Zen Trainer is still without internet and sends her regrets to the Kitchen. The Christmas bomb in Nashville is the reason. I hope she’ll be back online soon!
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.
Some tidbits for you from the internet…in no particular order of importance.
This was good news this morning.
Epicurious is righting cultural wrongs one recipe at a time
With a new Black editor in chief and ambitious promises to do better, a little corner of the Conde Nast universe is taking on racial and cultural injustice one recipe at a time.
Since July, the small staff at Epicurious, a resource site for home cooks, has been scouring 55 years’ worth of recipes from a variety of Conde Nast magazines in search of objectionable titles, ingredient lists and stories told through a white American lens.
A hero, may he Rest In Peace:
Creative recycling, with a festive twist (the pictures are lovely):
The Australian Town That Turns Trash Into Christmas Trees
Lismore’s festive trees are made out of glorious garbage.
The first tree—built under the cover of night out of a pile of bicycles—debuted in 2015 and ushered in a new tradition. In subsequent years, the tree has been made from used tires, old road signs, broken umbrellas, and potted plants combined with solar-powered lighting. Materials are sourced from the town’s junkyard, and various town staff take on design and construction.
Like most things in this unusual year, the 2020 tree was a little different. It was a group effort, since most staff worked from home due to COVID-19 restrictions. And the tree is an ode to resilience. “This year’s tree is a nod and a tribute to our rural community,” says Marks, who spoke to Atlas Obscura while he waited to see whether flood waters in town would recede and allow him to travel back to his workplace. “They’ve had a tough time. They’ve gone through fires, a drought, and now a little too much rain.” Local farmers have also suffered from indirect effects of COVID-19, including border closures, despite Lismore being one of the many regions of Australia that has had no active cases of the virus.
This year’s 23-foot tree is made from recycled 6.5-gallon drums that store chemicals for use on farms. The decorations are made from used animal feed bags, piping, and discarded metal.
I have a lot of time for Glen Kirschner. This is from today.
And circling around again to recipe related things, this is from the Washington Post. Our favorite cookbooks of 2020
Like all of you, we’ve been at home for most of 2020, cooking more meals in our own kitchens than we ever expected to. Many of us have turned to familiar ingredients and recipes time and time again, when we just needed to get dinner on the table or couldn’t run out to the store. Thankfully, we’ve also had cookbooks to help us get out of the rut. They introduced us to new dishes, new people and new ways to “go somewhere” without actually leaving our homes.
Great cookbooks do a lot of things. They inspire us. They make us think. In 2020, our favorite books were tasty and timely, providing us with satisfying meals and food for thought about underrepresented voices and cuisines, how to make do with what you have, and more. We think you’ll find these 12 cookbooks, each selected by a staffer, just as inspiring this year — and beyond.
Come in, be comfortable, and share your day and any interesting tidbits you might have come across! This is an open thread.