Monday Miscellany: hot chile edition (updated!) December 28, 2009

Jacob’s stepmother is from Thailand, and grows a truly astonishing amount of (primarily Thai) vegetables in a beautiful upland garden here in Hawaii. Here is one part of the green papaya forest, with Thai chile plants in the foreground. One morning we volunteered to help harvest chilies.

Just a few links for this lazy holiday week:

Blogreader Orlande pointed these out months before, but MY GOD! SO ADORABLE! Handmade vegan shoes. I’ll take one pair of each, please!

There is something beautiful and calming about a three-star New York Times review (beware: intense non-veganism at that link) even of a restaurant I will never, ever go to. Maybe this means that I’m a bad anarchist because deep down I value standards and being judged. Luckily, I am on vacation and am not going to think about it that deeply.

The chilies are HOT.

Oh dear this little French girl is cute. Just ludicrous.

Sometimes, as a subversive sort of “fuck you” to health food freakers, and because it looks so fun, I tell myself I want to get into intense sugar work like this or this or this. The desire always passes…but I hope that one day it doesn’t. In ten years, I’d love to have given myself over to the world of refined, refined sugar in all its glory.

Here’s a fascinating read about the real-life world of a non-supermodel model (since my favorite secret guilty pleasure blog, Elyse Sewell’s brilliant Livejournal, is apparently defunct, I apparently have a vacant spot for jaded ex-model stories).

This is her last batch, being sun-dried to a toasty crisp. She cooks with a LOT of chilies.

Two bits of local outrage to end with:

First, what is UP with this freaking New Paltz Middle School MADNESS? How can people who are against the renovation not understand that a) it has to be done, for the safety of “the children! the CHILDREN!!” and that b) it will cost much more down the line, if we don’t do it now? I’m so confused. Is it the same old boys network freaks who wanted to build a completely new school? Do they even understand the math at all, or are they just 100% corrupt? Either way, they certainly have a lot of cash—$800 ads in the NPT every week, really? I’m not very coherent on the whole thing, obviously, but School Board member KT Tobin Flusser is, so go read what she has to say.

Second, our blogreader pal Dan recently pointed out, in a well-written letter to our erstwhile local rag the New Paltz Times, that this whole natural gas drilling thing is a giant fiasco that threatens the very survival of our beloved Catskills.

This appears to be the next big battle in my neck of the woods between capitalism and the continuation of our local ecosystem, and I’ve been steadily ignoring the horribleness that is looming ever closer. The worst aspect of the war to come, it seems to me, is that it really pits us (mostly middle-class, let’s admit it) environmentalists against mostly working-class (if such a thing was permitted to exist anymore, which it’s really not) people who see the quick cashy allure of letting the very land under their feet be drilled (by such upstanding companies as….Halliburton!). This pollutes drinking water (and it’s not like all of NYC depends on upstate for their drinking water or anything…) and puts their houses at risk for fun things like exploding—but it does give some cash-strapped homeowners some desperately-needed dollars.

It’s a mess from top to bottom, and the very thought of stopping it is so daunting it makes me want to breathe into a paper bag. But stop it we must. And so we shall.

Dan points out CatskillMountainKeeper.org as the place to go for outrage/info/action.

Also, Dan? We’ve never met, but someone just told me you’re David Porter’s son? The David Porter who almost single-handedly defeated Wal-Mart in NP? I’m so in love with your dad!!! This makes me want to have a little New Paltz-Resistance is Fertile blog meet up thingie! Just you and me and Brittany and KT. And ol’ what’s-his-name! Um….maybe not.

Monday Miscellany: stylish, trandy, and totally outrageous edition (updated!) December 21, 2009

Oops, I forgot a link:

Dustin pointed out this SO PERFECT Alternet article: Are Liberals Pathetic? My answer is a solid YES. Gotta love that Chris Hedges! This is a must read, for sure.

In an anarchist society, who will pick up the garbage? A spot-on, super quick read. (Thanks to Facebook pal DS for the link)

And from anarchism to my other love, thinking consumerism! A really great gift guide that the Bonbons were included in– I sort of want everything mentioned, particularly the quirky and lovely animal portraits.

And also

Good article in the NYT on the dangers of kitchen plastics and chemicals.

Also from the NYT, an article pretty much totally about my life, except that I don’t sell my wares on Etsy. And don’t make “more than $140,000 a year.” But still, it’s my business life down to a tee: a so-called perfect work life whose one big giant trade off is working every minute of every day, forever.

Oh, and! As previously mentioned, my farmer pal Kira got a sweet little write-up in the Times too! Oh, how cute is she? I’m amazed they got her to stand still long enough to take her picture—by far, she’s the hardest working farmer I know.  (And I make it a point to know farmers, so I know of what I speak.)

