Assuming you’re all braving the lines at your early-voting stations (if you can), it feels appropriate to open the week with a protest song. “Giants” by Pete Josef and Marie Lister pays homage to the figures who built the foundation for the new era we’re charging toward— but that reverence comes with a hint of dread. On his Bandcamp page, Josef asks, “Where are the giants of our age? And when will they wield the power that makes the difference? By that time, will it be too late?” Longing to create order out of crowd energy, the song lyrics draw a pointed distinction between moving forward and moving out of the way: “Some of us have to move before we all can stand tall / Standing on the shoulders of the giants that have come before / Some of you have to move before we all can get talking / Hit the ground and change the mindset.” Curiously, Josef’s agitation is delivered in a downright bop built on a wall of horns and voices, suggesting that there might be some power in the collective after all. Here’s hoping.

Every year, tech giants from Pinterest to Twitter put out trend reports based on platform “insights” to tell us about ourselves in aggregate and predict where we’re going in the year ahead (to which we say, you’re welcome for the data). This week, we’ve been graced with a forecast of 2021’s food trends from Whole Foods. From “the mighty chickpea” to “boozed up booch,” the musings of their eight ball are hardly surprising— but their framing is alarmingly white-bread for a company that’s supposedly tuned into culture and people. A trend called “basics on fire,” for example, is here to tell us that white people are loving chili crisp these days: “home chefs are looking for hot, new takes on pantry staples,” and thanks to some spicy CPG companies, “the basics will never be boring again!” (We assume the term “basics” refers to the ingredients, not the folks preparing them.)

Despite their framing, Amazon (Did I say Amazon I mean Whole Foods) is indeed onto something with their condiment buzz, and Taste Cooking is here to clap back. This week, the internet’s hottest food mag published two knockouts on “pantry staples”: one by Katie Okamoto on all the food items we’re buying from POC-owned companies on instagram (spoiler: “ethical” consumption does not absolve you of your privilege) and the other by my buddy Max Falkowitz on what the Washington Post called “the new sriracha” in 2017. In his article, Falkowitz describes a new line of painstakingly produced harissa called Zwïta, reckoning with the fact that it tastes entirely different than his seasoned palette expects. And that’s sort of the point: Mansour Arem, Zwïta’s producer and a Tunisian-American fermentation expert explained, “There’s a quote-unquote openness to other food cultures in the United States… but those flavors also must be health conscious,* they must fit into American diets,** and they must serve a practical use.***” His line disavows the American appetite for mass appeal and profit— and challenges consumers to do the same.

(It’s working; Samin Nosrat tweeted that she bought two jars before she finished reading the story.)

*turmeric!

**hot sauce!

***“digestion”