Thanks so much for taking the time to type, format, and write each review! Cannot wait to explore these.
Sharing a cozy little cafe for you: Le Phin on the Lower East Side. Curious how you’d like it!
Creating a thread for discussion of the latest episode. Gojo stans, come out of the woodwork!
Broke as fuck this week, made a quick cheap chili that was actually pretty good. Moving out at the end of the month, so trying to use up as many ingredients as I can.
Ground beef (12$ for 3lbs)
Chicken stock (4$)
Red kidney beans (3$)
Pickled Jalapeños (3$)
Canned tomatoes!
Cumin!
Dried guajillo and ancho peppers!
! for ingredients already in the pantry (I forgot to pickup an onion/garlic at the store but the dish turned out okay)
Prep was pleasantly simple for this one pot meal, as most ingredients were canned. Removed seeds and stems from dried chilis, toasted them dry in dutch oven, blended them with stock to create a chili flavor base. Brown ground beef, use the fat to toast spices (cumin, salt, pepper). Other spices that would work well here are paprika, garlic powder, and allspice. My spice cabinet got decimated by roaches though, so I’m stuck with the basics.
Add diced onions, garlic, and tomato paste at this point if have it. Having none of the above, I went in with my can of diced tomatoes, the beans, the jalapeños, the remaining stock, and the chili flavor base. Stir well and let simmer for a minimum of 15 minutes. Enjoy the chili in a bowl, topped with cheese (if its in your budget and you’re lactose tolerant), or over rice, or with bread, or with tortilla chips. Makes approx. 8 servings for an average of ~3$/serving.
Broke as fuck this week, made a quick cheap chili that was actually pretty good. Moving out at the end of the month, so trying to use up as many ingredients as I can.
Canned tomatoes * Ground beef (12$ for 3lbs) Cumin * Dried guajillo and ancho peppers * Chicken stock (4$) Red kidney beans (3$) Pickled Jalapeños (3$)
- for ingredients already in the pantry (I forgot to pickup an onion/garlic at the store but the dish turned out okay)
Prep was pleasantly simple for this one pot meal, as most ingredients were canned. Removed seeds and stems from dried chilis, toasted them dry in dutch oven, blended them with stock to create a chili flavor base. Brown ground beef, use the fat to toast spices (cumin, salt, pepper). Other spices that would work well here are paprika, garlic powder, and allspice. My spice cabinet got decimated by roaches though, so I’m stuck with the basics.
Add diced onions, garlic, and tomato paste at this point if have it. Having none of the above, I went in with my can of diced tomatoes, the beans, the jalapeños, the remaining stock, and the chili flavor base. Stir well and let simmer for a minimum of 15 minutes. Enjoy the chili in a bowl, topped with cheese (if its in your budget and you’re lactose tolerant), or over rice, or with bread, or with tortilla chips. Makes approx. 8 servings for an average of ~3$/serving.
I recently watched my friend beat stephen’s sausage roll, a game that I have not been able to beat in 10 years. That game is bonkers hard. My arbitrary guess is that the number of people who have beaten the game is under 5,000. If anyone is looking for a puzzle game that will make your brain hurt, that is the game for you.
I used to love getting lost in virtual worlds. My favorite games were the ones that I could explore for hours: New Vegas, Skyrim, Hollow Knight, Breath of the Wild, Outer Wilds, Outer Worlds, KOTOR, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, (okay you get the idea). A game felt like a bargain if my attention span was the only the only thing keeping me from playing more.
I discovered the wide world of roguelikes, and for a while I demanded infinite replayability out of each purchase. Spelunky, then Spelunky 2, Enter the Gungeon, Hades, Slay the Spire, Wildermyth. I credit this partially to being broke and wanting to make each dollar last.
But recently with the Summer Sale, I picked up two games that made me rethink what I now value in games. The first game was Citizen Sleeper, a beautiful narrative that I binged in a single twelve hour sitting. I wanted to befriend everyone in the city, finish every single quest. In Citizen Sleeper, the main challenge of the game is survival. The game does a wonderful job of providing the player with a sense of urgency—the player character is infected with a terminal illness and must work for medicine. However, towards the end, the player can become self-sufficient.
