#she is meant to be asian but i was silly and forgot which part of asia i was looking at

[octoberarts]

I need to wear my wrist splints again, so...art to make me feel better.

[Image Description: A drawing of an asian woman with her arms in the air, and a pose that twists her upper body slightly towards the viewer. She has long purple hair with a red and blue bow in it, a freckled face, and on her hands are painted red and blue nails and red and blue wrist splints. Her dress is similiarly red and blue, with a blue bodice, red collar, and red and blue bow. One short puffed sleeve is red and striped whilst the other is blue and spotty. The skirt portion is split into two layers, both red and blue, the top one striped and the bottom spotted. Finally, she wears mismatched socks - one red and spotty with a blue frill and one blue striped with a red frill, and mismatched red and blue ankle boots on top.]

[guessmonsta]

BITCH IM BACK AND READY FOR CHRISTMAS Starting out with some headcanons?? So tell me what you think ur fave boys fave Christmas songs are because I love ur playlists that you made I still listen to them lmao

I’M BACK IT’S MY FAVORITE SEASON I’M IN A CAFE WITH A LARGE SUGAR COOKIE HOT COCOA ITS SNOWING + I’M LIVING (Also why just my favorites when I can do them all??? Same thing???)

Daichi Sawamura: Last Christmas - George Michael

This was the only song his mother used to play around Christmas time when he was younger, so it’s stuck with him throughout the years. He remembers making lots of jokes about the lyrics when he was younger, but finds it to be charming, now. 

Sugawara Koushi: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra

He absolutely loves this song, and he has no idea why. Sometimes, he’ll find himself listening to it in July, just because he can. It makes him want to steal a glass of expensive red wine off of his parents alcohol table and drink it out on the balcony on Christmas Eve, which he has done, by the way. 

Asahi Azumane: N/A 

Surprisingly, he’s the only one on the list that actually doesn’t like Christmas. It’s not because he hates joy, and it’s not because of the fact that both his parents are Buddhist, but he hates it because every year before winter break, Sugawara has the stupid idea to dress him up as Jesus and crucify him to the volleyball net. He does it willingly, but that doesn’t mean that he technically enjoys it. 

Nishinoya Yuu: Carol of the Bells - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Thing is, he actually doesn’t know what the song is even called. When asked what his favorite Christmas song is, he resorts to just aggressively humming. Because he doesn’t know the name, and none of his friends know what he’s doing, he has no clue how to find the song and actually listen to it. 

Tanaka Ryuunosuke: Rocking Around The Christmas Tree - Trap Remix 

He isn’t a fan of the way old music sounds, and that’s what Christmas music is built off, essentially. But when Nishinoya showed him this song at practice one day, he found it to be absolutely hysterical. Truth be told, he probably enjoys it more for the meme than he does the actual musical value. 

Kageyama Tobio: N/A 

Christmas was always viewed as a solely romantic holiday in his household, and with his parents always being off at their respective jobs and ignoring the holiday as a whole, for a long time, Kageyama forgot it even existed. The only Christmas song he really knows of is Jingle Bells. 

Hinata Shouyou: The Chipmunk Song - Alvin and the Chipmunks

His adoration of this song came from something like a Stockholm Syndrome. Natsu has a small, Christmas tree ornament that plays the song on repeat for however many times you crank the dial, and she adores it. So, from the moment she wakes up, to the moment she goes to bed, the entire house is filled with the cursed song. Hinata has considered, on multiple occasions, throwing it out his bedroom window or breaking it with a hammer, but like most things, Hinata warmed up to it eventually, whether he actually wanted to or not. 

Tsukishima Kei: Little Drummer Boy, Peace On Earth - Bing Crosby and David Bowie

He has a really specific, pretentious music taste, and like hell he’s letting it falter, even during the holidays. He’s not even sure if he likes it because it’s a good song, or because David Bowie is one of the singers. 

Yamaguchi Tadashi: Oh Holy Night - Bastille 

Sure, he’s a fan of the original, choir version of this song, but he much prefers an indie/alternative twist on it. Although the song talks about Christmas in a more religious way, he doesn’t really understand the lyrics all that much, but likes the way that it’s sung, regardless.

Oikawa Tooru: Baby it’s Cold Outside 

He’s aware that the lyrics are a bit unacceptable for today’s society, but nothing is stopping him from wanting to sing a duet to this song with literally anyone. He’s too nervous to ask, and even then he’s sure none of his friends would comply, so he ends up singing, (more like vomiting) both parts of the song on his car ride to and from school. 

Iwaizumi Hajime: N/A

He never really celebrated Christmas as a kid, his mother being Muslim and not really knowing much about it herself, so he was kind of sheltered from the whole idea of it all. Even though he doesn’t know much, every Christmas Eve he’ll buy some beautifully decorated sugar cookies for him and his mom, because even if they don’t celebrate the holiday, the cookies are to die for. 

Bokuto Koutarou: Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer

Well, it’s not necessarily his favorite, but every year when his family gets together for the holidays, it’s the only song his younger cousins tend to sing, so it inevitably gets stuck in his head. Not that he minds, really, the kids crack up when he chimes in to sing the silly words in between each verse of the song. 

Akaashi Keiji: Anything by Frank Sinatra 

He knows that not all Frank Sinatra songs are Christmas related, but he’s not very big on Christmas, either. He likes the classy vibe his music gives off, it reminds him of city streets lined with snow and the warmth of speakeasy cafes.  

Kuroo Tetsurou: N/A 

If you were to ask Kuroo what he thinks about Christmas, he would tell you that it used to be a holiday meant for worshiping Jesus Christ, a religious figure. But now, a bunch of Asian kids who’s ancestors fought off Christian mercenaries in the 15th century, and who know nothing about Christianity themselves, are crying about wanting gifts and things for a Christian holiday. He doesn’t hate the holiday, really, but his “favorite song” is making Capitalist jokes all month. “Merry Capitalism! Shoot! I meant Happy Consumerism! Nope, that’s not it either!”

Kenma Kozume: N/A 

He probably can’t even name one Christmas song, except maybe, “that one about the snowman who smokes.” He’s only into Christmas because he’s a fan of Starbucks’ seasonal drinks, to be honest. (The Snickerdoodle hot cocoa is his favorite!)

Lev Haiba: Sleigh Ride - Amy Grant 

He’s another one who isn’t really sure why he enjoys the song, he just does. His family doesn’t even celebrate the holiday- his mother being Russian and celebrating The Epiphany instead of Christmas. He still thinks Christmas is cute, though, and probably buys his friends those fifty-cent candy canes that the school issues before breaks begins. 

Ushijima Wakatoshi: N/A 

His family was never really big on Christmas– his mother is very Buddhist, and his father lives across the ocean, so he’s never really been exposed to the traditions. Although, he finds that The Trans Siberian Orchestra’s rendition of Carol of the Bells gets stuck in his head around December every year, but isn’t really aware that it’s a Christmas song. 

