ancho

Weekend eats:

Finished up my "salad" of the week: chickpeas, potato and greens with cumin, chipotle pepper, and lemon all topped with a fried egg (this gas stove makes frying crispy eggs soooo easy, swoon)

What is a salad exactly? Does this qualify as a salad? My earliest definition would be a mix of raw vegetables, which then expanded to include non-vegetables and cooked components. Currently, I think a salad is an assembly of ingredients that are in a ready-to-eat state already, the only procedure is to toss the salad together. So I would disqualify this as a salad since the components are cooked together (although almost all of them could be eaten prior to the final cooking).

Made some jambalaya, motivated by the sample pack of cajun spice mix that was included in my Penzey's order: Bless that this can be made with frozen / freezable vegetables, so I don't have to watch all the extra veg that I can't finish languish in the fridge.



Also ate out at Cuchara again because I made the mistake of reading about the best moles in Houston on an empty stomach:

Mole Verde

It is indeed very good ;o; I especially liked the refried beans, so good with the cotija cheese on top. Also got some fried tortilla chips (fresh from the fryer!), which had a great corn-y taste. Hoping to come back at least 2 more times to try more dishes.

maybe maybe maybe I can share it with you

Best accompaniment for insomnia, hnnng:

egg

More blooms in the neighbourhood! I am very pleased with everyone's intense gardens.

I will very much miss being surrounded by this much flowers and greenery after moving back to Toronto and being in a condo. Some time ago I considered adopting the urban jungle aesthetic, but then weighed the very real consideration of increased bugs and dismissed that thought. Also not the biggest fan of pruning and cleaning dead plant parts, but the increased humidity from more house plants is a plus. Will have to choose indoor houseplants very carefully.

punch

Summer of salads continued:

A very expensive (relative to my usual ingredient costs) salad of radicchio, endives, manchego, olives, and a honey dressing. The sweetness of the dressing is definitely key in tying this salad together. Each mouthful is great with the slightly bitter greens and the fatty and salty cheese. It would be even better if I didn't fuck up and buy the wrong olives. The recipe calls for castelvetrano olives, which I assumed I could find at Pheoncia. I was wrong and had to make do with whatever's available at the olive bar, which didn't include a plain green olive. Instead I bought a mix of Italian olives, which had 1! one! green olive. The bites of salad with that one green olive was amazing, the black ones are meh, and the red ones are pretty bad. Honestly this salad is like an 8 with the green olive and maybe 5.5 without.

A Mexican themed, super green, salad of cucumber, tomatillo, jalapeño pepper, avocado with a cilantro-lime dressing. Literally every ingredient is green. I knew going into this that the cucumbers are going to release a ton of water, so I did my best to cut off the seeds and sprinkle some salt to draw out some water. But I underestimated the cucumbers, it still released a ton of water waaahhh. I admit defeat, from now on, I just won't meal prep salads with cucumbers.

Dorset

Shoutout to Surrender to Chance for being bae & replacing my first order that USPS lost!

But this post is actually about a different perfume sample order. One made from Bloom Perfumery in UK, which I paid almost 30GBP to ship to me. Plus it was an impulse buy.

Why did I go that far? Because I absolutely fell in love with the concept of Parterre and the style / notes of their 3 perfumes. Extra points for being SW UK, which I instantly feel great affinity for.

I also ordered samples from Grossmith's full line (their brand story, via Perfume Shrine, was also fascinating, but their full bottles are insanely expensive) and Fleur de Louis from Arquiste so that my shipping fee isn't more than my order ;o;

But today is about Parterre.

First up is A Tribute to Edith, my current platonic ideal of rose:
Super sharp and fresh (like wasabi almost, but not pungent / nasal clearing) opening, but the roses are there right off the bat too. The sharpness turns into a sparklingly, soda-bubble texture. Like a rose soda water? At a distance (elbow to nose), the sparkling texture is barely noticeable, but the rose projects well. The rose is…a true rose? It’s at least what I expect rose to smell like. Not light, not dark, no spice or oud. Just a lovely, pure rose scent. About 1.5h in, the rose scent haven’t changed much, the sparkles are gone even at close range. At 2 hours, the strength has faded a bit, but still noticeable. Ah, this is a jammy rose, this descriptor just popped in my head as I made the connection to Lush’s Rose Jam, which high school me owned a tiny bottle of. But not sweet, or more like, no added sugar haha. At 4 hours, I’m getting hints of the base, what it is I’m not so sure.

