The Economist has a section on its website listing its guest contributors—handily titled “Economics by Invitation”—to which they have invited 55 guests. Two of these guests are women.
This is a complaint both about reality and about The Economist—but I definitely blame editorial choices like these for perpetuating the problem. And anyway they reinforce my impression of them as pompous, stodgy (read sexist) arses when they edit the posts of their 27 American guest contributors (out of that 55 total) to read “labour” and “cheque.”
I bought blueberries at the farmers’ market yesterday expressly to make blueberry muffins. I’m not a huge fresh blueberry fan but baked blueberries——mm.
So I found an appealing version at Simply Recipes to make. Unfortunately, I had misestimated the muffin tray I’d caught a glimpse of in our kitchen. Turns out there were only mini muffin trays which are so tiny that a blueberry studding the side of a muffin really threatens its structural integrity. I think store-bought mini blueberry muffins must have really tiny blueberries?
There was leftover batter that I poured into a cake pan to make impromptu blueberry “muffin” cake—that actually turned out more enjoyable than the minis. I think I’m going to have to spring for a normal people sized muffin tray.
I went to Mike’s Pastry last night—allegedly the best Italian bakery in Boston. They are most famous for their cannoli and they have a ton of different flavors, among those, amaretto, pistachio, and chocolate mousse. I tried two types: one yellow cream and one ricotta florentine (pictured below).
No picture of the yellow cream because it was finished yesterday, but I just ate the one above for an afternoon snack after a late breakfast of the last piece of peach pie.
The pastry is good but the best part of the whole deal is the packaging—blue and white boxes tied up with string. The picture above is my sloppy retying job rather than the impeccable twirly tying by the woman who served me. For a few blocks around the store you spot a lot of people carrying these boxes.
Aside from my interview experience (suit, suit, suit with the one patterned shell that works miraculously well with it) yesterday felt like my first adult dressing experience. Dress code was business attire/business casual per invitation. The club it was held at also had dress code on their site—checked because R was afraid he would be given a lender if he showed up without a sports coat. Luckily, the dress code stipulated collared shirt and slacks, no jacket required. Interestingly, that was it, no mention of female dress code! Paging Sociological Images!
Thus unguided, I wore a new Costello Tagliapetra for Uniqlo dress ($29.95!) with black pumps and charcoal cardigan. The dress is pictured above on the left, but in the color of the blue dress on the right. It was hot out, but I felt a little too “party” and a little un”business” without the cardi. The outfit was perfect and comfy, 3 1/2” heels were definitely a good call, I still felt pretty short beside many of the people I stood next to. The drinks were free and good—the G&Ts were not too strong for my liking, unlike a certain $11 one I tasted in NY on Friday. The nice thing about free and not overburdened bars is that you don’t need to get your liquor’s worth on every drink. The food was good but I didn’t get much—you can pretty much handle drink OR food and still shake hands when called upon, and of course, drink takes precedent.
I may also have bought this dress in black and another taupe number from the C.T./Uniqlo collection while in New York last week. Uniqlo is bar none the best fucking place in the universe to buy cheap, attractive, work-appropriate clothes. My plan is to take periodic trips to New York from Boston when I need new clothes. I will probably have to sell these trips as “visiting people” or “soaking in culture” but there will be Uniqlo. Or bust.
Forgive the subpar photos and the dirty tablecloth—I’m working with photobooth here and, um, have no excuse for the tablecloth. Anyway: peach pie, my first pie in a new kitchen.
It’s a Food & Wine recipe but I used 2 store bought crusts (1 top, 1 bottom). The pie was good fresh and really good cold but somehow just not quite as flavorful and fruity as I was hoping for. :(
I’m considering trying a nectarine or nectarine/peach mix pie next. I’m also hoping to head to a supposedly fantastic and cheap farmer’s market on Saturday so fillings may be dictated by whatever looks best there.
Goodbye California tart. Lemon ricotta filling (Martha) with fresh strawberries. Cheesecake-y.
Amateurish attempt at food blogging, since amateurish cooking is what I’ve been doing for the last several weeks.
The plum pie I baked yesterday. With sweet piecrust from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and filling recipe from Martha Stewart. It came out a little too tart, so more sugar in my filling next time——and there was an incident with dripping juices setting off the smoke alarm, so I’ll try not to overfill it too!
And the lemon tart fancified with fresh rasberries for July 4th. Sweet tart crust recipe also from Bittman. Filling recipe and topping idea from Week of Menus. This came out great—so much neater than a fruit pie and easy to put whatever decoration on top—tasted fantastic with the fresh rasberries.
tulletulle:
(via fuckyeahmeangirlsmacros)
This appeals to my interests.
People I follow virtually (see above) and know irl (see MBW) have been weirdly into Daria lately. I feel sort of left out because I’m sort of down, but not that down. I’m going to jump on that bandwagon and go marathon it out.
I have missed a blog outlet surprisingly little in the last several months but being back in the Bay Area and in my absolutely final summer break is really giving me twinges of blogstalgia.
Think I’ll start reblogging again as a sort of halfway blogging home and see what happens.
“We might model the spread of a story in terms of an epidemic. Stories are like viruses. Their spread by word of mouth involves a sort of contagion. Epidemiologists have developed mathematical models of epidemics, which can be applied to the spread of stories and confidence as well. For these models the essential parameters are the infection rate (a measure of the ability of the disease to be communicated from one individual to another) and the removal rate (a measure of the speed at which people lose their contagion). The essential initial conditions are the number of people who have the disease and the number of people who are susceptible to the disease. Given these, a mathematical model of epidemics can predict the whole course of the epidemic. But there is always uncertainty, as various factors, such as mutations of the virus, can change the contagion rate over time.
Just as diseases spread through contagion, so does confidence, or lack of confidence. Indeed confidence, or the lack thereof, may be as contagious as any disease. Epidemics of confidence or epidemics of pessimism may arise mysteriously simply because there was a change in the contagion rate of certain modes of thinking.”
—Akerlof & Shiller, Animal Spirits
“Ronald Tobias wrote in 1993 that there are just twenty fundamental plots, which he titled ‘quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension, and descention.’”
—Akerlof & Shiller, Animal Spirits
Dunno who they’re by, but love-love these sunglasses. (Jacquelyn Jablonski for Another Magazine)
garance doré
Love this look a lot—it’s a lot of simple elements that I like, put together impeccably and the sharp lines of that skirt are the standout for me—BUT, this and all the thigh high socks on runways are making me irritable.
They look lovely and they’re always a step more interesting than tights, but in my experience, high socks never work out as planned.
They’re scratchier than tights and its hard to pull them off without looking at all skanky. Most upsetting of all, they sag. I’m not talking about the enviable rumpling seen in this photo. Oh no, that’s what comes before your stupid socks start edging down past your knees. There’s nothing like tugging up your thigh highs to make you feel 1) like a skank 2) like a fashion victim.
