#writers bagel basket

[thestrawberrymari]

✨️🍓Introduction Post🍓✨️

Mari • she/her • late-diagnosed autistic

✒️ English professor & writer

✏️ a very casual artist

🎬 I make videos sometimes! Check out my channel here and watch me talk about the American Girl DS games and play Kirby's Dream Course with my husband @bacon-with-wings 💙

🫶 Things I love:

•DUNGEON MESHI

•Ghost in the Shell

•Fruits Basket

•Project Diva/Vocaloid

•Fashion Dreamer

•Pompompurin :3

•Madoka Magica

•Graphic novels

•Southern Gothic & horror books

•Weather content (special interest 🌧)

•Gardening & composting 🌱

📑 Tags I use:

•#strawberryprose for drafts and writing ideas

●#bagelbite for photos of my cat Bagel

[xtruss]

Are We Living Through a Bagel Renaissance?

A New Wave of Shops Has Made Its Mark Across the Country—and Shaken New York’s Bagel Scene Out of Complacency.

— By Hannah Goldfield | April 28, 2024 | Nashville Now

Illustration By Milo Targett

A few weeks ago, after a rare earthquake in New Jersey sent tremors through New York, giving the denizens of the five boroughs a mild shock and an immoderate jolt of self-importance, a writer named John DeVore posted the following on X: “i know nyc isn’t the first city to ever experience an earthquake but imagine how Los Angelenos would react if they, one day, suddenly, ate a delicious, fresh bagel in their city.” It’s an old joke, not least because Los Angeles has lately grown rich in bagels—bagels that some New York transplants insist are actually good, bagels that have earned accolades from even the New York Times, which dared publish, in 2021, an article titled “The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York).”

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but to write off bagels made outside of New York would be a mistake—not only because there are plenty of great ones to be eaten elsewhere but because New York’s bagel culture, until recently, was growing rather stagnant. I’m hardly the first to note the broad downward spiral of New York bagels, which were first made by Ellis Island-era Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and, over the course of the twentieth century, began to assimilate. Once uniformly small, dense, salty, and malty—traditionally, the dough is boiled in water and barley malt syrup before baking—bagels surpassed doughnuts in popularity in the U.S. but also evolved to look more like them, becoming sweeter, paler, and softer. Even in New York, they’ve attained obscene new forms (see: the rainbow bagel), adopted increasingly outlandish flavors, such as French toast (what cinnamon-raisin hath wrought!), and grown ever more puffy as traditional methods of hand-rolling gave way to high-output mechanization. Despite popular claims about the quality of municipal water or baking altitude, the science of bagel-making is not about terroir but, rather, context: every bagel reflects the tastes of the people it exists to serve.

L.A. is just one data point in what Bon Appétit has dubbed “The Great Bagel Boom,” and what Sam Silverman, the founder of New York’s annual BagelFest, calls “a bagel revolution.” Cities across America have long been home to flaccid facsimiles of New York-style bagel shops, but lately they’ve been joined by a new breed: bagel businesses undertaken by ambitious, savvy young people, who are seeking not to replicate some Platonic ideal of the bagel so much as to make it their own. Every city—see Miami’s El Bagel, where the menu includes a bagel layered with guava marmalade, cream cheese, and a fried egg, and New Orleans’s Flour Moon Bagels, which offers bagel “tartines” (plus, sometimes, a crawfish-stuffed bialy)—seems to have its own new-wave status bagel, which draws fanfare on social media and long lines in real life. “The bagel business has been, historically, a pretty terrible business, but the rise of this sandwich culture really helps,” Silverman told me. “It’s a vehicle that can infuse any sort of local culture and cuisine.”

The last time I was in L.A., I made a trip to the most famous of the city’s entries to the field. In 2020, the owners of Courage Bagels, who initially peddled their wares from the basket of a bicycle, opened a brick-and-mortar store in Virgil Village, between East Hollywood and Silver Lake. Midmorning on a Monday, I joined a line that had at first seemed reasonable and quickly became a way to spend half a day, snaking down the quiet block, opposite a dollar store and a tattoo parlor. When I started a casual conversation with the woman in front of me, she seemed almost startled. She had moved recently from New York, it turned out, to work as an assistant to an entrepreneur, whose bagel she was waiting to order. “People don’t make small talk in L.A.!” she said. Another former New Yorker in front of her, overhearing us, nodded in weary agreement.