Tendou Satori: Little Drummer Boy, Peace On Earth - Bing Crosby and David Bowie

Along with Queen, David Bowie is another one of his absolute favorite artists, so there’s no way he couldn’t stan this song. He gets really offended when his friends tell him they’ve never herd of it before. 

Semi Eita: Yule Shoot Your Eye Out - Fall Out Boy

He’s secretly, not so secretly, still an emo edge lord, so for the entire month of December, he has this song on repeat. Some other honorable mentions for him are Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass, by All Time Low and My Chemical Romances rendition of All I Want For Christmas Is You.

[vmfx]

FULL MOON SPECIAL.

(Summer.)

This year Spring came and went a little easier than usual. Aside from a stomach-churning break-up that neither my now ex-girlfriend or I wanted to take part of, the Spring revival brought a brand new charge that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Feelings of meeting someone rare and opening up to them for the first time. An opportunity with an art-school-type Korean girl who nicely put me down but ended in an amicable consolation. Taking snapshots with the who’s-who of the Press at the trendiest post-production parties. Extended drives out west with my friend Jewish Mary discussing thoughts, feelings, summer plans, and laughing out loud over getting to know each other as friends.

The mania continued when we all discovered two social-networking sites that year: Myspace and Facebook. Both had opened a wide portal for anyone who used it. Not only did they offer an opportunity for friends and classmates to keep in direct contact with each other, but it also doubled as a dating or hook-up site. When it first opened people would randomly contact each other through a very curious yet open world with plentiful results. This was before the term ‘stalking’ was taken seriously, and when people were more welcome and less discriminating.

One day I was curious and did a search for people who liked Deftones. The first thing that came up was this black-and-white photo of a girl eating a King of Diamonds playing  by CouponDropDown" target="_blank">card with both hands and a happy chipper smile. I liked cute girls and I liked playing cards…and then I liked cute girls who liked eating playing cards, so who was I to pass this up? I jokingly messaged her to stop eating the King and cease being disrespectful. A day later, she replies.

Her name was Catherine. We messaged each other sparsely for two months being silly and then it stopped. I don’t know why. I assumed it just ran its course and that was that. I thought nothing of it, moved on and forgot about her.

**********

(Autumn.)

One afternoon in the campus news office I open my account to find a message waiting for me, feeling interested as always. Then I see who sent me that message: it was Catherine. Out of nowhere she decided to pop up and say hello…fifteen months later. What the circumstances were of why there was a fifteen-month silence between us I’ll never know. It did not matter anymore.

At first I could not remember who she was until it hit me, but it felt real good hearing from her again and I was amazed that she remembered me after a long silence. Very rarely in this nature would people do such a gesture these days. She told me she liked talking to me when we did which was why she contacted me again. There was no reason to not seize the opportunity to continue so we picked up where we left off. The rate of communication accelerated and quantified. Our next constant starts by getting to know each other.

What I first learned about Catherine had me very concerned. At the time, she found herself at home feeling lonely with a bottle of vodka nearby accompanied by a supply of painkillers and a pack of blades, extreme for someone I just started talking to. She was slipping and I pushed and persisted for answers because I am a savior to my friends. As she reached out to me, I had to reach out to her. I wanted to put the pieces together because I genuinely felt sorry for her. I was not as successful as first since she heavily guarded herself so I decided to tread very carefully.

Alternately, Catherine and I discussed philosophies and logic; life struggles, situations at hand and other miscellany. I discover that we had a good number of things in common. She listened to the very same music I was into when I was in high-school a decade before. (I preceded her by eight years and her birthday was only ten days after mine. I am a Virgo, she is a Libra.) She was into Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and her number one Elliot Smith, certifying her as an alternative-rock sentry in my eyes. She wrote, did graphic design, and even attended the same university as I. She had creative qualities and I saw lots of potential in her, thus the race to rescue Catherine from her own personal black hole had become more essential, more so when I had week-long periods of not hearing from her.

Catherine should not have to drown herself every weekend in alcohol and loneliness nor let alone consume vicodin and oxycontin, so I felt. She also did not have to punish herself by cutting, either. All this as a result of social neglect and mostly being un-accepted in her high-school years, with her using and drinking as a means of coping now ignited due to meeting some guy at a party who introduced her to a sip of beer. I now gave her an opportunity to come out and be at a safer place, to bring her out and have dinner with me to discuss her situation.

During this time, I was going through a very heavy period of discovering music. Tower Records was going under and were closing its doors for good by the end of the year. One night after work I paid my final visit there and I picked up Public Image Limited, The Buzzcocks, Stereolab, and Jesu. Roy Ayers, Ladytron, Leonard Cohen, Boards Of Canada, and much more. Artists I either meant to try or even discovered out of nowhere. And back at the Press office, someone somehow uploaded a lot of music into one of our office computers ripe for the taking. Direct Control, Regulations, Stereo Total, NON, and MF Doom were playing endlessly while I furiously typed away articles for the next issues of the semester; after which I occasionally took a break for spicy fried rice at the campus’ Asian food quarter. A scent of lime was present, in tandem reminding me of the cold air and starry night skies complimenting that Autumn.

The turn of the New Year arrived when I was at the campus radio station doing a countdown set with several on-air staff. I contacted Catherine when the show was over. We decided the time was right to finally meet up after her Thursday secret meeting. We weighed our options including any given Greek diner for midnight breakfast, but we opt for American instead.

**********

(Full Moon, January.)

Daily errands were done. In the afternoon I went clothes shopping and bought a watch, a black t-shirt with a cassette printed on the front and a grey pocket t-shirt with some gold lettering. The scent of lime now replaced by a strong hue of blue and white static powder. Later that night, I spearheaded a radio station meeting as program director with several other talents about what extra equipment, wires, boards, and knobs to buy for our studios. After two hours of sitting through the meeting taking suggestions and going over schematics I finally conclude the meeting. All I had eaten so far was a Snickers bar but I wasn’t feeling hunger pangs. I was still standing.

I walk out of the building and it was extremely cold. A bright full moon and stars were out with absolutely no clouds or snow in sight. I called Catherine on my white cell-phone to let her know my meeting was over. Her secret meeting concluded as well. Both of us were on the way. We would trade several more phone calls to make sure we would stick to our guns.

I arrive at the American restaurant. It was a crowded Thursday night, the day of the week most students from campus migrate here to unwind and eat. Noisy as usual, lots of people talking, cups and glasses clinking, excitement and loud music fill the air. I sit at the lobby waiting to finally meet Catherine for the first time, wondering what she could really be. I had no idea what to expect or what she really looked like in person.

I was about to find out, and here she is.