Once this happened in my game, I immediately set out to befriend everyone in the city, finish every quest. Not out of some persnickety completionist urge, but out of a genuine love for the world and characters stitched into the game. I finished most of the pre-DLC content, as the sun peeked into the window of my room, I finally crawled into bed.
The next day, I realized I had no real desire to return to the world of Citizen Sleeper. I wanted to see how some of the stories ended, but knew that it would essentially consist of talking to an NPC, waiting the requisite X days for the story to advance, doing my chores each day to stay alive. The narrative didn’t feel worth the busywork. I had gotten enough out of the game.
I booted up the other game I’d purchased instead: Roadwarden. I was ready to explore another world. My god, did Roadwarden deliver. I have never encountered a game like it. It is a game that respects the player — granting you immense agency in what you choose to do.
In Roadwarden, you are a traveling mercenary, part messenger, part scout, part muscle-for-hire. Originally, you are tasked to explore a remote peninsula to determine whether its villages can be profitably integrated into the Ten Cities. Besides your mission, you choose a personal goal for your character at the beginning of your adventure from the trite (I want to help others), to the classic (I want to be remembered as a hero), to the mercenary (I want to complete my mission and retire rich). The brilliant choice in the game, though, is that you are limited to 40 days on the peninsula.
My first playthrough lasted about 10 hours, and I did standard hero stuff. I reported back to the guild that hired me for the mission with a full map, saved a city from ruin, befriended a village. I thought I had done pretty well. The journey had been satisfying. The post-game report told me otherwise. The city I saved from plague? It would be ravaged by the bandit tribe I failed to stop. The villagers I befriended would be the first to fall to dark magic that I had ignored.
The next day I woke up and decided to try again. My second playthrough, I was determined to do things differently. I knew the layout of the peninsula, I knew how to complete the main story. Surely I could do more to ensure civilization continued on the island beyond my death. Instead I stumbled upon even more secrets. I befriended a local sorceress, helped her overcome an addiction, but had to leave before I could convince her to move to the city with me. I discovered a previously unknown tribe, but wasn’t able to convince them to tell me their secrets. I found mysterious items and statues that led me to betray my faith in pursuit of their power. I failed to uncover their mysteries. I discovered an island that required four party members to fully explore. I was four coins short of convincing a person to help me. I uncovered a conspiracy but didn’t have the time to confront the mastermind. Although I saved civilization on the island, there was so much I couldn’t do.
Therein lies the beauty of Roadwarden, and in games that limit your experience. There is a great GDC talk about placing guardrails for your players to protect them from themselves. Counterintuitively, when placed in a game world, players will not always do the things that are fun. Sometimes they’ll choose to grind boring content for XP instead of venturing into new areas. Developers need to find ways to nudge players into having fun. I found that the limited nature of each game of Roadwarden made my curiosity stronger.
While I gave up on Divinity Original Sin 2 after 30 hours because the story felt too slow, I have never felt similarly bored in Roadwarden. The pace of the story is dictated by the player, who chooses to explore only what is interesting to them. It is a testament to the developers of the game that they were able to weave so many mysteries into a game less than 1GB.
Anyone else feel this way about games? I feel like at this stage in my life I prefer short narrative experiences like Before Your Eyes to yawning epics like Elden Ring or Persona 5 Royale.
Also curious if others have game recommendations for narratively strong, compact little games like Citizen Sleeper or Roadwarden. I am obsessed. Thanks for reading :)
My method is similar to a few other people in this thread, but thought I’d write a really verbose essay about it all. I love rice, man.
My parents are from Hong Kong. For me, rice is simple — cooked with just water. No salt, no stock, no veggies. There is a time and place for that, but I’ll go to Texas for good mexican rice.