It was easy to see how a Courage bagel could offend, if not enrage, a New York purist. It brings to mind a rustic, crusty baguette: the exterior is dark, craggy, and heavily blistered; the crumb is a little stretchy with a lot of air holes. (Courage bagels are leavened with sourdough starter, rather than commercial yeast.) If you were to scoop it, another move for which a bagel aficionado might make a citizen’s arrest—stay safe out there!—you’d be left with mostly crust. This makes it especially suited to Courage’s main offering: photogenic open-faced sandwiches. Bagel halves are topped with various combinations of cream cheese, jewel-like slices of tomato, thin coins of cucumber, smoked salmon, roe, or sardines, then painstakingly finished with salt, freshly cracked pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, fronds of dill. A Courage bagel is a Los Angeles bagel, ready for its closeup.

You could argue that the nationwide bagel revival has been a boon to New York’s own scene, shaking it out of complacency. Ten years ago, the introduction of Black Seed’s Montreal-inspired bagels, which are thinner and sweeter, boiled in honeyed water, only improved the landscape. Lately, the city has been home to a growing roster of indie bagel-makers, many of whom started by churning them out of restaurant kitchens during off-hours, or at home. On a recent Saturday morning, as I picked up a half-dozen sourdough bagels and a tub of burnt-scallion cream cheese from Wheated Brooklyn, a pizza restaurant just south of Prospect Park, the owner, David Sheridan, told me, “There’s a bagel movement happening in this country.” Louisville, Kentucky, of all places, had inspired him to get into bagels: as he prepared to open a location of Wheated there, he noticed a huge hole in the bagel market. Back in Brooklyn, he dove into R. & D., selling the fruits of his experiments on the weekends.

Earlier this spring, the people behind Leo, a sourdough-pizza place in Williamsburg, opened Apollo Bagels, in the East Village, which serves L.A.-inflected bagels, open-faced and meticulously assembled. (If I were the owners of Courage, I’d cock an eye at Apollo and remind myself that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) The Mud Club, a wood-fired bagel, pizza, and tapas restaurant and dance club in the Hudson Valley, is currently popping up on the Lower East Side in the original location of Scarr’s Pizza, where, the other day, I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese, oozing aioli and roasted-jalapeño-and-tomato jam, on a dense and crusty everything bagel. (They’ll soon open a permanent outpost a few blocks away.) Sakura Smith, the baker behind Bagel Bunny, supplies private clients and sometimes specialty shops with small, soft bagels made from a vegetable-flecked dough; it’s leavened with a fermented yeast that she says was first grown by a monk in Japan in the nineteen-seventies and feeds off mountain yams, rice, and carrots.

When it comes to my own bagel preferences, I am open to creative recipes but believe that a bagel should be, fundamentally, a humble staple—relatively inexpensive and sold by the dozen, or a multiple thereof. A sandwich has its place, but bagels belong, first and foremost, in a paper sack, hot from the oven (they need not be toasted unless they’ve gone stale), grab-and-go. The new-wave shops, especially outside of New York, don’t all seem to embrace the bagel’s inherent utility. In Washington, D.C., at a café called Ellē, my six sourdough bagels came packaged in individual paper sleeves, as if they were croissants or artisanal chocolate-chip cookies. At Courage, I had to wait—and wait, and wait—for my half-dozen. As the sun grew hotter, and I paced back and forth, restlessly sipping on a rose-flavored lemonade, I had to wonder, What were they doing in there? You could imagine a chef adhering sesame seeds one at a time with a tweezer.

The newcomer bagel that best fits my vision can be found in New York but it was born—sorry, haters—in Westport, Connecticut. One day in the summer of 2020, Adam Goldberg, a flood-mitigation specialist in his forties, was floating in his pool with his cousin, “having margaritas at eight-thirty in the morning,” he recalled recently. “We looked at each other and we decided that it was too hot to make sourdough like we’d been making every other day for the whole pandemic.” They decided to make bagels instead, imagining that they’d be “more refreshing.” After just a couple of weeks of recipe-developing, Goldberg settled on his ideal formula, and it wasn’t long before he was selling bagels out of his back yard. Four years later, the business, PopUp Bagels, is growing rapidly, with multiple locations in Connecticut and in tony precincts including Greenwich Village, Palm Beach, and Wellesley, Massachusetts.