I see Catherine walk into the restaurant. When I looked up at her for a moment to verify if it was her or not; everything registered to line up with themselves and I call her out. “Catherine!” I get her attention and she turns to me. We were thrilled to see each other and trade smiles and pleasantries. She was this young thin self, her neck-length Trixie hair, slim purple long-sleeve sweater and black jeans torn at the knees. She sits to my left in the lobby and our conversation starts off with three topics in a matter of five minutes: her secret meeting in Port Jefferson which she refused to divulge, how she drove out to and missed the record store in Ronkonkoma, and what was possibly wrong with her cable box. Five minutes later our maitre d’ escorts us to a window-side booth seated adjacent from eight loud and noisy frat boys who thankfully did not start in with us. After a year and a half, here was the first time we would get to talk to each other, face-to-face.

I order chicken stir-fry. Catherine orders only a diet Coke. “Are you sure?” I ask her, and politely she said she wasn’t hungry. I upped the ante and told her that dinner was on me and she could have anything she wanted, no worries. But she stopped at a diet Coke and said it was OK. I gave in and nicely obliged.

We went forward and re-iterated every conversation we had over the last three months. Catherine was very soft-spoken. So soft spoken that I had to lean toward her to focus on every word she said, and on one occasion I kindly told her to speak just a little louder. My undivided attention was on her when she said every word since she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen. Big eyes. Lovely eyes. Obvious eyes. Memorable eyes. Cat eyes. Eyes that made her very cute. Eyes that ‘made’ Catherine.

We went more in-depth about the parallels we had. I was still very flattered Catherine was into the very music I was years prior. Had she went to high-school with me she would have been accepted to my circle of friends with no problem. She also mentioned that once she was a Cinema/Cultural Studies major on our campus. However, we had no classes together and the two years that she attended our university we did not once cross paths, but very well could have.

We talked and listened to each other more and more, progressing without one single hitch. No missteps, no awkward looks, no slip-ups, no back-pedaling. It was only Catherine and I sitting across from each other with all the time in the world having a complex yet honest, concerning, intelligent conversation; a type of conversation extremely rare in our disposable, attention-deficit, lowest-common-denominator world. She was that someone different than the rest who was exactly on my level. I was that someone who would give her the concern, understanding, and the attention she was looking for.

Our night, however, was drawing to a close and I wanted to end it on a high note. I asked Catherine if she had gotten a hold of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, one which she was missing. She was in the midst of explaining herself when I take the CD out of my jacket pocket placed next to me and tossed it on the table right in front of her, a late Christmas present for a friend to bring herself and her spirits up. She was in total amazement. So much it spilt all over the table. She could not believe I would do such a thing for her.

Catherine then offered me anything I wanted. She even waved her money in my face for the CD which I absolutely dead-refused to take. What I wanted in return was to see her again, and soon.

**********

To this day, no one I have ever met in my life gave me a surreal thrill just by being with someone for three hours. I felt amazed that I even met her.

Catherine was without a doubt one of the most original and unique people I’ve met, ever. Hands down. No contest. She had a lot of things about her that no one could copy, because everything about her was hers. From the music she listened to, her philosophy, her good parts, her bad parts, even her looks…it was all hers, as if there was an art to her.

She was real interesting and because of her conversations I tried to reach out and look out for her. She made me want to look forward to meeting her again and in the process got my mind off a lot of things because she was really that special. I bought her that gift just to prove to her that I can help her out and bring her up in any way.

It was that feeling of meeting someone who was more to my liking, whose complexion was young, her personality, looks, and features unique and rarely seen, the feeling of assurance because you finally had the answers to those swirling questions. In front of me was someone I believed was truly special despite her severe misgivings and flaws. Despite her errors, I only thought about the good things, colors, and feelings about her.

Every now and then I go back and listen to everything from that era. All those sounds are a watermark of that time when I first met Catherine and conjure up everything else that occurred at the time. That clear cold weather and the memory of lime, infinity, and powdery static. That white cell-phone, the spicy rice. Nights of heavy snow on campus and long night drives home. The series of Wednesday night radio shows and our resident DJ’s coming over to visit at the turn of midnight. Those loud nights of campus techno events and meeting different shades of Jewish women with different colors of hair, skin quality, fashion sense, glasses, make-up, and sweat. Those feelings, thoughts, shades, hues, and patterns of purple, blue, grey, black, and white. But none of anything could come close to that one defining moment of meeting Catherine, where from that point on it would watermark and define an era in a time where everything added up to equal an apex.

**********

We met again in Spring a couple of times thereafter. We sat down over ice cream and even traded more music to each other. I still truly believed that Catherine was someone special and stood out from everyone I have ever met, and I seriously wanted to remain in touch with her. She happily obliged as she gave me a sympathetic goodbye hug in the end.

Later on that season I had an art report to do and she had an affinity for museums. I offered Catherine an afternoon in New York City and we went to the MOMA as I prepared my critique about Joan Miro’s Women, Birds And A Star. At the end of that mostly sunny day we said goodbye to the city and took the train ride home together; our discussion of each others’ individual lives, future plans, and possible outcomes comprised the final hour of the last time we would ever see each other…for a long, long time.

Permission granted by the very same subject presented here.

[ryanmeft]

Kong: Skull Island Movie Review

Kong: Skull Island, if it were a person, would be someone who claims to have lots of hidden secrets but can't resist telling you their life story five minutes after meeting you. The early moments have all the makings of something special, at least by CGi-fest standards: kooky scientists, enigmatic mercenaries, idealistic journalists and war-hardened vets, all on a mission at the height of 1970's American decay to find one big monkey. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and his team even have the stones to ape (I'm so sorry) the style of Apocalypse Now, complete with helicopters flying operatically over a jungle and a character who almost certainly loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Sure, Vogt-Roberts is out of his league, but you have to admire his sand.

Indeed, the movie is constantly trying to punch above its weight class, and sometimes it manages it. It is 1973, Nixon has just made a funny joke about peace with honor in Vietnam, and Bill Randa (John Goodman) is trying to get funding to investigate a mysterious island. He recruits a former SAS officer named James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and gets the expedition headed up by Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a colonel who is not at all ready to go home from war, the only place he's comfortable. Packard's crew includes the down-to-earth Chapman (Toby Kebbell), Earl Cole (Shea Whigham), who fills the obligatory devil-may-care might-be-crazy role, and about a dozen others destined to be monster lunch. Randa brings along his assistant (Corey Hawkins), a biologist (Jing Tian), a scientist (Marc Evan Jackson) and another scientist (John Ortiz). An ambitious photojournalist (Brie Larson) worms her way into the crew because she thinks the island is an excuse to test military weapons, or something, I honestly forgot that bit. The island they are going to is surrounded by a storm no one has ever penetrated, so they say, and I must admit I love that stuff. The film doesn't build it up much, though, and within about 20 minutes we're on sunny Skull Island for our vacation getaway.