My fave band/performance artist, The Blow, is back from a little hiatus!

My BFF Christy introduced me to this lovely Portland blog. It’s super stylie, pretty,  & thoughtful—in short, delicious in every way. We both hate American Apparel and love hair dye, fermentation projects, and veganism, wooo!

Randy has a great post all about his fermentation 101 experiments (among other interesting life tidbits) and I’m not just saying it’s great because he mentions me favorably in it! Sample bit of typical Randy awesomeness: “there seems to be an unwritten exception to noise ordinances allowing any amount of racket so long as it is produced by gas powered tools designed to manage nature.” Oh god, so true.

This is a reminder, to myself (and maybe you too!) to save my copious amount of jars for the fine folks at Wintergreens when I get back to cooking next…decade!

Word on the street (that street being audubon.org) is that the excellent Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms is soon to be an iPhone app!!!! My exclamation points runneth over! My dog-eared copy of the book hangs out in my car trunk, along with a battered ’shrooming basket, and the promise of a shiny new fabulous-sounding app (the bird one has bird calls!) is making me feel all tingly.

Monday Miscellany: grumpy feminist (is there any other kind? OH SNAP!) edition November 30, 2009

Hey, look, a whole essay about what a horrible person I am! Ya gotta love the internet. And people who take quotes from years-old essays whose positions I’ve moved away from, and/or developed more nuanced ideas about. Ah, life.

Though I don’t have any feminist cred anymore, can I still point out more PETA ridiculousness?

Also, here’s a snippet of a conversation on Carol Adams’ Facebook page that started out being about about the infamous bj Burger King ad and turned into a discussion of PETA:

Someone: What does everyone think of the excuse PETA uses: the feminist ideal that a woman has the right to use her body and/or sexuality to make a point if she so chooses? They use references to Lady Godiva, who used the beauty of her naked body as a metaphor for her cause. I am looking at this for a master’s thesis, and am anxious for feedback.

Carol Adams: MacKinnon is best on this: they assume that the equality we are working for has been achieved; and thus that consent has meaning. But in a world of sexual inequality, consent is a fungible term.

What do you think? (Brittany, I especially want to hear your thoughts, ’cause I know you’ll disagree and you know I like that!) As usual, I think Carol is brilliant, and no one can ever refer people to Catherine MacKinnon fast enough for my taste. But if I said it I would be accused of accusing other women of false consciousness and hated on for the rest of humanity for even breathing the CaMac name. Fuckin’ feminists. You can never win with those bitches.

On a completely different note, why I haven’t been reading the blog of the fiercely feminist farmer Kara over at Wintergreens since day one, I do not know, but I’m happy to be reading it now. Upstate awesomeness, for sure—fresh/fermented/wild/frozen food all winter long!! People, they are MAKING BABY FOOD! Wow.

OK, back to work.

xoxox

L

Monday Miscellany November 2, 2009

I’m already mourning the passing of the Season of Wearing Cute Dresses in a pretty hardcore way. Yuck. Forgive that I already posted a picture of this outfit (which I have christened “You’d Never Guess She’s a Man-Hating Anarcho-Feminist,”), but I did a lot of tailoring to it to make it fit (there was a LOT more lace) and I’m pretty much in love with it. Those tights have little twee hearts on them!

Lots happening out there in the world, plus I am over my horrid mood of last week! Let us celebrate with links:

My BFFF (extra F for how Fucking much I love him) Than Luu is doing some ridiculous food blogging on his travels around the world with his band Black Gold (Oh look! Another opportunity to mention the music video I was in, how handy!). Check it out!

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Speaking of bands, while I was engaged in a horrible Halloween depression spiral, my sweetheart was in Louisville mixing THIS. Wow.
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Profanity-laced hilarity courtesy of McSweeney’s.

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The new Bloodroot calendar is out! In the two years since Bloodroot published the gorgeous cookbook set that I was honored to have had a hand in creating, they have been publishing a calendar with new recipes. The calendar is super gorgeous and filled with 99% vegan recipes straight out of my mentor Selma’s head–snap it up!

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I’m happy one of the Brooklyn Jonathans (Safran Foer, Ames, and Letham) wrote a book about why you should be vegan or whatevs, and I’m happy that famous blonde actresses are writing vegan cookbooks, all of that is well and good. But these books are written for non-vegans—why people have to keep pointing them out to me I have no idea.

