your hate reads

Oh christ

hahaha that is hilarious

BUT

said restaurant is actually great

whilst we aren’t exactly Google, ILX has always felt like a rocket ship to me, specifically the kind where it takes decades to reach the destination, which may or may not be suitable for colonization, and suspended animation hasn’t been invented yet.

We are definitely getting older and trying to have a barely noticeable impact on the way people talk about race, politics and the arts.

Reach out to me if you want to join us, be it on ILM, behind the 77 or in the server farm. And please do tell as many people as possible about this. You don’t need loads and loads of experience, I prefer to work with people full of character and develop the trolls.

I'm in

ignoble rot

Bad news and scary facts swirl around us even as we grow hungry, and even as we choose to make an Ethiopian-style spicy chicken (above) for dinner instead of simply eating takeout protein while scrolling through our news feed, worrying about the future. That is more than right. That is as it should be. We feed ourselves well because good food makes things better, makes possible the belief that despite all, everything will be all right.

Bear that in mind this weekend, as Hanukkah continues and the Christmas holiday looms. The weather outside is frightful (here, anyway, dour and chill), and the news may be as bad, but there's still the possibility of happiness around your dinner table, at least if you cook low and slow with one of our five-star recipes for chilly days, or see your way to baking a batch or two of thin-and-crisp chocolate chip cookies.

Good morning. The streets are still a little quiet in the wake of Christmas, people staying on with family in Waukesha, padding down the beach at North Cap, walking to yoga class with Michelle Obama. Manhattan offices are running at 60 percent, good people crunching end-of-year numbers and eating Popeyes for lunch, then hitting the H Mart en route to the subway and home: mapo ragù (above) for supper, and six new episodes of "Peaky Blinders" to follow. Stay up late, and trickle into work in the morning tomorrow at 10. No one's stressing anything this week. The nation's at idle.

Still, we'll cook a lot. I'd like a Gruyère and chive soufflé this week, really I would. And a spinach, tofu and sesame stir-fry as well. This would be a great week to make garlicky chicken with a lemon-anchovy sauce, or to simmer lamb meatballs in a pomegranate glaze.

that tone really is quite special

i don't know if it's author photo that's suggesting it but i picture sam sifton as fred macmurray, tucked-in polo shirt, clean apron over the slacks, setting down a gin-and-tonic and sticking out an honest hand to shake yours, somehow remembering the name of your aunt. he's johnny carson, nebraska values in a faithless world, a rock in the storm. i mean just look at that name! it's the name of a sheriff's deputy who has three lines near the beginning of the film. he has such longevity as a hate-read for me i think because he is, apart from the absolutely back-breaking bathos of his format, a pretty good writer, and also because the small-town guy in the big city trick is straight out of my own bag. he got out of winesburg, ohio while the getting was good (look, i'm starting to sound like him) but he carries this core of common american white male plain-spoken decency around with him that lets him get away with all kinds of fruity pronouncements on exotic tapenades etc. i absolutely hate him and cannot stop reading his newsletter.

The only hate read I can think of is Bob Lefsetz's blog, but that's mainly through the ilm thread on him.

ILE

even seemingly innocuous grafs like this push all my buttons

You could make velvety chicken breasts with mustard sauce for dinner. Or you could spend the afternoon making shrimp and scallop DUMPLINGS! instead.

look i do this "false choice" trick with my kids all the time, stop pressuring me into shit, sam

i have no idea why "DUMPLINGS!" capitalised and got an exclamation point on post, sorry

i read this yesterday. after the familiar claims made on my afternoon he said:

Do this at the very least: Take a few navel oranges, and put them in the fridge overnight, then slice them into eighths in the morning and eat them standing over the sink, before you've even made coffee or tea. Then tell me if there's a better fruit available, save a perfect watermelon or, like, three mangoes a year. I dream about those oranges this time of year, and they surprise me in the morning every time. Plain yogurt is a good chaser, and then I see about the coffee and head off to work.

now, this actually sounds pretty good. but it brings me uncomfortably close to sam sifton the man. i feel like i'm in his underwear, there with him as he scratches his nuts. DO NOT WANT. (see you tomorrow!)

vox.com

and also the former colleague who is loading up her Instagram feed with her new business of being a "thought leader" and doing the requisite online webinars.

oh man, colleagues doin thought-leader life-coach stuff on their instas is like a whole nother grisly category

ILX

I'm starting to take this personally now

i really hate 'the outline'

Scott Adams!

I don't knowingly read anything Scott Adams writes, but I will read Dilbert out of habit. I'm not sure how much Adams actively participates in the strip these days. I think he gets most of his ideas from fan mail and delegates the inking to interns or something.