Naturally, this island contains a giant ape, which we know because we see him make his grand debut five minutes into the movie. Subtlety is not on the menu here; instead, Vogt-Roberts seems to be aiming for the sort of monster flick where you see the monster(s) as much as possible.

This violates the "Jaws" rule, which holds that the longer it takes to see the beast, and the less you see them, the scarier they are. It is almost universally true---witness the 2010 Wolfman remake, in which the Wolfman appears almost in the opening credits and is not the least bit frightening. The monsters in Kong: Skull Island are not meant to be frightening. Kong is opposed by creatures the film calls Skull Crawlers, which look like dinosaurs with skin conditions that never evolved back legs. They are there to eat characters who have served their purpose. I kinda liked that the film simply attributes them to a seriously bad day on the part of evolution, but they lack the punch of a lumbering T-Rex slowly moving into frame, and the fights between titans break out with so little fanfare that there isn't much tension. Compare Kong's takedown of the expedition's helicopters to the 1933 original's log-rolling sequence, or his final row with the chief skull thingy to his virtuoso multi-level grudge match with two T-Rexes in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake. The fights here aren't dull, per se, but there is nothing like that degree of creativity or foresight on display.

Industrial Light and Magic's artists have done their jobs well in terms of design, though. Kong's not complicated, but you feel like he is really punching and stepping on everyone and everything he's supposed to be punching and stepping on; pedants who are still hung up over the slight flaws in Jackson's dinosaur stampede will have little to complain about there. Every once in a while the effects team even gets a moment of real creativity, such as a giant stick bug with a fallen tree as armor, or a bunch of saw-billed birds camouflaged in a unique way. The film has little time to dwell on this, though, when there is more fighting to be had. There's some business about the beasts coming from the hollow interior of the planet and giant ants, but we never see proof of this ourselves, sadly.

The plot is all over the place. Once the choppers carrying the monsters' catered lunches arrive on the island, they are quickly downed, the nameless characters done away with, and the team split in three: Goodman and Jackson get one group, Hiddleston and Larson get another, and Kebbell is on his own, waiting at the north end where everyone is supposed to meet up if they get lost. Goodman and Jackson make for the most interesting characters; Goodman's ongoing weight loss feeds well into the perception of a man gone slightly kooky from his obsession with the island, and he speaks like someone who has resigned himself to not leaving it. Jackson's Packard clearly has some fictional form of PTSD. He desperately wants some more war to fight, and when others try to reason with him by pointing out Kong isn't the worst monster, he decides to just try to kill them all; if you gave him enough ammo and time you get the sense there wouldn't be a ladybug left alive on that island.

Hiddleston and Larson don't have much in the way of personality, and certainly they lack the quirks that made the leads of the 1933 and 2005 films stand out; they fill more traditional action hero roles. They do meet a character played by John C. Reilly, who has been living amongst a perfunctory ancient tribal race on the island for some time, and who is more interesting. His comic relief falls almost completely flat, but when he taps into the depth of genuine loss and well-earned nuttiness the island has instilled in him, he's the most sympathetic character in the film. He steals most scenes he's in, and his eventual fate is the movie's best moment. None of these characters, however, manage the connection with Kong that made Naomi Watts such an integral part of the last reboot, and as a result Kong himself never comes home as a anything but a plot device. The movie has no time for the female characters; Tian is thrown in to appeal to the Asian market, and the Oscar-winning Larson is utterly wasted on an empty role.

If this seems like way too many onions for one soup, well, it is. I was exhausted just listing them, because 75% of them don't matter. Is it a spoiler to say the scientists exist to be killed? Since the smartest characters always die embarrassing deaths because those poor eggheads just don't got real grit, I'm saying no. The film rushes ahead at breakneck speed, and though it is dotted with good ideas---the Apocalypse Now-inspired bombing run, the explanation for Kong himself, Reilly's character---they never coalesce into a movie that can really hold our imaginations. That might be a result of the script, on which Max Borenstein (Godzilla), Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), Derek Connolly (Jurassic World) and John Gatins (Flight) all worked without ever collaborating directly. The film feels like it was pieced together by people who weren't in the same room. One moment we have an almost balletic sequence involving bombs only to segue into uninspired action, and there are just way, way too many characters for most of them to feel real.

The movie's best moments are when it abandons all attempts at being serious and dark and just goes for gonzo. A Nixon bobblehead bobbling away on a helicopter dashboard, fetish-level focus on pre-personal computer technology, characters looking cartoonishly up just as they are about to get smooshed---these touches come from a place in Vogt-Roberts's brain that clearly knows how silly his premise is. What we get is a completely watchable action flick, but given that there are apparently plans to have Kong (and Godzilla) be part of a larger monstrous universe including some of the more wonderfully silly Toho creations like Mothra, it is to be hoped the people in charge fully tap into the insane in future installments.

[kittymonks-fanfiction]

Genderswapped Nations Review - Chapter 5

Welcome back to Genderswapped Nations, where apparently North Americans can get to Germany faster than a Brit can when a brainwashed female personification of Germany wants to win the world record for the most pointless world meeting in the history of human society. Last time, we learned that Prussia isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed if he intended to invade the UK while England was away (and yet waited until a time when it would have been preposterous for him to still be away) and that Ariana is an indestructible cartoon character. What shenanigans await us this time?

Well, if you read the closer for the last chapter, I bet you’re expecting an explanation for the World War III comment. Well...here it is.

Chapter 5: Hamburgers and Hurt

Do you remember way back in the first chapter’s review when I said that the alliteration in the  chapter titles eventually led to some unfortunate names? This is one of the worst in the entire fic (probably the third worst, if I had to rate it). Hamburgers are only mentioned at the beginning of the story and...hurt? Yes, a bunch of people do get hurt—somebody even gets put into the hospital—but the only plot relevant ‘hurt’ to be seen here is more emotional than physical. So if you’re so insistent on keeping the Hamburgers, why not make it “Hamburgers and Heartbreak” instead? Or better yet, “Hedonism and Heartbreak”? Because yes, you’ll be seeing a disproportionately large amount of hedonism in this chapter since Allison is its focus.

*NOTE: Canada's Gender swap, who was originally named 'Alexis', is now Mattie. I had forgotten Canada's human name when I wrote the first four chapters :3 *

Oh, well...that’s a way to start a chapter.

Yeah folks, I retconned a character’s name in an author’s note a fourth of the way into a fanfic. You’d have to be an idiot to do something like that to disrupt the canon when the “plot”’s about to take over.

Do you want to know the truth of that statement, though? I never forgot Canada’s human name, I just never knew it in the first place. I got all of my Hetalia-related information off of Wikipedia and Canada’s human name wasn’t listed there when I went there looking for it. How unprofessional!