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Speaking of another of the Bklyn Jonathans, Ames wrote that new show Bored to Death and though I haven’t seen it I completely loved & agreed with Nancy Franklin’s recent New Yorker review (I basically agree with everything Nancy Franklin has ever said though.). Particularly this part:

Chick lit—the range of fiction by women about contemporary city life, friendships, sex, jobs, climbing out of the wreckage of youthful dreams—gets a lot less respect than the male equivalent, which people tend to approach as if it were automatically more artful, more written. Women write “thinly veiled accounts”; men write “romans à clef.” Women writers may have a room of their own, but men who thrash around in front of the mirror and record their every failure, humiliation, moue, and excretion for an audience’s consumption still own the house, even if all they do in it is lie on the couch—and then write about it.
The work of Jonathan Ames, who created the new HBO series “Bored to Death,” lies in this vein of self-fascination and self-conscious inertia.

My god, YES. I suffered through a Jonathan Ames audiobook (which I refuse to Google to figure out the title, as I am unwilling to spend one more second of my life on Jonathan Ames) once, and every second was pure torture.

On the other hand, everyone says this new series is good. Oh, the pain.

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And a few work-related miscellanies:

Heya Baltimorites (?)! Check out Brunie’s Bakery, a cute small-batch vegan bakery in your fair city. Recently their head baker emailed me to say that she was making the wedding cake for the woman who ordered the aforementioned wedding truffles from last week and she just sampled and adored a few truffles. How nice is that? I love it when things like that happen. Vegans can be a crazy bunch, but overall we are such decent, sweet, friendly people, no?

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(All that follows is NSFW!)

So, this erotic chocolate shop in Belgium wants to sell ye olde vulvaz, and I hope we can make it happen. How hilarious does it look? My favorite product so far is the “Candy Gay String.” And while I find these deeply, deeply horrifying….I must say they are pretty well done! And they remind me all over again to be annoyed that no one (Beloved TCHO! Are you listening?) makes high-quality vegan (coco milk!!!) milk chocolate and white chocolate. Oh, and I have this mold! I once made it for my sweetheart filled with peppermint patty filling and presented it to him right before he left on a tour. It was too much sugar (a solid inch or so of peppermint patty filling, I’m not sure quite what I was thinking) and he couldn’t eat it in front of anyone and I fear a lot of it went to waste. But it was adorable!

Monday Miscellany: beaucoup de mishegoss edition October 19, 2009

Strataspore: “A platform for collective knowledge about mushrooms.”

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Spend an adorable and seriously heartwarming 20 minutes with this Brooklyny hipstery awesomey shortie, all about abortion!

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FUCK YEAH: Barbara Ehrenreich on how “positive thinking has undermined America.” Yep. Totes!! My god, I loves me some Barbara Ehrenreich.

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This entire blog will terrify and fascinate you, I promise. Veronica turned me onto it because in this post this seriously mentally insane person explains how many of the little globule-y things I had at Alinea were made. Wowzers.

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This Calvin Trillin gem that so perfectly sums up the Roman Polanski mishegoss has been passed around a bit, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a peek and an “EXACTLY.”

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An anarchist’s take on Michael Moore’s new anti-capitalist movie.

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Little bit o’ Bonbons press (the blog is also my personal scrapbook, OK?)….

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Oh, and here is the cutest, (and also most bizarrely inaccurate) piece o’ Bonbons press ever.(I wouldn’t exactly say that I “made the chocolates in part as a response to friends who voiced their opinion that no one else but Obama could have won the Nobel Peace Prize” though yep, I did have a conversation with someone who said that and yep, I did point out that Vandana should have received it instead, but man, that would have been quick to whip up an entire choco line! But whatevs, that’s a minor quibble in a sweet article.)

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Brittany pointed me to these cute vintagey threads. Oh Etsy, je t’adore.

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Our local distillery, Tuthilltown Spirits, is now incredibly famous, and deservedly so. Their Baby Bourbon and Manhattan Rye Whiskey are RIDIC. Hooray for local hooch!

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I found out about this sweet teeny jam company from Edible Brooklyn–how adorable: Anarchy in a Jar jams. How amazing to be alive when anarchists are practicing their politics by making jam.

It warms my heart, yo.

Monday Misc: inadequate eyelashes [Friday] edition October 9, 2009

Some rapidly aging links I’ve been hoarding for a while:

In the ideas-change-over-time category, I’d like to publicly state that this article from Feministing has officially changed my mind about Zero Population Growth and the idea that trying to get people (i.e., women) to have less babies (which I still think is a splendid idea) is the very best way to accomplish environmental goals.

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Sweet seed librarian Ken has a good article all about—what else?—seed saving here at Civil Eats, which is a pretty rad site overall, actually.