PopUp offers, strictly, bagels and schmear, and if you preorder a dozen to pick up from the store, they will still be warm when the paper bag is passed to you. Goldberg is careful not to describe PopUp bagels as New York bagels. “It was the first thing we dropped from our branding,” he told me. “We’re our own style of bagel.” He uses a proprietary mix of flours and commercial yeast, no sourdough, and he has worked under the guidance of a “dough coach,” a championship baker he’s hired “to refine our recipe so that it’s more mobile.” When I asked him if he’d been aware, before getting into bagels, that there were people who called themselves dough coaches, he said, “No. In fact, my dough coach was unaware of it also. But once I told him he was my dough coach, he was very excited.”

A PopUp bagel is a bit less dense than the most traditional New York bagels; Goldberg wanted to make them light enough that you could comfortably eat more than one. In other ways, a PopUp bagel seems archetypal: small, chewy, with a crisp, golden-brown crust—urbane, and almost chic, in its restraint. Goldberg has kept the flavors classic, offering just plain, sesame, poppy, everything, and salt. He only gets playful with gimmicky (and sometimes great) cream-cheese flavors—Old Bay, ramp, coffee cake—and the occasional absurdist collaboration; just last week, PopUp and Dominique Ansel, of Cronut fame, introduced a limited-time-only Gruyère bagel with escargot butter, for a cool eighteen dollars.

This may seem like an awful lot of fuss over boiled bread with a hole in it, but pedantry is part of the fun. We enjoy outraging the purists and then posturing as purists ourselves, bringing our own tastes and associations to the image of the perfect bagel. I discussed this recently with Zoë Kanan, a pastry chef and baker who can make an excellent bagel anywhere (she once did a stint as a bagel consultant in Mexico City) and who will open a Jewish-ish bakery, called Elbow Bread, on the Lower East Side in May. Kanan and I were both introduced to bagels inauspiciously. Every day in elementary school, in New Haven, I ate a sandwich of Genoa salami on a squishy egg-flavored Lender’s bagel—the brand sold in plastic sleeves in the grocery store. Kanan grew up in Houston, where her weekly order at the Hot Bagel Shop was a strawberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese. Which is to say that, when it comes to bagels, we were blasphemers: in the High Court of Bagel, we’d be sternly sentenced to a penal colony.

Despite these beginnings, or perhaps because of them, Kanan and I now share a strong internal compass about what a bagel should be. “Chew is at the top of the list,” she said, as I nodded fervently at the other end of the line. “It should, I think, give your jaw a little bit of a workout when you’re eating it.” She explained that a low-hydration dough (as opposed to, say, the wetter dough you need for a spongy focaccia) made with high-protein flour gives you a strong gluten structure, and optimal chewiness, but can also result in a bagel that stales quickly. To extend shelf life, she’s come up with a slightly left-field solution: potatoes, roasted whole, skin-on, and mixed in with the flour, yeast, and water. “It adds starch, which locks in moisture,” she explained, and also results in “a really thin, kind of crackery shell of a crust. And then, the interior is chewy, and also tender, and moist.” I pictured an arrow hitting a bull’s-eye.

One New York bagel shop that sates both traditionalist tastes and the Internet’s appetite for absurd viral foods is Utopia, in Whitestone, Queens. Here, they hand-roll the bagels, boil them in enormous kettles, and then bake them in a carrousel oven made in 1947. They’ve got all the essential flavors, including pumpernickel—a favorite of mine, and rarer and rarer these days—but if you want sourdough they have those, too, plus rainbow, piña colada, and jalapeño-cheddar. As if to provoke the snobs who complain about ballooning bagel sizes, they also sell a ten-pound “party style bagel wheel,” an audacious rejoinder to the party sub. The giant everything bagel I ordered the other day was, I’m sad to say, completely raw in the center. (My theory was that they’d taken it out too soon, when the garlic that dotted the exterior had started to burn.) But I’d also ordered a party-style pizza bagel, a sesame ten-pounder sliced in half, scooped (the extra dough gets turned into garlic knots), and layered with marinara sauce, mozzarella, and chopped chicken cutlet. It was outrageous yet comfortingly familiar and, dare I say, spectacular. ♦

— By Vaseline

[aughtpunk]

I posted 10,439 times in 2021

125 posts created (1%)

10314 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 82.5 posts.