DISCLAIMER: Yes, a rice cooker is the easiest way to get perfect rice. Still, just like knowing how to do dishes by hand or how to mince garlic with a knife not a press, making rice in a pot is something I take a silly amount of pride in. (And I find it marginally faster — 20 min vs 30-40min)
Add rice and water to a non-stick pot. I have made rice in a stainless steel pot, but would not recommend it. If you cook your rice perfectly, cleanup is mildly annoying. A minute over, and it’s a bitch. If you burn the rice? God help you. (My tip? A one hour soak to loosen things up.) Non-stick is way more forgiving.
The proportion of rice to water here is KEY. If I were less lazy, I would measure out how much I use. But frankly, I never touch my measuring cups in the kitchen anyway, unless I’m baking. The best tip I can give you is something my mom taught me. Stick your index finger so it’s hovering right above the rice, then fill the pot with water up to your first knuckle-joint. I wish I had more precise numbers to give you, but I think they’d be useless rather than instructive. The amount of water you add varies depending on the type of rice, the diameter of your pot, and the amount of rice you put in. I promise you though, as you keep making rice, you’ll nail down the ratio.
Too much water and the rice will be gummy. It will have the consistency of a soft cheese. This is pretty much one of the worst sins you can commit in the kitchen. At this point, salvage the batch by making congee with it.
Too little water and the resulting rice will be puck-like in the pot. The grains will stick to itself and generally feel tacky in the mouth. This is hard to do as long as you add water above the level of rice. As a general rule: err on the side of less water rather than more.
Turn on the stove. The goal here is just to get the water boiling. If you’re impatient and hungry like I am, and the rice is the last thing standing between you and digging into a delicious curry/stir-fry/chicken and broccoli leftovers, then blast that shit with as much heat as you can, and put the lid on your pot. Don’t worry about anything burning. The water should insulate the temperature of everything in the pot until it starts to boil. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the pot unattended at this step if you are an impatient pot blaster. You will ruin your rice.
Immediately, once the water boils, turn the stove to the lowest setting possible. In the previous step, we put a lid on the pot to help the water boil faster, but in this step, it keeps the pot insulated and the water boiling. The water will continue to simmer and cook the rice. You let this sit until…
You don’t see water in the pot. When you look at the rice it should look slightly moist, not wet or soggy. When this happens, kill the stove. Next, just let it sit for 10 minutes. LEAVE THE LID ON. Under the lid, something magical is happening. The moisture from the rice is evaporating into steam, cooking the rice even further. Excess moisture is condensing on top, dripping back down, and then evaporating again. This step will ensure that the any extra moisture disappears, leaving the rice clump-free. Remember: just like a good steak, a perfect pot of rice requires a little rest.
This entire process should take around 20 minutes. Take off the lid and stir the rice with a fork. Ideally, nothing sticks to the bottom, and the rice is beautiful and fluffy and separates grain by grain. (This is made easier if you wash the rice beforehand, which lowers starch content overall, but who has the time?!)
Clean the pot immediately to minimize starchy stickiness. Enjoy your rice. Leftovers can go in the fridge and make great fried rice after a day. Alternatively, the microwave is a perfect method for reheating old rice, as it resteams the rice from the inside out
Gah, this is so good! This paragraph in particular was so well paced.
“If you tell me to stay, I will” Kurt said to me. My knees nearly buckled. This shit doesn’t happen in real life. My heart was now pounding. I wanted nothing more to say yes pull him into my apartment and have a life with him. I wanted to adopt kids with him, watch him mow the lawn. Curl up with him in bed at night. Have coffee in the morning.
Have always been curious about the filters for Aeropress, my brother owns one and it’s a tank, though the disposable filters seem annoying to refill and deal with. Are they proprietary, or is it pretty easy to find replacement filters from 3rd parties for cheap? Worried about what VC money taking over Aeropress means — it’d be like if Patagonia got sold to Blackrock.
This might just be the best resource I have ever seen for both out-of-towners planning their move and for Bay Ridge residents to quantify their complaints. Seriously awesome site.
Just wanted to chime in and thank you for following through on this! It was a wonderful little reason to sit down and write, something I haven’t done in months. In love with the ethos of “bad writing”. Let’s just get some words out there!
