Category: None
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Salt Cured, III
Like fermentation, curing is a method to preserve food without the need for heat. However, whereas fermentation takes advantage of good microbes to keep food safe for eating, curing prevents bacteria from entering it at all. Both methods result in food’s physical and chemical transformation – fermentation with the aid of external microbes, and curing…
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Drawing
Adult coloring books have been a thing since a few years. These are of intricate details and repetitive patterns, designed to induce calmness and zen for stressed out and anxious adults. Else, they can surely alleviate boredom for a few hours. They are compelling reasons to pick up the pencils, regardless of one’s ability to…
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Kintsugi
Alfie is a play adapted into film in 1966, and again in 2004. As a young woman, I loved this movie for its witty lines and beautiful characters, namely the womanizer that is Alfie. What’s Alfie like? Listen to his impression upon Aphrodite, “beautiful she was; perfect female form; chiseled features; exquisite. I stood in…
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Ikigai
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the Japanese concept ikigai as “a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living”. It is to give meaning to life, a raison d’être. Here, we have furthered it into a venn diagram consisting of four circles: what the world…
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Discourse on Happiness
Happiness is a popular and well-studied field in the US. As Americans, we care about our happiness a lot. The right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is written into our declaration of independence. We’re inclined to think that everyone else does, too, but the pursuit of happiness is not a universal pursuit. …
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300 Degrees
Slow-smoked beef brisket is among the most amazing American food. That a slab of brisket can be made so tender and flavorful is pure wonder and purely wonderful. Again, time has proved itself to be the magical ingredient to transform all things anew, both in textures and in flavors. The brisket spends hours over smoldering…
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Agile
Among the greatest social challenges today is how to help marginalized populations productively with minimum unintended consequences. Especially from a policy perspective, to draft a strategy often comes with assigning attributes to certain groups of people, often with negative statistics such as gun violence, drug abuse, and domestic abuse. These statistics have an unfortunate tendency…
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The Dreamer
Solitude: the state or situation of being alone. To be alone, but not to be lonely is not an innate ability. In fact, we’re born with an opposite inclination. Humans are social animals, meant to bond with our kins; and to belong is to feel safe. Yet, we’re also profoundly alone. One sees the world…
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The Introvert
Some kids spent a day learning how to ride a bicycle, but it took me a week. I still remember being alone on a river bank, dirt high and slope steep, full of tall grass. Then I fell and rolling down with me was the bicycle, all the way to the edge of the water. …
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High Rises
Bakers love high rises. A tall and fluffy loaf of bread, a crisp and airy pâte-à-choux, a poofy and pillowy soufflé, a bed of cloud of meringue are the crowning achievement worthy of a brag. Previously, this sort of baking could only be done in a communal oven, which only existed in highly populated towns.…
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