molls

I have so many! Mostly food, some others though.

Carla Lalli Music is an entertaining chef and recipe developer who shares recipes from her books. She takes inspiration from all sorts of cuisines and blends them into delicious, adaptable recipes. Crispy gingery ground beef like lime and herbs earned an instant spot in my regular meal rotation.

Claire Saffitz and her team bring mostly baking videos with occasion forays into cocktails, dinners, and lifestyle. Expect lots of cat cameos and fun editing easter eggs.

NYT Cooking has Sohla and Ham El-Waylly, a wildly creative culinary power couple who can make a multi course tasting menu out of anything. Sohla has other solo stuff scattered around, she opts to do work with other channels rather than host her own though.

Minutefood is food science, and even if you think your food science knowledge is good, you’ll still probably learn something from Kate.

Simone Giertz and Laura Kampf are both makers (who are friends and often collaborate).

This appears to me to a way better alternative use of office space than converting to housing. Seems like the issue with the housing plans is lack of utility infrastructure to support separate dwellings, but an indoor farm can probably make good use of what’s already there. This is the first I’ve heard of using old offices as agricultural spaces, it would be amazing if this could become a mainstream solution!

If you just want a faster way to move around without a car, electric longboards are a good compact option. My partner just got one and he absolutely loves it. He can keep up with my regular bike and we can go way farther than if we were on foot, and fits in the corner of our small apartment.

One line that stuck out to me regarding the outcomes of the fecal transplants was ‘improved gastrointestinal symptoms’. If people with ASD have higher rates of GI-related issues, then the findings of this paper could be really helpful in understanding and improving treatments for GI problems in patients with ASD. Of course I understand the skepticism that this work could be used to try and cure something that doesn’t need to be cured, but my hope is that the more likely outcome is a more holistic understanding of ASD that leads to better medical care across all areas of health.

Repeat after me: perfect is the enemy of good enough. Don’t let perfect be your enemy when good enough will do just fine. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everything in life always, but it 100% does here. It’s okay to not know how to build the most efficient, elegant version of something right now. I’m slowly learning R to make my life easier at work (research lab tech), and I’m just doing my best with what I’ve learned so far. I know that down the line when I’ve learned more or face bigger challenges that require more sophisticated tools, I’ll look back at the work I’m doing now and think ‘why the hell did I do it THAT way?!’ and that’s okay! The cool thing about code is that you can always go back and tinker with it. It’s not like woodworking where once the glue is dry, it’s set. Go easy on yourself, embrace being a clunky beginner, start doing things with what you’ve got.

Oh I’m not hosting, I don’t have room to. Just being a generous contributor to the pot luck. Unfortunately the chores of daily life don’t take holiday weekends, lol

First barbecue of the summer! First barbecue with friends as an independent adult too, really. I love to cook for people and have two perfect summer recipes picked out to make this weekend- arugula salad with steak and parm, and a spicy cucumber-watermelon salad. And then Sunday will be full of chores :(

Sure thing! Also I forgot something very important: beans take FOREVER to soften in acidic conditions. My biggest bean fails have been attempting dried beans (even pre-soaked ones) in tomato based sauces from the start. They just never fully soften. Instead, save tomatoes and vinegar for the end. If you’re doing something like chili, I’d recommend cooking the beans in a separate broth. Keep it simple but well seasoned, cook until tender or just shy of tender, and then add to the chili to finish cooking them in the sauce.

My suggestions would be to learn how to cook a perfect pot of beans on their own. Beans are wonderful and can be the star of their own solo show, complimented by salt, fat, and some humble aromatics. Carla Lalli Music is a bean queen and following her bean philosophy has given me the best pots of beans. This is a good starter recipe for brothy basil beans and this is more of a ‘beans and other things’ kind of recipe. Carla talks a lot about using fat liberally and as far as beans go, I have yet to overdo it. Don’t be afraid to really let that bottle of olive oil glug glug glug away.

If you’re going for canned bean ideas, I like doing crispy roast chickpeas or a simple chana masala. I find other canned bean applications are fairly lackluster compared to the flavor and texture payoff you can get from cooking from dried. That said, canned beans are great in a pinch and I always have a few kinds in my pantry.

I totally feel you on enjoying biking way more. Biking around feels so much more human to me than cars ever will because you can like, see people’s faces. I only need to see a face once or twice for it to be recognizable, but I could definitely sit in traffic and next to the same person in the same Honda civic every day while commuting and never realize. Cars just put so much space, separation, and obstruction between people.

I still have less-than-ideal interactions with pedestrians in high traffic times- our pedestrian/bike infrastructure is mixed and fairly imperfect, and often I get funneled into tight spaces and people on foot tend to do unpredictable things. In cars, when drivers do things that annoy or endanger each other, it’s always horns and middle fingers and road rage behaviors. But on a bike, you can talk to each other. On your left, coming through, excuse me, sorry. I’ve had a lot of interactions where pedestrians say sorry to me as I pass and they realize they were in a weird spot, and I have a chance to holler back that it’s okay, no worries as a ride off.

I’ve also noticed that with other bikers, we have a mutual understanding of how to move out of each others way and navigate the pedestrians/obstacles around us, just through body language and facial expressions. It is so much easier to be nice and considerate and communicative on a bike.

I’m currently on a regular bike, and lucky to have my main destinations (work and the store) within a few miles on flat terrain with bike lanes. I definitely want to upgrade to an e-bike so I can ‘unlock’ more reasonably bikeable places and ditch the car for everything except long trips and moving big cargo. I have some people at my work who commute on personal e-scooters and electric longboards, too which is awesome. The more the merrier!

Being nervous is super super normal, I was downright terrified for some of my first interviews. The good news is that they tend to get easier over time as you practice! If you can get a fake practice interview in before the real one, even better. Recruit someone trusted who can ‘pretend’ to be a stranger and really grill you so you’re ready for the real deal. This is a good time to try out your prepared responses to the most typical interview questions.

Ahead of any interview, you should do research on the company/industry and come with some specific, meaningful questions. Some all-purpose questions I really like include asking about what your training period will look like, what success metrics/performance indicators look like for the position at 3/6/12 months. That tells the employer you’re forward thinking, goal-oriented, and want to be successful.

As far as dealing with pre-interview jitters, if I can I like to do as many push-ups as I can. This may or may not work depending on where the interview is (easier at home for a remote call) or your physical ability. Just try do something that requires all of your bodily will and mental concentration as a nice hard-reset. Plus, endorphins feel great!

No matter how well the interview goes, take it as a learning experience and be proud of yourself for getting it done. If I’m job hunting, I’ll even take interviews for positions I know I don’t want just to be able to get practice. Good luck!