You know the drill! Three essays, three books, three tv shows, three movies, three twitter follows, three recipes. Plus three unsolicited opinions.
Essays & Poems
Ann Patchett on Why We Need Life-Changing Books Right Now
The Inside Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic by Paula Forbes and Dan Solomon (Which reminds us: Are you aware of the Waffle House Index? In emergency preparedness circles, this is, legit, the most reliable indicator of where things stand. If you want to know how dire things really are, you can read more here, here, and here.)
Rumi Kaur
Books
The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson | The introduction alone, detailing her process, is totally worth your time. And her treatment of female characters is so, so good.
Bossypants by Tina Fey | She makes a pretty stunning, salient, and universal point 71 pages in: "I started to see a pattern...It was a power pyramid. At the bottom were all these disenfranchised residents who had to be taken care of like children, above them were a middle class of women who did all the work and kept the place running, and above them were two or three of the least-useful men you ever met."
Marriage, A History by Stephanie Coontz
TV Shows
One Day At A Time (The reboot with EGOT winner Rita Moreno)
Movies
The Incredible Jessica James (Adding this one so that it isn't all Greta Gerwig all the time. And we haven't seen her Little Women. Have you? Should we?)
Bonus since you might be home with kids: Moana.
Twitter Follows | Today's links are in honor of National Equal Pay Day (Wyoming's Equal Pay Day will roll around sometime in June). Equal Pay Day is the day in 2020 where women finally earn what men earned during the entirety of 2019. It also leads to about $407k in lifetime losses. Awesome. And you wondered why you were feeling tired and economically insecure?
Recipes
Pancakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, or slightly less table salt 1.5 tablespoons sugar 1 large eggs, lightly beaten 1.5 cups buttermilk (you can make buttermilk by adding 1T of lemon to your milk) 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 1 tablespoon extra for brushing griddle (Side note from Deb at Smitten Kitchen: "I’ve made these pancakes with and without the butter mixed in, and can say with confidence they work either way. They’re just richer with it, of course.") 1/2 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen and thawed (optional)
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl.
Add the eggs, buttermilk, and 2 tablespoons melted butter, and whisk to combine.
The batter should have small to medium lumps.
Cook on a griddle at medium heat.
Pizza Dough | Apparently everyone on the interwebz is kneading bread or baking bread or trying to start a sourdough starter. Which means that flour and yeast might be in short supply in the stores if you don't already have both somewhere in your house. (Also, please stay home. We're pretty sure they're already in your house.) And this one is easy. Not to mention that pizza makes an excellent vehicle to use up any veggie or meat or cheese leftovers in your fridge. There are a million pizza dough recipes that are a mix of a packet of yeast, wrist temp warm water, olive oil, salt, a bit of sugar, lots of good flour. Just experiment, you'll be fine.
Blueberry Muffins | Yum. Also, apparently, we had a thing for blueberries this week. (It was fictional as there are exactly zero blueberries here, now.) Pancakes are great without them and these muffins do just fine with any frozen fruit or chocolate chips you have lying around the house.
Opinions
The Governor shouting in French near the end of his COVID presser kicked off the week in fine fashion!
Denial will not be an effective coping mechanism. (Sorry. Pick a different one.)
Kindness matters. And it will make you feel better. According to this research, "Human connection bolsters the immune system. That’s why it’s more important than ever to be kind."
Bonus opinion: Tomorrow will be April. We choose to list this as an opinion because we have absolutely no evidence that March 2020 will ever end.
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