Snow Day

It's maybe the second or third stretch of actually cold weather in St. Louis. This morning was the first time that we've had actual snow on the ground this season, and as someone who hates traveling in winter weather, I'm happy to sit here, looking out the window, having both a cup of hot coffee and nowhere to be.

It helps, too, that there's breakfast.

Scrambled eggs, cherry tomatoes sautéed in olive oil, a couple slices of toasted rye bread, lightly buttered and salted.

Now, I have the space heater going next to me, a belly full of breakfast, freshly ground, piping hot coffee, and a playlist of podcasts to plow through. All from the comfort of my desk, looking out on the dusting of snow, as one of the neighbors across the way stands bundled up in black, smoking a cigarette and alternately blowing streams of smoke and breath into the chilly air.

Happy Sunday.

Pay In to Lose →

Sounds like an interesting challenge. Nothing motivates more than money!

The Apricot

You know, before today I've never had an apricot. At least, not one that hasn't been prepared, shoved into a can, and sold as preserves.

The other day, I was at the store and I decided to change that. Recently I've found myself wanting to push myself to try new things. I fall into the habit sometimes of sticking with the same things I know, to play things safe.

Now, especially when it comes to delicious summer fruits, I want to light a fire under myself. I don't want to be boring old Michael anymore. (Well, not as boring.)

Today, the St. Louis weather is continuing this awful heat streak. The AC is running practically nonstop, but I just went out to grab some coffee, so the heat has sort of zapped my brain. It's hard to concentrate on anything, so I made the deliberate choice to eat that apricot this afternoon.

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Was it tasty? Yes.

When cutting it, did I misjudge where the pit was and wind up having to kind of dig it out with my knife? Also yes.

But, as they say, "Live and learn. And then get Luvs."

I'm getting into cobblers as an easy and delicious dessert to take advantage of summer fruits, and I'm really looking forward to trying out a recipe for an apricot and blueberry cobbler. I think it sounds really blissful.

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Now I have to figure out what the next thing I should try should be. Maybe a mango?

The Exercise Sweet Spot

How much exercise is the right amount of exercise?

The question’s a tricky one—and one that I’m dealing with as I try to incorporate more activity into my daily life—but according to a blog post in The New York Times  a pair of recent studies might have a better indication of the target we should all be aiming for.

Any amount of exercise reaps a benefit, but according to the first of these studies, moderate exercise of 150 minutes per week (about 20 minutes a day) resulted in a 31 percent reduction in the risk of dying in the study’s 14-year period.

Bumping that moderate exercise up to a full hour each day (or 450 minutes a week) bought the risk of dying down by a whopping 39 percent compared to people who did not exercise.

The second study found that putting in a little more strenuous exercise had benefits, too.

Up to 30 percent of participants’ time spent exercising vigorously resulted in a 9 percent reduction in mortality; and for those who did more than 30 percent, they gained an extra 13 percent reduction.

The researchers do point out that the study is based on the participants’ recollections of their own exercise habits, so the studies can’t concretely prove the amount of exercise directly impacts the mortality rate, just that there’s an association between the two.

The takeaway?

At minimum, try to go for about 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week if you can. Out of that, if you can do 20 or 30 minutes of vigorous activity (running instead of walking, for example), that should give an even greater health reward. And, of course, consult with your doctor before taking on any big exercise regimen.

The First Day

It’s Friday, June 26 of 2015.

We’re coming up on the end of the month, midway through the year, and today is something like the first day.

Today the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling declared that marriage is a fundamental right of the American people—both gay and straight. Now, all 50 states have full marriage equality that means husbands and wives married in one state don’t have to worry about their unions not being recognized from one state to another. It means that all the benefits and rights of marriage apply to gay couples just as much as straight ones.

It’s difficult to convey just how meaningful this decision is. For so long gay people have had to insist that we’re just as normal as everyone else, and we have just as much of a right to express our love and dedication to one another as anyone else.

There are times when it’s so easy to lose hope. For a lot of issues, the lack of progress can be incredibly frustrating and dispiriting. And then every once in a while, something wonderful happens.

