper liners, or spray each well with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. Add peanut butter, and mix on medium speed until well combined and crumbly.
4. Add in egg, yogurt, water, and vanilla, and mix until just combined.
5. Use a medium-sized spoon to scoop about 1 ½ tablespoons of batter into each muffin well. Shape a little well in the center of the dough for the jam. 
6. Next, place 2 teaspoons of your favorite jam in the center of the muffin batter and top with another scoop (1 1/2 tablespoons) of muffin batter. If necessary, use a spoon or knife to gently spread batter to cover the jam.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes.

Printable recipe.