America and Allison drove up to the drive through of a fast food restaurant. "I want six double cheeseburgers, four hamburgers, and two large drinks!"

Or better yet, this chapter should’ve been called “Hamburgers and Heart Attacks”. Seriously, I don’t care if America is a personification of a country, this amount of food could kill a man (even if the hamburgers are meant to be for Allison). And isn’t he an immortal country? Couldn’t he just be stealing food from his citizens at this point?

America exclaimed, his counterpart looking with starry eyes as the workers prepared their food.

It’s understandable that a McDonald’s wouldn’t have that much food just sitting around, but I’m sure it would have been more polite to pull around and wait for them to finish instead of holding up the drive-through line.

When they finally got their food, they speeded home and Allison bit ravenously into one of her hamburgers.

What is this Frankenstein’s abomination of a statement? ‘Speeded’ isn’t the right tense of ‘speed’ to use in this context (‘sped’ is) and ‘ravenously’—though it’s a nice big word to flaunt your intelligence with—gives the reader the impression that Allison was literally starving to death before she ate. Unless this is a really crappy off-handed reference to the one in six Americans who face hunger every year, it doesn’t make any sense.

"Amazing like always!" she exclaimed.

"I know, right?" America said with his mouth full.

If America’s eating and Allison’s eating, then who’s driving the car?????? *screeeech*

Suddenly, the phone rang. Tony, who had been with Allison and America the whole time, answered the phone.

Yeah, I promise he was there. He just didn’t get any food from McDonalds because he’s an illegal alien and we don’t tolerate those in these here parts. This is ‘Murica.

...I’ll go ahead and let myself out.

He held it towards Allison, implying it was for her. She took the phone from the alien's hand and asked, "Hey, what's up?"

"Hello, Allison, its Ariana." The phone said.

Oh hey, I can finally introduce you guys to my favorite character in the fic; the phone. Not Ariana, the phone.

"Everyone's coming over to Louella's house so we can talk. I'm already here, get here soon."

Allison glanced back to her fast food and said, "Yeah, I'll try to get there soon."

"Good, then." Ariana said, hanging up.

Alright, what the hell is this Twilight Zone bullshit? Why would they invite the North Americans to their meeting last when everyone else has already arrived? They know that they’ll have to wait for 9-12 hours for Allison and Alexis Mattie to show up, right?

Not to mention the fact that they’re having another meeting in Germany that could have easily been held over Skype. Seriously, why don’t they at least go to a different country this time? I heard that Japan is pretty enjoyable in the wintertime. Why not go there, if you’re so insistent on meeting in person?

Allison walked back to her food and began to eat again. "Who was it?" America asked, food in his mouth like usual.

"It was just Ariana calling from Louella's place," Allison replied in between bites. "The other counterparts are going to meet at Louella's place later."

If by ‘later’ you mean ‘right now’.

America nodded before eating his last double cheeseburger and slurping the last of his drink.

And now there’s food and soda all over the floor because both of these revolting slobs just carried on an entire conversation with burgers stuffed in their gobs. I hope they don’t plan on making the alien clean that up.

When Allison later finished her food as well, she boarded America's helicopter and flew to Louella's house.

Fun fact (which I learned just to refute this ridiculous plot point): Helicopters are not usually used for transatlantic journeys because they’re not very cost efficient (they cost three times more to ride in than a passenger plane and cost even more for maintenance), only fly 1/3 as fast as a normal jet or plane would, and are three times as noisy as a fixed wing aircraft. So not only is she causing the U.S. to lose money by choosing to arrive in a helicopter, she’s also wasting time (making everyone wait even longer for her to show up) and giving herself a headache for the sake of looking cool when she shows up to Berlin.

...Tell me again, why is she our main character for this chapter? I mean, it doesn’t last long—since of course Ariana steals the spotlight when she appears in this chapter later—but this already makes her look selfish and petty. Our hero, everybody!

Later, the helicopter flew over Louella's front lawn.

If by ‘later’ you mean ‘a full 24 hours after Ariana called’.

Allison leaped out of the helicopter with a parachute, just as Louella and Ariana exited the house. America's counterpart opened the parachute and floated safely to the ground.

Oh jeez, she’d better not still be wearing her ‘skirt dress’. She’d be flashing all of Germany then.

The helicopter flew away after she got off, and Louella asked, "Why the hell did you ride a helicopter to my house?"

"Because I'm the hero, and everyone knows the hero always rides in a helicopter!" Allison exclaimed.

Not really. Haven’t you ever watched Snakes on a Plane? How about Con-Air? I mean hell, have you ever watched any of the Superman movies? You never see Superman riding around in a helicopter. That’s just silly.

"That's a little overkill," Ariana sneered.

"No it isn't, didn't anybody else bring helicopters?" Allison asked.

I like how she asks it so innocently, as if riding in a helicopter to a casual meeting between friends is normal. It’s not, you egotistical loser.

"No, us normal people brought planes and walked." Ariana said.

Wait...walked? That’s hundreds of miles we’re talking about here! It would have taken the Asians, like, a year to show up on foot! Francisca I could almost see, but still, that’s 615 miles! It would take her eight and a half days to walk that far! And are you implying that Ariana walked over the English Channel to get to Germany??

Allison ignored Ariana and walked into Louella's house. Louella and Ariana entered soon after Allison did, and they sat down after she did. "Okay, let's count everybody," Louella said. She pointed to the other countries, and counted eight people.

These poor girls. They’ve probably been waiting for three days now.

"Who could possibly be missing?" Ariana asked.

Suddenly, Mattie flung open Germany's door and came inside, glasses lopsided and hair a mess. "Sorry I'm late, everyone, some guy on the street tripped me on my way to the airport," she apologized.

Oh man, how did I see that coming?

But that doesn’t even make sense. Unless she got totally KO’ed and missed her flight, it doesn’t make sense why she would be just a few seconds late since she was tripped on the way to the airport. That plane’s going to leave at the same time no matter what.

--MATTIE ABUSE +1

"Why?" Louella questioned.

"He mistook me for Allison," Mattie explained nervously. "Apparently she forgot to pay for a hamburger or two!" Then she laughed at her own joke nervously, before noticing everyone else was silent and staring at her, then she gradually stopped laughing and sat down, and then seemingly disappeared.

You know, I’m gonna give that two points. Why? Because oh my god. Not only does nobody have sympathy for her, but it was her sister that made this terrible thing happen to her! Why would Allison indiscriminately steal from a fast food restaurant if, as previously shown, she and America clearly have enough money to waste on some fried garbage? Is she some kind of kleptomaniac?

Not to mention, you wouldn’t be randomly tripped on the street if you stole food (from a burger place on the way from the capital building in Ottawa to the nearest airport??). You’d be arrested.