This certainly doesn’t mean the end of the struggle for equality and equal treatment. There are still bigots out there (and probably will be for decades) who go to the grave lamenting us and thinking we’re evil, just as there are people still today who harbor the fundamentals of racism and xenophobia. But I can’t help feel that today marks an important milestone where we get to jump ahead.

I have no idea if I ever want to get married. Of course not everyone wants that. But the marriage ruling goes far beyond that.

There’s something powerful about reading through all the news stories and all the Tweets and Facebook posts rejoicing at the decision. I couldn’t help but tear up. Aaron said he had to go outside at work and cry because he was so overwhelmed.

I read on Twitter in the wake of the ruling something like “Today, a lot of people gained a right, and no one lost one.”

Opponents like to spout the belief that marriage is a sacred right that’s only for a certain kind of people. One man, one woman. That limited, outdated notion.

For so long we in the gay community have had to hold our heads above the tide of society telling us that we are not normal. That we’re not worthy of this thing, or that. And every year, the tide doesn’t come up quite as high, and it’s just a little easier to catch a breath. And now the water’s receded to a point where maybe we don’t have to think about drowning. We can take a deep breath and celebrate this recognition before moving forward.

No one has lost anything. And so many people have gained a great thing.

Today is the first day in a new part of our history, our shared history, where people maybe don’t have to be defined by gay or straight. Our relationships don’t have to be differentiated or blocked off into civil unions or domestic partnerships. Our love is officially not different as of today.

We can now just be regular married. Because, of course, we—all of us—are just regular people.

Urban Chestnut Takes Four Medals at the North American Beer Awards →

Congratulations to St. Louis brewery Urban Chestnut on winning four medals at this year's North American Beer Awards. Urban Chestnut is one of my favorite local breweries, and if you haven't stopped into their new location on Manchester in The Grove, make time to do it.

And check out some of their award-winning beers:

  • Apotheosis (Gold medal)
  • WInged Nut (Silver medal)
  • Urbanator (Bronze medal)
  • Ku'damm (Bronze medal)

Double Dollars

I'm excited to see that a new program at some local farmers markets will be offering a dollar matching service for SNAP recipients to help people afford healthier, locally grown food. SNAP 2 It! lets SNAP cardholders pay $10 or $20 from their account and get double the amount back to use at participating markets.

I'm hearing about programs like this more and more often, and it's great to see that St. Louis is helping to make local, healthy food available for an increasing number of people. One of the big hurdles to eating locally grown food is that it can be more of an upfront cost, which when you're living on a budget can seem like a splurge.

At least with programs like SNAP 2 It!, St. Louis residents can get a little help when it comes to making better food choices.

You can visit the SNAP 2 It! website here. In the coming weeks, they'll have a link set up if you'd like to make a donation to the program.

Setting the Bar →

For its tenth year, Esquire put together a Best Bars in America list, and imagine my surprise when I saw that they awarded the honor to the place where I'm sitting, writing this post right now: St. Louis.

Scanning through the list, I was surprised because a lot of these places I'd never even heard of before. There are a few places that I was happy got the recognition I think they deserve. Sanctuaria, for example, is a great tapas bar and place to hang out. Dressel's is amazing. And Urban Chestnut can be a blast.

It's popular to rag on St. Louis, especially when you live here. It's easy to forget how diverse and interesting this city can be. Like anywhere else, St. Louis has got its charms, a few aces up its sleeve.

And now, when people start to lament this city, I have some new places to point out.

"It's Like Two Sandwiches in One—And Your Side." →

What has a third of a pound of ground beef, a hot dog, and a handful of Lay's potato chips? 

If you guessed the new Most American Thickburger from Hardee's (aka Carl's Jr.), you're correct! And now that you can't un-know that, you can go back to avoiding burgers from places whose name sounds an awful lot like slang for "heart attack."

 (For example, "I keep eating fast food, even though I've had three Hardees since last May!")

Benign Masochism and Loving the Flavors We Hate →

Aaron, my boyfriend, loves going to Thai restaurants and surprising the wait staff on his preferred level of spiciness. When they present the range of heat, Aaron will usually go for the upper echelons. One being mild and five being hot? He'll go for five. And sometimes the waiter or waitress will smile at us, eyebrows raised as if he's maybe forgotten how numbers work and I'm just cruel enough not to correct him.