I added 250 tags in 2021

#amwriting - 41 posts

#writer - 31 posts

#writing - 31 posts

#writinglife - 31 posts

#themidwife - 26 posts

#amwritingfantasy - 25 posts

#fairytale - 19 posts

#themidwifefables - 16 posts

#midwifefables - 16 posts

#amwritingscifi - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 86 characters

#i started writing because someone on a podcast described the birth scene from twilight

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Basket update! Now for the tricky part (at Granite Falls, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CMr1eWDDkqf/?igshid=pbgbg46j5aq7

13 notes • Posted 2021-03-21 14:56:52 GMT

#4

My new Good Omens fanfic Snevolution (Snake Revolution) is up! Featuring my adopted son Warlock #GoodOmens #GoodOmens30 #Crowley https://archiveofourown.org/works/29518662 https://www.instagram.com/p/CLaB-eBgSM3/?igshid=u1kcd13zp65g

17 notes • Posted 2021-02-17 20:28:22 GMT

#3

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: Disco Elysium (Video Game)

Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim KitsuragiHarry Du Bois & Kim Kitsuragi

Characters: Harry Du BoisKim Kitsuragi

Additional Tags: Movie Nightdate fic Fluff Cuddling Snuggling First Kiss Can I stop writing fluff about these two probably not Kim POV The failed version of Smallest Church is the best version fight me Not beta We sing our hearts out at karaoke like men

(These were not dates.

Sure they might sound like dates. Look like dates. Were better than actual dates Kim had gone on. But no matter what everyone said down at the 41st they were not dates. Every time someone joked about it Kim would silence them with a twitch of his eyebrow and change the topic back to work. Sure it didn’t help that Harry kept calling them dates no matter how many times Kim corrected him, but the truth could not be denied. These were not dates.)

Kim and Harry watch a movie. Kim totally falls asleep. Cuddling happens.

19 notes • Posted 2021-08-13 16:36:06 GMT

#2

Oink. #knitting #knittersofinstagram #knitstagram #knit #knittingaddict #knitter (at Granite Falls, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTnLUICn7Ki/?utm_medium=tumblr

19 notes • Posted 2021-09-09 19:11:15 GMT

#1

BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD

Toast always lands jelly-side-down around Crowley.

This does not seem to be a big deal at first. After all, even if you take into consideration the thousands upon thousands of meals he and Aziraphale shared it still wasn’t likely that any toast would fall during that time. Toast tended to stay put on the table. It’s toast. And, one might even argue, of course the toast is going to land jelly-side down. That side’s heavier. It only makes sense.

Which is what Aziraphale always thought until he held a piece of toast roughly a finger’s length over a plate and dropped it only for the bread to defy all laws of physics and land jelly-side-down anyway. He then went on to test it with jam, preserves, marmalades, compote, and even had one go with peanut butter. Every piece of toast landed spread-side-down no matter the height in which it was dropped. After he had ruined nearly half of a loaf worth of toast Aziraphale decided this was A Demon Thing and left it at that. 

***

Toast always lands butter-side-up around Aziraphale.

At first Crowley assumed this was An Angel Thing. It certainly sounded like an angel-thing. Forever blessed by Her Grace to protect her flock from ever having to wipe butter off the kitchen floor with a paper towel. Crowley had even went out of his way to see if the type of bread mattered. After making his way through the local bread aisle he went on to try bread-adjacent test subjects like bagels, croissants, muffins, scones, and even the most hellish breakfast item he could think of: an english muffin. All landed butter-side up. 

What Crowley didn’t know is that this wasn’t An Angel Thing. Why would it be? Aziraphale was the only angel who enjoyed eating enough to go out of his way to butter a slice of toast. In reality this was An Aziraphale Thing, as no bread or bread-adjacent food item wanted to hurt Aziraphale’s feelings by landing the wrong side down. Even breakfast items couldn’t stand to see him disappointed. It was for the best that Crowley didn’t know this. Being on the same emotional wavelength as bread would just be too much for his demonic heart to take. 

***

As always, it was the humans who mucked things up. 

