This morning, let’s all turn on “Wasted” by Tomberlin, an indie pop track about secrets that are hard to keep. Do yourself a favor and skip the video, shot with an excess of eye contact by Busy Phillips and Marc Silverstein at their vacation place in South Carolina. Enjoy the beat instead, which adds spice to an otherwise waify production. (Not a secret: it helps to have famous friends.)
Get ready for some deep cuts: Does anyone remember an app called “Ask Karen”? Launched by the USDA in 2011, it was a digital helpline designed to answer consumer questions on food safety. Its advocates at the Department encouraged Americans to “invite Karen” to Thanksgiving and other food-centric gatherings, and respectfully, I cannot imagine a worse idea. Yogurt a day past its best-by date? Call the manager. I mean, Karen. Concerned your potato salad sat out too long? Ask Karen, who will demand that the other barbecue across the way turn down their music. Wondering how soon you need to cook raw chicken? Ask Karen; she’s got her eye on this birdwatcher and she has 9-1-1 on speed dial.
Some time in the intervening years, the feds seem to have realized this problem and have re-branded to “Ask USDA.” But if anyone’s getting a Thanksgiving invite, it’s a postal worker.
Here’s the food resource you want to see: Alicia Kennedy’s stop-in-your-tracks essay about luxury. In Mark Bittman’s Heated, she pits “delicacies”— truffles, caviar—against commodities like coffee, chocolate, and sugar, asking what holds them apart. The answer is simply, “colonization.” When the place producing an ingredient has been colonized, she explains, crop production is fast-tracked and mass-marketed on the backs of exploited workers; as the product becomes readily available, the labor behind it becomes invisible, leaving consumers in America or Europe or wherever to take it for granted (see: coffee farmers; the cocoa and sugar trades). But when the crop comes from the land of the colonizer (wine, peak-season tomatoes), its production becomes both legend and art. Feeling bad? Good. Now read the rest from A.K.
Right now I’m trying a coffee subscription called Atlas Coffee Club, which sends you on a world tour of micro-lot coffees from 50+ countries. This is coffee you can’t find on the shelves—think Myanmar, Ecuador, Malawi— and every shipment is an experience, with postcards and packaging to help you connect to the culture and history of the country. Importantly, when Atlas seeks out hard-to-find coffees in developing regions, they pay above market rate for the beans to help farmers earn a sustainable living.
I’m currently drinking a washed Guatemalan bean from Los Verdes with notes of chocolate and cherry. Each country’s coffee tastes unique, of course, so when you sign up, each month’s offering will be a new experience. Right now, Atlas is offering 50% off your first bag— try them out here.