Overall I love it, don’t regret paying the insane shipping from UK to get this in my grubby hands. And you bet I would pay the more expensive shipping to get a full bottle. I consider this a “queen” type scent, not princess-y (perhaps something lighter) and not empress level.

...

Then is A Run of the River, which is functionally a more interesting Bergamote 22:

Day 1: Opening is the most realistic herbal scent, literally how it smells if you rub the leaves of some mix of herbs and then smell your fingers. No particular herb stands out, it’s a smooth mix. If I smell really hard, I can pick out the lemon thyme. I’m also picking up a slightly musty base, maybe it’s the oak moss or the frankincense? This one doesn’t project well, can barely smell it at an elbow to nose distance. On second thought, this smells both realistically herbal and now powdery at the same time, like if someone made a dry ointment from the herbs in their garden if that makes any sense. Very interesting since herbal and powdery are usually opposites, but here they are in harmony. Time to revise another impression, the projection is stronger now that its about 10 mins in. After 40 mins in, this fragrance has settled into the heart notes and now smells more like dried herbs rather than the fresh herbs at the beginning. I think I smell the juniper now as well. This is what I imagine a hardcore gardener to smell like, with the soil, verdant herbs, and herbs that’s been snipped off and dried. Interestingly for a fragrance with “river” in the name, there’s no intent for any aquatic impressions. Huh, 2 hours in and I get a sniff of bergamot? Yeah there’s definitely a citrus accent to the clean soil scent. This does give me the impression of being on a river bank. Alternatively, this would make a great drink with some soda water.

Day 2: Sprayed on chest this time in contrast to my usual elbow. Opening is still the fresh herbal, but I’m getting bit more citrus which reminds me of Le Labo’s Bergamote 22. I find the texture of both perfumes to be similar as well. I can consistently smell the scent from my chest, which is really about ~3” closer to my nose (oh the horrors of using IP units). In both days, the scent didn’t last as long as A Tribute to Edith, fading considerably in 4 hours. I do periodically catch a whiff of it later on.

...

Lastly, Root of All Goodness, which sadly I didn't like because the amber ruined everything :(

The opening is herbs and citrus, but fuller and rounder likely due to the amber and leather. But ugh I can't stand amber, at least I know that for sure now. I had high hopes for this one due to the vetiver too. 

feather

Floaty, floral summer dresses are my weakness, hnnng:

super loving the grey-blue color / this is like the perfect grocery shopping or errand running in the middle of the heat wave dress xD

rice

A sustainable food system is one of the causes that I care about, but haven't done much towards. I'll at least summarize a great research paper on the subject: "Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems" (free access too!!)

Context:

Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge. Although global food production of calories has kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diets that cause micronutrient deficiencies and contribute to a substantial rise in the incidence of diet-related obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Unhealthy diets pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe sex, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined.

Aka it's a quality and distribution issue, and a very big issue.

...

The absence of scientific targets for achieving healthy diets from sustainable food systems has been hindering large-scale and coordinated efforts to transform the global food system.

Everyone's favourite management quotation: you can't manage what you can't measure. The target is based on the planetary boundary framework. The article also proposes a reference sustainable diet that will "provide major health benefits".

...

The article recommends 5 strategies to achieve the required drastic and global change:

1. National & international commitment by "investment in public health information and sustainability education, and improved coordination between departments of health and environment" (I'm not optimistic on this one after what happened with the Paris Agreement)
2. Farm for healthy (both human and biodiversity) rather than quantity
3. Intensify agriculture in a sustainable way, aka not what we've been doing by inefficiently applying tons of water and fertilizer 
4. Not fuck up biodiversity (any more than what we've already done) by "strong and coordinated governance of land and oceans"
5. Minimum 50% reduction in food loss and waste

"However, this transformation will not be achieved without people changing how they view and engage with food systems."