--MATTIE ABUSE +2

"Well, at least I wasn't tripped, because then there'd be no hero!" Allison shouted, standing up and pointing to the ceiling. Everybody groaned, excluding Mattie and Felicity; Mattie was just sitting in the corner of the room, with a bright red face and Felicity was talking to Louella with no response from the German girl.

Red with anger? That’s what she should be red with. But needless to say, Allison’s right. There wouldn’t be a hero if she got caught for her crime because then she’d be a criminal.

"Anyway, I thought we could discuss how it is at everyone's new homes," Louella said. "Who wants to begin?"

Is she serious right now? This was easily a conversation which could have been had over Skype, not over tea in Berlin. I mean hell, they could have easily texted each other this information! And before you call me out because ‘hey maybe texting didn’t exist in the fanfic’s time period!!’, this takes place in 2012. Texting existed and the swaps are even shown to text each other later in the fic. So why not now?

Without any sign of hesitation or raising her hand or anything, Iscah stood up. "It's very fun at Russia's place. I like to mess around with the Baltic States until they start to cry and fall down like little babies.

Oh well that’s just great. Create some more hapless butt monkeys that did nothing to deserve being tormented by crappy OCs.

But I should probably point this out right now before it becomes a thing; the Baltics have no reason to be at ‘Russia’s place’ right now. They only resided there in the original run of the anime because they were a part of the Soviet Union. Since the USSR broke apart in the eighties, there’s no reason why I should have thought it existed in 2012 unless I watched Hetalia and seriously didn’t connect the dots and think that those sketches took place in the past. It’s like Switzerland all over again, but this... was I really that stupid??

Except we've been having a lot of trouble with Belarus lately, with all the scratching at my door at night and all. She wants to destroy me and marry Russia.

I’d question why Belarus would want to destroy her brother’s genderbend and not seek to marry her as well (considering that Iscah is literally Russia with long hair and boobs), but I’m too exhausted by that Baltics thing to give that more than just an uggggh.

I tried to beat her off with a stick, but then she snapped it in half.

Uh....double entendre??

I don't know what to do."

"I got it, I could patent Anti-Belarus Spray!" Allison announced.

"How in the hell are you going to make that work?" Ariana questioned.

"Who cares? Everyone knows it will work because-"

"I'll take ten," Iscah cut in.

This almost seems like a funny joke just because of how weird it seems, but then you realize that I stole this joke from a picture I found on DeviantArt. No, I’m not kidding. Here it is:

Classy. (credit where credit is due to YoorNaymHeer, the artist of this picture and the creator of this joke. Jesus fucking Christ.)

After Iscah gave Allison money for a relabeled can of spray paint and Iscah swore eternal doom upon Allison,

And then killed her? Please? Allison has been the worst ‘hero’ ever so far. All she’s done is stuff her face, waste money indiscriminately, steal for no reason (and make sure her sister get blamed and physically assaulted for it), and cheat somebody out of at least ten dollars in a situation where receiving her product is essentially life or death. None of that is heroic; it just makes me want to throw her into a ravine.

Ariana stood up and began. "It's cool at England's house.

Well the dialogue has gotten better so it’s not as awkward as it used to be, but this seems way too casual for Ariana to say. Or too...American. I know that she technically is American, but hush, I’m trying to suppress that knowledge right now and pretend that she’s actually British. In which case, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can’t hear that obviously American dialogue coming out of a British person’s mouth.

I met this nice boy named Sealand who has a rig very close to our house. He's trying to be a country like England, but doesn't seem to like him very much at all. 

Oh god no, don’t bring him into this. Let him live. Plus these sentences have this weird thing going on that I can’t really explain, but it makes Ariana sound like she’s trying way too hard to sound British. What I can say is that all of the ‘very’s make the sentences sound clunky, though.

Anyways, England always wants to cook, though, and his food is kind of… bad. So I cook before he does, and it kind of annoys him. But he always says he's grateful after I cook, though, and comments on how well I cook British food."

You know, the stereotype of England being a bad cook comes from British food in general being bland and tasteless. It’s an exaggeration of that ‘white people don’t season their food and can’t handle spice’ stereotype that’s a part of England’s character because he himself is a stereotype. So of course it figures that Sue-riana would be able to cook this inherently bad (and not to mention completely foreign) food better than the embodiment of the fucking country itself can.

"I can cook anything better than you," Francisca bragged.

"Oh, shut up, Francisca. If you're so good at cooking, then why don't you try cooking the kind of food England has in his cookbook?" Ariana challenged.

And look, I even acknowledged that in the story! Ariana straight up admitted that England’s food is the crappy part, not his cooking. So how is she magically able to make it taste awesome?

Seriously, this instance of the conflict ball being thrown around just doesn’t make any sense. It’s based on an argument of who between two girls can cook better. Isn’t that a little...on the nose, considering that the point of the fic is to feminize some male characters? Resorting to female stereotypes this early on doesn’t bode well for the rest of the fic.

Francisca got up and pulled out a twig. Before anyone could stop her, she went over to Ariana and proceeded to smack her in the head with it, providing her own sound effects as well: "Smack, Smack, Smack, Smack...!"

That’s a reference to a sketch in Hetalia about France jumping onto the winning sides of wars to reap the winners’ benefits—France may be weak, but he wouldn’t start a war with England of all people using a twig. Besides, where would Francisca have gotten a twig from and why would she carry it around with her everywhere? The stick whapping was a metaphor in the anime!

Ariana then got angry (or as Allison would say, 'totally pissed off') and kicked Francisca in the face, sending her towards the floor in a matter of seconds.

"Holy fricken' crap, dude!" Allison cried excitedly.

Well that’s not very gentlewomanly! Gentlemanliness is one of England’s defining traits (he even has an entire character song about it!) and already Ariana’s messed it up. Who responds to being poked with a stick with a kick to the face?

I also hate all of Allison’s slang, by the way. All of these fricken’ fricks.

Ariana began to kick Francisca while she was on the ground, which led Louella to restrain Ariana while Francisca got up. Yiesha ran over to Francisca and asked, "Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding, aru..."

Francisca wiped her nose. "Yeah, that's… unrelated. I'm fine, I assure you."

Jesus Christ, what is with all of the misplaced perversion?? These girls are 13!

"You're going down, you perverted wine-loving bitch!" Ariana shouted, still kicking and flailing at Francisca.

OH FUCK! If you’ve been keeping track, this is the first time a really bad word has been uttered in this fic. Fun fact; my parents didn’t use to let me swear, so I put bad words in this fic in spite of them and prayed that they wouldn’t find out. They’re used correctly and all—they aren’t all over the place—but...I don’t know, thinking about the circumstances makes me cringe. It’s like I was one of those kids who knew they couldn’t swear but tried anyway, so they’d just whisper the swear word in the hopes that their parents won’t hear. “You perverted wine loving…b-bitch.”