I learned from the best: Anton Ego, Pete Wells, Anthony Bourdain. Every column is a story, complete with heroes and villains, intrigue and gossip. The food? The food is just an excuse.
When Verguenza opened in New York, I was sent to cover it. The young prodigy, Sterling Rivera, had just left a stint at the celebrated Farmhouse Inn after a spectacular conflagration with the head chef. Sources say the argument centered around the restaurant's famed Gorgonzola Mac. Rivera is reported to have thrown a carbon steel skillet clear across the kitchen, screaming that his genius was being wasted on "shit Kraft casserole". The new restaurant was supposed to be a statement by the critically acclaimed youngster -- proof that he could revolutionize the world of fine dining with a global, no-holds-barred approach.
The only meal available at Verguenza is a four-course, prix fixe dinner. The courses change nightly, depending on the seasonality of rutabaga, the availability of jamon iberico pata negra, and, most importantly, the temperament of the chef. In the restaurant, the guest is never handed a menu. They are simply promised "a delightful surprise". Rumors abound among chefs about Rivera's legendary commitment to perfection. It is said that if salad is served as a course, the chef at the grill station was likely fired that night. The chefs I've spoken to describe an intense, militant culture to Rivera's kitchen. They say that no one lists Verguenza on their resume unless they stay for more than a year. Leaving before then means only one thing: you were lacking.
I can happily report that none of the dishes served to me were salad. In fact, the menu was remarkably creative, and lived up to its billing. Rivera himself came out from the kitchen to introduce the meal. In his words, the meal was a "voyage across continents and worlds, inspired by the work of Salvador Dali, the absurd made mundane". The first course was a hamachi ceviche cured with yuzu and citron foam. It left a delightfully zippy taste that quickly faded into effervescence. Next came a lightly chilled soup described as pumpkin gazpacho. It perfectly prepared the palate for the main course, a seared filet of alligator served on a bed of peppery spring greens. Finally, the biggest surprise of the meal was final course: candied ants. Several of the diners recoiled when presented with the crystalline nugget meant to evoke arthropods trapped in amber. Four actually walked out of the restaurant. However, for those brave enough to partake, this dessert was a singularly spectacular treat. I can only hope that this dessert makes a return to the menu soon, though based on the chef's penchant for switching things up, the odds are slim. I left the restaurant with high hopes for the future of fine dining. Rivera, at least, is not content leaving things to the status quo.
It does! Grateful for the insight, and glad to hear you’ve found a routine that lets you write daily. One page at a time! There is hope :)
Honestly, this has been the best part about moving to a city where public transit is the norm. My commute is longer. It used to take me 15-20 minutes to drive somewhere, while now I generally budget an hour to get places. Still, most days I prefer the hour of relative calm where I can escape with a good book to the stress of being stalled thirty honking cars deep on the highway.
It’s definitely made me appreciate the escapism of books more, though! Specifically enjoying sci-fi and romance novels much more. A couple recent favorites were The Sparrow and Red White and Royal Blue
Thanks for sharing! My brother just finished the first draft of his big honkin’ fantasy novel (167,000 words) last week. Watching him work gave me such an appreciation for the effort it takes to write and edit! I don’t know that I would ever have the discipline for something like that.
Question for you: how do you find time and energy to write/edit? I’m assuming you have a full-time job. My brother’s just starting his career and mentioned how draining it was to work a full 9-6, get home at 7, and then only have 5 hours to himself before the next day begins. In my own life, I’ve found that creativity is almost impossible when just going through the motions takes up 90% of my energy. Admittedly, I’m an essayist and poet, not a novelist. My projects take days to weeks, not months and years. Would love to share some advice with him from another long-form writer.
Project Hail Mary was such a fun read for me! I loved how concrete the engineering problems were throughout the book. It kept me tied to the stakes of the story.
Haven’t been able to finish Three Body Problem, unfortunately, it kind of lost me within the first 100 pages. May have to give it another shot! I hear a lot of good things about it.