I resubscribed to the NY Times Cooking newsletter just to hate-read Sifton. This isn’t as bathetic as usual but it’s just as grasping. Imagine this being said by Dick Cavett:


Good day. How’s it going for you right now, where you stay? It’s unsettling, what’s happening in our nation and across the world, and it’s maybe super-unsettling what’s happening in your neighborhood, your village, your building, your apartment, your head. Loads of people are sitting scared, some frozen, unsure what to do besides look at screens. Will it be worse tomorrow, or just the same?
The answer’s in the kitchen, I’m certain. Many have stockpiled for weeks of social distancing, if the shelves at the market are any indication. They’ve hunkered down. And perhaps you have, too. I hope so. The time to make the most of it is now.

so i'm not alone in that!

there was one when he was in the hamptons, i died

his rhythm and tone are so chirpy and unrelenting, if he was a budgie you’d throw a tea towel over his cage

shame to burn a good tea towel like that tbh

what if it’s an old waltzing matilda tea towel with a big scorch mark on the jolly swagman’s boot

cavett emptor so

Good morning. I hope you got some time to rest and reflect this weekend, to sit with where we’re at in the world, and where we might go. I hope the conversations you were able to have at the kitchen table were good, even if they were just with yourself, and I hope that this week brings you grace and hope in equal measure, even against a backdrop of anger and anxiety.

I believe cooking can help. Both the activity of it and the fellowship it provides — again, even if you’re just cooking for yourself. It is difficult not to become a little cheerful, for instance, making Ali Slagle’s puckish new recipe for crispy sour cream and onion chicken (above)

NO

haha what a sanctimonious twat

the fellowship it provides — again, even if you’re just cooking for yourself.

yeah like the yale club for losers

Tracer, is that Sam Sifton? Please link to your hate reads so we can all hate read them.

Lol yes it is and yes I will - however I like to think my judicious hate-filled editing really conveys him at his least attractive

here's the column in question
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/what-to-cook-right-now.html

‘Puckish new recipe’

so glad i found the sifton hate club, dude writes like a youtube yoga influencer

sam sifton you never disappoint when i am looking for innocuous things to hate

So, maybe: a kind of Eastertime stir-fry of onion, shredded cabbage, apples and ham? It’s pretty simple, a hack of an old Nigel Slater recipe someone once sent me: Melt some butter in a large pan, and sweat the onions in it, with a clove or two of garlic, if you have any./

please sir, can you spare some garlic?

can't stand the "clove or two of garlic" approach to cooking, imagine making a dish with 0.25 cloves of garlic per person, why bother putting any in at all? also feel annoyed every time I read/hear the phrase "a stir-fry" - you know it's going to have undercooked carrots, overcooked beansprouts, tinned water chestnuts, limp red pepper and taste of absolutely nothing.

but yeah it's also bad writing

when I make some garlic infused oil for pasta I use 2-3 bulbs, cannot take people seriously who talk in units of cloves

a whole bulb in curries at least, sometimes three depending on my supplies

I don't know if my taste buds are knackered from smoking, but I cannot sense the taste of garlic on the 1-2 cloves in a recipe range.

idk i could never be accused of under-seasoning my food but i could see using two cloves to make cabbage because i like the taste of cabbage, and i use 5 or so cloves in curry. but this it not about the garlic quantity it's about sam's ability to stuff every sentence he writes with these annoying and meaningless flourishes.

I always imagine it's these so relaxed, we're-only-throwing-together-a-simple-supper dudes who would be simmering with barely contained fury if you were cooking in their kitchen and chose the wrong salad bowl.

i have fantasized so many times about doing a podcast of his columns where i just read them in the most earnest midwest accent possible.

But if you’ve got a little bit of gas left in your tank? How about putting together the very best charcuterie board (above) for dinner tonight?

emails from certain co-workers

harbl i just shuddered visibly

surely homeopathic use of cloves has some benefit. Keeps fractions of vampires away at least?

BUt I do tend to use one whole bulb in a meal preparation.

I don't think UI have had the chance to work out what a hate read would be, spending too much time reading through part of what I want to read for itself and surrounded by loads of other possible great reads. Do you use a hate read as a palate cleanser or at least resetter?
So you have a baseline to compare good writing to?
I do remember reading a music journalist I cant read and Hilary Mantel in quick juxtaposition and thinking the quality difference was mammoth. But find it odd that anybody would have the time to actively hate read. Would be good to have the time to read everything one would actually want to. is there a level of masochism involved?

I tend to use a whole bulb of garlic at a time as well stevo, it's the key to immortality imo.

That’s not what John Retoul says

I've got the power to weaken the undead knave, just by breathing on him!

apparently when you crush garlic there is a chemical reaction that alters its cellular makeup and makes it very good for your health.