"Shows what you know; I can't have wine, I'm thirteen," Francisca said. Allison noticed she had her fingers crossed, though.

Actually, young people in Europe are allowed to drink wine and the like, they’re just not allowed to purchase it. This can be chalked up to their Americanization, probably, but it still doesn’t make much sense.

This brings up a pretty decent point I’ve been meaning to get to, though; there’s a high chance that I made the girls American because I didn’t trust myself enough to do the proper research required to make them belong to different nationalities (which involved a concern that not all of them would know English). This is one of those moments where such a thing would make sense; I knew the laws in America just fine, but being a sixth/seventh grader in the United States, I had no clue what the laws in Europe or Asia were like. It almost makes sense if you think about it like that, but if I didn’t trust in my own ability to write characters of different nationalities, then I shouldn’t have tried to write this fic based on some dumb fantasies I used to have about secretly being the female version of a country.

This only made Ariana angrier, and Louella almost lost her grasp on the English girl a couple times.

"We'll help you out, Louella!" Felicity offered, dragging Kierra with her in her effort to help Louella keep her hold on Ariana.

Allison jumped from her chair and sped over to Ariana. "You're being so bad-ass right now!" she exclaimed.

Of course Allison would say that in the face of this vast overreaction on Ariana’s part and random smackdown that came about because of it. How is she a ‘hero’, again?

"Now isn't the time for that, Allison!" Louella scolded. Meanwhile, Iscah was still sitting down, giggling at the other counterparts' anger.

Mattie, who had just gotten over her embarrassment, noticed the quarrel breaking out between her friends. She went between Francisca and Ariana, just as Louella, Felicity, and Kierra lost their grasp on Ariana. "Hey, can everyone just calm-" she began, before being cut off by a swift kick to the gut that was supposed to be for Francisca. She croaked and fell to the ground, but not before groaning, "Maple-hockey..."

"Mattie!" Ariana cried, her anger melting away, while Iscah was clapping and cheering for more violence.

Because yes, this is how a Canadian person would respond to being kicked in the gut ‘by accident’ (the quotation marks are there because I think it’s almost impossible that Ariana could have overlooked Mattie’s intervention as she was breaking away from the Axis Powers and rearing back to kick Francisca). Don’t you know? That’s how all Canadian people swear.

And who are we supposed to like here, exactly? Why would we want to root for a Mary-Sue (Ariana), an inconsiderate asshole (Allison), or an implied attempted rapist who cheers for physical assault (Iscah)? Oh yeah, spoilers, Iscah gets the POV in a later chapter. Our only solace is in Mattie.

--MATTIE ABUSE +1 (BUT THIS TIME IT’S PHYSICAL SOMEHOW, WHAT THE HELL)

"What's going on in here?" Germany's voice echoed. He entered the room, and looked around to see it somewhat trashed, and every gender swap (except Mattie and Iscah) frozen from fear.

Only somewhat trashed, though it would have no reason to be trashed at all since Ariana just kicked Francisca onto the ground. You know, unless you’re counting all of the crappy OCs, who are trash themselves.

Allison became animated again, while the others were still blank.

That’s an embarrassing thing to add. I was trying to describe anime expressions.

"Dude, it was AWESOME! Ariana was all like, 'Francisca, you suck!' and then Francisca was all like 'No I don't, you do!' and then Ariana beat Francisca up and then Louella came in and she was all like 'Ariana, stop it!' and totally held her back and stuff, then what's-her-face came in and got PWNED!" She shouted excitedly.

This entire line of dialogue kills me. Not only is there the usage of such wonderful, timeless middle school slang as ‘you suck’, ‘dude’, and ‘PWNed’, but Allison isn’t even describing what happened. Ariana said she could cook well, Francisca said she could cook better, and then Ariana randomly flew off the handle when Francisca lightly hit her with a twig.

"What?" Germany questioned, aghast. "What do I tell everyone else when their swaps come home bloody?"

Whoa, when did this become Germany’s POV?! You could almost say that that italicized segment is spoken dialogue delivered sharply, but Louella’s answer doesn’t acknowledge it at all. So does the POV just randomly switch to Germany so he can share one thought?

"Yah, I'm afraid it's true," Louella admitted to Germany.

Gratuitous German? Being brainwashed to speak with an accent is one thing, but appearing to know a foreign language out of the blue is just ridiculous…even if it was just the word ‘yes’ and not something extreme like a spontaneous Scheisse.

Before Germany could scold his counterpart, his phone ringed. He left the room to go answer it, leaving the room in a silence. Felicity broke this silence, however, by saying, "I'm hungry. Louella, what kind of food do you have?"

"Well, we don't have pasta, so don't get your hopes up," Louella responded.

Felicity said, "Aw…"

Leave it to Felicity to be completely oblivious to her surroundings and only focused on food. Really, I hate how her character is handled. She could have been so cute, and yet...

Just then, they heard a shout of disbelief from where Germany had gone to answer the phone.

"What's going on?" Kierra asked silently.

"I don't know," Ariana said in the same fashion. "But Flying Mint Bunny and I will go check."

"Flying mint bunny?" Francisca questioned teasingly in disbelief.

"Yeah, don't you see him? He's right there," Ariana said, pointing to an empty spot beside her head.

What the hell? Why does Ariana only start doing and saying Flanderized England-related things when the POV is taken away from her? She’s still ludicrously Sue-y, but only now is she acting ‘in character’.

Not that POV matters much anyway, since all it does here is tell the reader what that character is seeing. There aren’t any thoughts or motivations or emotions, just actions.

While everyone commented on the absence of the magical bunny, Allison got up to go check. But right as she was about to ask Germany while he was on the phone, he hung up and walked right by Allison, heading towards the room where everyone else was. She followed after him, and sat down when he stopped in the doorframe leading to the room.

Germany looked Felicity right in the eye. "Felicity… While you were here, Italy got attacked by Prussia and a few other countries."

Holy shit, this is the beginning of a world war. I made this story get dark fast. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s something. Now all of these girls are going to get wrapped up in international war politics or something, aren’t they? Or better yet, are they going to fight in the war? Are they going to fight literal actual countries?? IS ALLISON GOING TO DIE IN THE PROCESS?? PLEASE???

Felicity at first had a worried look, before changing to a humored face. "What? Nice joke, Germany! Italy always told me about the funny jokes you used to-"

"This is no joke! Romano called me to tell me, and then Prussia called to gloat about it. I'm sorry, Felicity."

Of course Felicity would be too stupid to realize that he’s being serious, but on a side note, what? Why would Prussia call his brother, Italy’s best friend, to gloat about this? Does he seriously want to get his ass kicked? And why would he pick Italy, of all people? He loves Italy!