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I didn’t mention this on the blog because it was pretty upsetting, but now things have calmed down a bit, so here we go: my best friends Noel and Selma’s restaurant, Bloodroot, was robbed a few weeks ago. Selma was slightly injured when she confronted the robber because he was stealing her precious knitting bag (which he most likely thought was a purse). Selma and I had a good chat about the whole thing last week, and she seems to be back to her serene, bizarrely-energetic, beloved self. Here’s a piece of our exchange:

“So, anyway, the day after the whole thing we were scheduled to go to our Weavers Guild [which is exactly what it sounds like]…”

[at this point, after Sel has told me the story of how she basically attacked this robber and a serious melee resulted, all I can think is: "Wouldn't you want to just stay in bed the next day?"]

“…and, you know, I figured, what am I going to do, just stay in bed all day? So we went.”

That’s my Selma.

You have to register to read the articles, but you can pretty much get the gist of what happened here and here’s a nice blog post about it (in the end she recovered the knitting bag, can you believe that? A kid apparently found it in the water while fishing!).

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Ready to be completely blown away by a product that is the absolute epitome, the perfect zenith, the utter apex of that age-old dynamic duo of capitalism + misogyny? I bring you: latisse. Warning: “there is potential for increased brown iris pigmentation which is likely to be permanent.” Um, this shit is gonna stain your eye?

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And sorry to end on a downer, but have you heard about Condé Nasty ruthlessly murdering Gourmet? I know it’s not vegan (though their “Vegetarian Tonight” column pretty much rocked it), but it’s by far the best food magazine out there…argh, it was. I’m really broken up about it. Now Gourmet subscribers are doing to get stupid idiotic stultifying Bon Appetit—LORD HELP US ALL.

Monday Miscellany! September 29, 2009

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How beautiful is that?

So, with that beginning, here we go:

My bike expert BFF Randy has himself a fascinating and thoughtful brand new biking blog!

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If you weren’t lucky enough to go to Mergefest XX, you can check out some lovely videos of most of the bands (mixed by my sweetheart) here!

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This sweetie, Leanne, left a comment here a while back, but in case you didn’t catch the link to her site I wanted to point it out: high-fashion gorgeous VEGAN COATS, PEOPLE!!!!! Are you dying? I am dying! I have a constant coat issue (it’s related to the constant winter shoe issue, which, by the way, is as of yet unresolved, even one year later) and know that someday I am going to have to fork over a lot of money just to have a coat I truly love (I have an idea this will somehow magically make me like winter). Sadly for my bank account but happily for everything else, I might have found The One. (On the other hand, my heart also beats wildly when it looks at this one—what say you?)

Also I know a boy who is getting this shirt for Hanukkah:

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A cute review of the bonbons here (ignore the vegan ridiculousness….)…

And I have a few more bits of interest, but am too tired from a long week of work (and fun!) to get into them—more soon!

Monday Miscellany: cute boyfriend* Tuesday edition September 15, 2009

Can I just tell you this insanely cute thing first? A sweet sweet blogreader spotted Jacob in Denver! She recognized him from pictures on this here blog and, knowing his touring lifestyle + knowing that there was a big music festival in her town the day before + seeing as they were both in a veggie restaurant, she put 1 and 1 and 1 together and it all equaled Jacob and I’m just tickled by the whole thing. Jacob reports that he had a frisson of recognition too but didn’t realize it until later when I told him the story and he asked if she was the one who put up pictures on Facebook of her bonbon order. Yes and yes! Small worlds and lovely people!

Someone get that boy a transfat-laden vegan cupcake!

Speaking of the exact opposite, I am hilariously slandered by one of the meanest people in our town on this long long comments thread. I’ve got a lot to say about the whole thing, but I’m going to let it go and focus on more productive tasks. Like:

Everyone totally agrees with me about Julie & Julia (NSFV [Not Safe for Vegans] alert: there is a nasty picture of a dead chicken on that page)! Wow, I’m never so spot-on with the culture at large. I still haven’t seen the movie, though…partially because of the NSFV aspect I know is on display, partially because I am so utterly uninterested in the Julie story.

Also at Gourmet.com (and thanks to my amazing editor Brittany for pointing out the janky link), this interview with this dude who says that cooking food is what makes us human, which I have also always believed, which annoys crazy raw people, which is something I like to do, because: they are crazy.

Jacob thinks they stole the idea from me, but I am unconcerned about such stuff, and am super excited that the Feministing crew are doing some AMAZING blogging about Mad Men! Check it!

Also at Feministing, this thoughtful piece on nudity. Ah, I love that site…and being naked.

