🐻 First time watching The Bear (and other cool things)

July 5, 2024

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Happy Friday!

Here are some things I found interesting, inspiring and just plain cool this week…

🐻 Monday morning and our Threads feed is blowing up with posts about The Bear (Hulu). I knew it was about food. So I asked, a seemingly innocent question:

“Real question: Should I start watching The Bear?”

The response: Yes, you fool. Right now.

Not one to argue with the masses, I started watching it tonight (Wednesday) and I’m already intrigued.

For those of you who don’t know (like I didn’t), the show is about a rising star in the fine dining world who moves back to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop. 🥪

I’m one episode in and I’m already in love with the close up shots of 🥕 chopping veggies. (Though they did make me nervous at first as I thought there was about to be bloodshed 🔪🩸).

Plus, there’s that cool element of transformation that comes with stories about food. I can’t tell whether the chef will turn the sandwich shop into a 🍷 fine dining establishment or if he’ll make 🏆 award-winning sandwiches or if there’s something else that I can’t even think of in my 🎆 pre-July 4th brain.

And it’s odd, shows about food still manage to capture our imaginations.

Even though we are deprived of all of the senses that make food so freakin’ wonderful, we are still captivated by the 😮 visuals and the sound and ever-curious to learn about what’s behind those 🚪professional kitchen doors.

Have you watched The Bear?

🍶 This awesome guide to the different type of soy sauces.

Also, a few years ago, my sis and I travelled to Malaysia and had the awesome opportunity of touring a soy sauce company. Check out this video all about how soy sauce is made. 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

🥬 How many of you participate in CSAs during the summer?

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs are an awesome way to support your 👩🏽‍🌾 local farmers by buying directly from them and allowing them to predict their 💰 revenue stream.

While my sis and brother-in-law were traveling, they let me pick up their CSA share and 🥲 Oh, how I’ve missed it!

If you can’t tell by… Well, everything about me, I went to a hippie college.

Did we have an organic farm on campus? Yes. Did we have lots of interpretive art projects that actually led to the creation of this museum? Also yes.

But maybe most importantly, we could participate in the CSA with our meal plan!

I remember pouring over the options with my flatmates. Yes, I lived in an apartment with my friends as part of the hippie-ness! (Also, 👋🏽 HI!!!)

From 🥔 veggies and fruits to tofu and 🥖 fresh bread, the CSA was one of the highlights of my time at Wesleyan. It was a weekly break from studying and… other social activites cough 🍻. Plus, I would always run into my friends from the other food clubs on campus.

It was (and still is) different than the overwhelming nature of farmers markets and the mundane task of going to the grocery store. Even though this CSA was just a bunch of bags of produce in someone’s garage, I couldn’t help but feel the magic of my college CSA. The magic of connection, being closer to my food source, getting yummy and healthy foods, and doing something a bit more unique.

Find a CSA near you

💸 This article diving into the social complexities of splitting the check.

🥢 Recipes bridging a cultural divide between father and son.

“Food is our common language. That’s the language that we speak. That’s what we could talk about. And who would have thought?”

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