"He's okay though, right? He's not… dead, is he?" Felicity asked, tears welling up in her eyes.

"No, of course not. A couple other countries were able to stop Prussia halfway into his attack. He's fine, but… Romano thinks it would be better if you didn't come right now, Italy's really hurt." Germany said.

Yeah, that’s grounds to start WWIII. It’s going down just like WWI did. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after the assassination of their Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but only once they became allies with Germany in case Russia intervened to support Serbia—which they did—and France jumped in to support Russia and pulled Great Britain after them because of the Triple Entente alliance they were all a part of. But who are the ‘few other countries’ who helped a German terrorist attempt to wage war against Italy? Who are the ‘couple other countries’ who jumped in to help? These can’t be faces without names; if they’re countries, chances are good that they have personifications in Hetalia and are thus characters who need to be identified.

Allison thought for a moment she heard a small mix of regret and sorrow in the German's voice.

And...why would that be weird? His best friend just got put in the hospital by his big brother. Couldn’t the narrative have made this insightful by showing Allison’s emotions in this situation? We already know how Germany’s going to feel, but Allison’s a wild card. It would have been a lot more interesting to hear about this from her side of the story.

The tears collecting in Felicity's eyes finally overpowered her usually joyful and somewhat ditzy personality, sending salty tears running down her cheeks.

The way this is written makes it sound less sad and more gross.

Louella and Kierra scooted their chairs closer to her and put their arms around her. Allison, Yiesha, Francisca, Mattie (who had gotten up earlier, but no one noticed),

Nice potshot, even if it’s totally unfitting because of the current circumstances.

--MATTIE ABUSE +1

Ariana, and even Iscah had looks of sadness and disbelief visible in their expressions, and Germany had one to match.

They’re all just lumped together in their emotions. No individuality between them. Nobody has a differing take on things. Nobody’s demanding to go to the hospital, nobody’s blaming themselves for this attack, nobody’s in denial, nobody’s scared that such a thing will happen to anyone else. They’re just all, in unison...sad. Get used to this, because as the fic goes on, you’ll find that every individual in this group save for Ariana, Mattie, and Allison loses a lot of individuality as more and more of the plot becomes centered around them.

This is usually the part where I say something either funny, clever, or just something that needed to be said. For now, I just have this: :'(

I mean, you’ve never said anything funny, clever, or important in these notes, but thanks for not dragging out the mushy sentimentality longer than you needed to.

And that, my friends, was chapter 5 of Genderswapped Nations. It was quite the adventure, but I’m definitely glad it’s over. Luckily for us, we never have to suffer through another chapter where Allison has the POV ever again (and doesn’t it figure that the Mattie/Canada abuse counter doubled in this chapter?). Unfortunately, though, we still have fifteen chapters of this drivel left to go and Allison is still Ariana’s ‘Lancer’ in this story so she won’t be disappearing anytime soon. Anyway, come back soon for the next exciting chapter of Genderswapped Nations, where you can expect to see some classic French cuisine, asshole best friends, and past me openly lampshading the stupidity of some of the bullshit she tried to add into the fic and asking the readers to overlook it...and no, I’m not over analyzing anything or making a joke, it actually happens. Three times, in fact.

(CANADA/MATTIE ABUSE COUNTER=10)

[nielsencooking-blog]

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.

East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana

[Illustration: Laura Freeman]

A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.

It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »

Grilling With Vinegar

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »

Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder

Dive into the cheesy bread experience »

The Definitive Guide to Eggs

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor

Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »

Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Read all about chaat »

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods

[Illustration: Katie Shelly]

Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Check out our favorite fictional foods »

How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about how to step up your salad game »

The Best Things I Ate in Japan

[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]

I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »

The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer

Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »

The Pho I Lost

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »

For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor

Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »

What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate

[Photograph: Emily Dryden]

I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about soju »

How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer

Get the full history of Oreos »

A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)

[Illustration: Alex Citrin]

This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »

Obsessed: A Man and His Mold

[Photograph: Chris Anderson]

Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Catch the koji bug, right this way »

For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »

The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer

Dig into some chicken pot pie »

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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

New Post has been published on http://cucinacarmela.com/staff-picks-our-favorite-posts-of-2017/

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.

East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana

[Illustration: Laura Freeman]

A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.

It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »

Grilling With Vinegar

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »

Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder

Dive into the cheesy bread experience »

The Definitive Guide to Eggs

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor

Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »

Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Read all about chaat »

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods

[Illustration: Katie Shelly]

Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Check out our favorite fictional foods »

How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about how to step up your salad game »

The Best Things I Ate in Japan

[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]

I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »

The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer

Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »

The Pho I Lost

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »

For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor

Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »

What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate

[Photograph: Emily Dryden]

I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about soju »

How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer

Get the full history of Oreos »

A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)

[Illustration: Alex Citrin]

This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »

Obsessed: A Man and His Mold

[Photograph: Chris Anderson]

Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Catch the koji bug, right this way »

For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »

The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer

Dig into some chicken pot pie »

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New Post has been published on http://www.cooksutopia.com/staff-picks-our-favorite-posts-of-2017/

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.

East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana

[Illustration: Laura Freeman]

A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.

It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »

Grilling With Vinegar

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »

Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder

Dive into the cheesy bread experience »

The Definitive Guide to Eggs

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor

Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »

Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Read all about chaat »

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods

[Illustration: Katie Shelly]

Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Check out our favorite fictional foods »

How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about how to step up your salad game »

The Best Things I Ate in Japan

[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]

I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »

The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer

Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »

The Pho I Lost

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »

For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor

Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »

What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate

[Photograph: Emily Dryden]

I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about soju »

How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer

Get the full history of Oreos »

A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)

[Illustration: Alex Citrin]

This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »

Obsessed: A Man and His Mold

[Photograph: Chris Anderson]

Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Catch the koji bug, right this way »

For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »

The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer

Dig into some chicken pot pie »

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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017

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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.

East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana

[Illustration: Laura Freeman]

A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.

It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »

Grilling With Vinegar

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »

Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder

Dive into the cheesy bread experience »

The Definitive Guide to Eggs

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor

Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »

Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Read all about chaat »

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods

[Illustration: Katie Shelly]

Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Check out our favorite fictional foods »

How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about how to step up your salad game »

The Best Things I Ate in Japan

[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]

I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »

The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer

Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »

The Pho I Lost

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »

For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor

Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »

What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate

[Photograph: Emily Dryden]

I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Read more about soju »

How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon/h3>

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer

Get the full history of Oreos »

A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)

[Illustration: Alex Citrin]

This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »

Obsessed: A Man and His Mold

[Photograph: Chris Anderson]

Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Catch the koji bug, right this way »

For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »

The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer

Dig into some chicken pot pie »

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