This American Life from two weeks ago is about…..my Thruway exit! How bizarre…and interesting! New Paltz is even mentioned!

Speaking of podcasts, my bestest one, TBTL, was canceled last week from their Seattle radio station and is now making a go as a podcast: check it out & keep them in business so I can continue to listen to their lightly hipstery, non-political, pop-culturey, non-annoying voices three hours a day while cooking! (I loves me my Amy Goodman and NPR podcasts, but I need TBTL because it doesn’t make me angry like political podcasts do, which is a good thing when you’re cooking.)

Um…I’m playing hooky from tidying up the “garden” (read: weedland), so that’s it for now, sweethearts!

*Yeah, you know we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, but “cute partner edition” doesn’t sound as good.

Monday Miscellany! August 24, 2009

via TBTL via HuffPo, via I can’t stop laughing at this picture, what is wrong with me?

Oh Thom! Click here and read the “for more information, click here” and fall in love with Thom Yorke for the twenty millionth time since you were 15. (My crush on Thom Yorke is a teenager, how can that be?)

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Everyone and their uncle has sent me this link, and yeah, it’s just as horrid as we’ve come to expect from PETA. (Thanks to everyone and their uncle).

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Hudson Valley Vegan blog, what up what up! Vegans in the HV!!

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Buy a/r-friendly wine!

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I so loathe all the little “libertarian” kiddos in my college town who love pot and Ron Paul and are otherwise totes uninformed about true libertarianism–read this and weep, kids: libertarian is MY term! Stop stealing it! (Thanks to Deric for the link)

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The Hudson Valley Seed Library, run by adorable loves of mine Ken & Doug, made these cute Blight Bites t-shirts!

Monday Miscellany! August 4, 2009

You know what’s crazy?? This is not my photo, but I own a pretty much identical smock! It likes to hang on a clothesline too!

Dudes!!! The blog seems to have become a link dump lately, and for that I most heartily apologize. Regular screaming original programming returning soon—promise!

It’s actually really annoying when bloggers apologize for not blogging, isn’t it? It’s sort of a huge peeve of mine—who cares if you fucking blog or not??—so I’m sorry to do it now. I’m in that post-vacation work/housework/paperwork tornado, and while doing all my chores I’ve been thinking of lots to get angry about/recipes to post/Mad Men thoughts, so I guess I’m apologizing to myself for not getting it together to organize my thoughts on anything.

So whatevs, let’s get to it:

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Bitch Magazine on PETA, then Carol Adams on PETA (she, like I, must get so tired of rehashing this over and over and over and over and over. Can we just say it once and for all and be done? PETA IS FUCKED. Done!)

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All my BFF farmers (Kira! Billiam! Polly & Jay!) are interviewed in this heartbreaking NYT piece on how big box stores have ruined local organic tomatoes and we will have no tomatoes this year. Veronique and I usually turn 60 lbs of tomatoes into a few gallons of roasted tomato sauce every week that I freeze and use throughout the year. My goal for this year was going to be 800 lbs (100 lbs a week for 8 weeks, it sounds manageable, doesn’t it?), because I constantly run out of tomatoes by March or so. My heart is broken 20,000 times over, and I am steeling myself to pay in gold for what little bit of nightshade love I can get. Argh.  (Thanks for all the alerts to this article!)

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Amanda at Pandagon has a great analysis of women and porn, particularly this:

I hate to trot out the term “objectification”, because people really misunderstand what it means, including a lot of feminists who are really fond of it.  It doesn’t mean being looked at with lust.  It means that your subjective reality is dismissed in pursuit of upholding someone else’s, reducing you to an object.

Yeah, I find people constantly are confused by the difference between “we’re making out, please look at me lustfully,” and “you are nothing but a thing to be used for male gazey pleasure.” What a world of difference there is between those two, no? The whole article is super rad really, go read it!

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OK, and: did any of you read the New Yorker Nora Ephron profile? It was written by the lovely Ariel Levy, and I was so excited that she said just exactly what I feel about the Julie and Julia book (and now movie): it sorta stinks. I listened to the audio book of the book, and I will go see the movie because (veganosity not withstanding) I am madly in love with Julia Child, but man oh man I found that Julie lady to be, in a word, INSUFFERABLE. I’m disheartened that it seems the movie is a faithful representation of the book—why not a good old fashioned Julia Child bio-pic? Her life had enough drama and intrigue in it to fill up days! Why put in boring claptrap about some blah blah mall-clothes beige office drone?

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And this is getting long, but: WOW. This dude is doing some amazing chocolate….stuff. I found out about him through people making fun of me, and now I’m totally obsessed with his work. Fucking amazing, yo.

Je vous adore,

Lagusta