...

We've done well to increase food production to better some facets of life, but have shifted to an unhealthy diet, driven by "rapid urbanisation, increasing incomes, and inadequate accessibility of nutritious foods". This in turn is killing us and the planet. 

Some environmental stats (all quoted): 

• Agriculture occupies about 40% of global land, [13] and food production is responsible for up to 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions [14] and 70% of freshwater use.[ 2,15]
• Conversion of natural ecosystems to croplands and pastures is the largest factor causing species to be threatened with extinction.[16]
• Overuse and misuse of nitrogen and phosphorus causes eutrophication and dead zones in lakes and coastal zones.[17] 
• Environmental burden from food production also includes marine systems. About 60% of world fish stocks are fully fished, more than 30% overfished, and catch by global marine fisheries has been declining since 1996. [18]

We also gotta preserve natural carbon sinks and turn our farmlands into carbon sinks if we want any chance of keeping global warming below 2˚.

...

Food Consumption

This Bon Appetit article focuses on the reference diet, and also where I heard about this article. 

• Protein: 0.8g/kg body weight is a guideline, with vegetarian sources (soy, legumes, nuts) > poultry & fish > red meat. 1 or 2 servings of fatty fish a week seem to be good due to omega-3
• Dairy: pretty neutral, no need to consume dairy for calcium if diet is otherwise balanced
• Carbs: eat less of it (<60 and="" energy="" grains="" li="" of="" preferred="" total="" whole="">
• Fruits and vegetable: seem to be pretty good, the article recommends 300g veg and 200g fruits daily.
• Added fats: also seem to be pretty good if and only if they're unsaturated fats, aka more olive oil or rapeseed oil and less butter
• Sugar: article recommends less than 5% of total energy

...

Food Production

• GHG: "The total estimate of all greenhouse-gas emissions from food production is 8·5–13·7 Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year." whereas the target set by the article is 5 Gt annually.
• Water: requires regional analysis. Interesting point about the conflict of interest between food sovereignty and balancing water use in different regions through trade. 
• Nitrogen & Phosphorous: require more efficient use, both in spatial distribution and also in closed loop systems
• Biodiversity: severely underrated. "habitat loss and fragmentation, particularly through human appropriation of land for food production, is the greatest driver of biodiversity loss"
• Land use: in relation to biodiversity "Globally, the net area for food production has remained constant since the mid-20th century. However, this trend masks the real picture because substantial reductions in agricultural land have occurred in temperate regions of Europe, Russia, and North America, whereas substantial expansion of agricultural land has occurred in biodiversity-rich tropics". The article proposes 13M sq. km of food production land use. 

...

The next section of the article, "Achieving healthy diets from sustainable food systems" is quite heavy on the figures, which I won't steal. But the main points are:

• "grains, fruits, and vegetables have the lowest environmental effects per serving, and meat from ruminants the highest", while seafood is super variable
• "Vegan and vegetarian diets were associated with the greatest reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions and land use, [5,221] and vegetarian diets with the greatest reductions in water use. [219]". 
• Interesting point on how some crops are less nutritious when grown in an atmosphere with higher CO2 concentrations (Panel 5)
• Hitting the biodiversity target will require the most ambitious of changes. But there's again a conflict between biodiversity and food sovereignty: 

We found that adopting the reference diet (or one of its variations) could increase the global number of extinctions if land-use change occurs in areas of food production. This effect is mainly a result of increased caloric intake to 2500 kcal / capita per day in the reference diet in countries where caloric intake is lower than this value, and shifting production priorities to produce crops (eg, nuts and pulses) needed to support the reference diet. However, these results assume that domestic production will meet a proportion of the additional demand. Rebalancing regional production on the basis of biodiversity concerns could mitigate those additional stresses and have the greatest effect on reducing biodiversity loss (figure 6). [144,206]