"You...like spicy?" they ask.

Aaron usually orders first, so when it comes time for me, I can make my choice without feeling like I should be second guessing my decision. Although I typically don't go full-throttle. My good friend Jason and I both love spicy food, but more often than not I tend to settle on the upper edge of medium-hot. I've had plenty of dishes where after a few bites, my water glass isn't one-quarter of the way full, but oh my god it's three-quarters of the way gone, and my nose is threatening to run like it would when I was a teenager, mowing my grandma's lawn in the middle of allergy season.

Today I read a brief interview with Paul Rozin, a cultural psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who's studied the way that people throughout the world learn to love the flavors of things they hate. Like chilis, for example. Or beer. Or ginger. A lot of the things that I really like.

His research looks at the way people adapt to culinary elements through exposure and repetition. Take chilis, how in Mexican culture they're used on practically everything. According to him, people can learn to enjoy flavors (and even experiences) they originally hate.

When I was growing up, my family didn’t eat a lot of spicy foods. My parents drank coffee, but I didn’t until well into my teens. And we certainly didn’t drink booze together.

So, I have to wonder, why did I go through a phase in which I put cayenne pepper in my scrambled eggs? Why did I push myself past the point of only liking the smell of coffee to drinking the stuff every single day? And how is it that I can find myself prickling with anticipation at the thought of ordering a Negroni before dinner despite knowing full well there’ll be that bitter bite from the Campari?

I can’t claim to have any answers, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.

 

Chef's Table

The other day I started watching Netflix’s new six-episode documentary series, Chef’s Table, and two episodes in, I’m hooked.

Each episode looks at a single chef attempting to redefine cooking and expand our perception of the restaurant.

The premiere follows Italian chef Massimo Bottura, a famous figure in the world of modernist cooking. The second episode, the one I just finished this weekend, shows Dan Barber, a chef who’s working to push the farm-to-table style of eating that celebrates organic food, humanely raised animals, and the sustainability and harmony of the farm ecosystem.

The show is beautifully shot. It takes an artful look at these chefs, their history, what drives them to food and binds them to it. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen cooking and the resulting food look so sexy.

One of the things that I love when it comes to watching shows about cooking (and the chefs that really make it their life’s work to push food forward) is how passionate these people are, how driven. They’re soul-deep into food and have such a desire to share with people the limitless possibilities of what food can be.

It’s an amazing show, and I can’t wait to finish it.

HBO Now, Now Available →

I cannot express in words just how excited I am that HBO is finally, finally available sans cable subscription. Today, when I saw that it had launched, I immediately signed up. HBO's programming (it surely goes without saying) is top-notch and well worth the $15 a month.

I'd gotten a taste of that HBO goodness last year, when a friend of mine shared her HBO Go account with me, but I always hated having to mooch. And since I'm not a fan of pirating shows, I wanted a fair way for me to get HBO content.

And now it's here.

Fast Company has a nice longform article about the backstory to HBO Now—its history and how it came to be. It's worth a read.

Now I'm going to crawl into bed and watch some programming that's not TV. It's HBO.

Junk Food Stamps →

A few weeks ago The New York Times ran an op-ed piece about ways to boost the consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables in "food deserts," and it struck a chord with me. The piece starts with the statistic of only one in six low-income zip codes having access to a supermarket compared to one in two supermarkets for higher-income areas. With little access to fruits and vegetables, residents in those places turn to highly processed foods from convenience stores and the like, where good, healthy choices are relatively scant.

What the writers propose includes a change (which seems, to me, pretty reasonable) in the Department of Agriculture's requirements for stores accepting food stamps as well as a reevaluation of what kinds of foods qualify for the SNAP program.

The article is pretty brief, but it's worth a read. I used to work in a small-town grocery store, but it wasn't until recently when I started to learn more about cooking, nutrition, and the dangers of processed foods that I began to realize how insane it is that junk food and soda still get a pass when it comes to food stamps.