Aziraphale and Crowley hadn’t meant to befriend the humans they met at the end of the world. Usually they did their best to keep away from humanity. Nothing personal, of course, it just never seemed worth a bother considering they would be dead before you really got to know them. Better to admire humans from afar and help/hinder any of the mayflies that wandered across their path. 

(Neither man would ever admit that the exact opposite was true. In fact, it was really easy to truly know a human inside and out in a short amount of time. Even easier to befriend them, or love them. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The short amount of time. Both men carried a graveyard of memories in their hearts. And with every gravestone there would always be that promise--never again, keep them distant, it’s not worth it--only for them to dig burial plot when another human entered their lives. But enough about that. We’re here to talk about bread.)

They were prepared to leave the humans to their now-normal lives right up until the lot of them showed up at Aziraphale’s shop one morning demanding answers. Turns out that there was just enough non-humanity around them to trip up their brain’s instinct to forget everything that had happened. Every time one of their memories started to slip another person would clear their throat and loudly ask if anyone else was visited by aliens that day to make it all come crashing back. 

In the end it was decided they should all get together once a month for a nice cup of tea at Anathema’s place. Aziraphale agreed if only to make sure there were no odd side effects from Adam’s meddling. Crowley agreed simply because the other option was getting poked with a large silver pin over and over until he confessed his nipple amounts. They were both lying to themselves, but that was fine too.

(Don’t worry, we’re getting to the bread)

They were all having a nice conversation about how Crowley invented showing up fifteen minutes late with Starbucks to balance out Aziraphale’s invention of showing up fifteen minutes early with a dozen donuts when Adam lost his grip on his marmalade drenched scone and helplessly watched as it landed face-down with a large squelch. 

“That’s Crowley’s doing too,” Aziraphale said with a sigh, “toast landing jelly-side-down I mean.”

“Come on angel, it’s not like I’m doing it on purpose!” Crowley pointed accusingly at Aziraphale, “at least I’m not bending reality to keep butter from getting all over the carpet.”

“I’m sorry?” Anathema asked after the awkward silence went on a moment too long. 

“Toast always lands butter-side-up around my angel here,” Crowley said willfully ignoring the fact he said my angel, “go on, test it.”

Anathema took a scone, slathered the top with butter, held over the edge of the table and let go.

The scone landed butter-side-up. 

She picked the scone up, held it butter-side-down, and dropped it.

Butter-side-up.

She didn’t even see it flip around. 

“I don’t know why, but somehow that’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to us yet.” Said Madame Tracy. 

At that point both celestials and humans alike might have gone back to their tea and forgotten the whole toast-jam-butter thing ever happened, but Newt just had to ask a question. That’s what humans did after all. They got in trouble by asking questions. No wonder Aziraphale and Crowley liked them so much.

“So, wait, what happens if you spread butter and jam on the same side?”

Aziraphale and Crowley stared blankly at Newt. 

“You haven’t thought to try that?” Asked Madame Tracy. 

See the full post

261 notes • Posted 2021-02-11 17:34:13 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[cyanwormonastring]

I Can Be Useful: Part 5

are you feeling uninspired? do you want a list of completely random things to get you thinking? of course you don’t, anyway here you go. (my friend pointed out that these would make good chapter titles, so here you go, bitches with writer’s block)

1. My Grandma Wished Me A Happy Birthday, I Wish Her To Die

2. Stale Chocolate Chip Muffins

3. "I'm Just a Painter and I'm Drawing a Blank"

4. 9:00 PM

5. That One Friend of a Friend Who's Just a *Bit* Too Obsessed With Queer Representation in a Netflix Show

6. "I Would Never Listen To That Emo Music” I Said...

7. A Really Shitty Rendition Of An Album Cover On An Index Card

8. ...And Look At Where I Am Now, Motherfuckers

9. Listening to Classic Rock On A Saturday

10. You Look So Good In Blue

11. The Woodchucks Are Dead

12. Bagel Supremacy

13. Spinning Like A Ballerina

14. "I Know I'm Supposed to Love You"

15. Some Pretty Dusty Speakers

16. COOKIE JARRR

17. Who Needs a Boyfriend When You've Got- Uh- A Basket Full of Rocks?

18. I'm Going To Make It! (I, In Fact, Did Not Make It)

19. The Homophobic Employee Wishes You A Happy Pride (They Know You're Gay, Susan)

20. I'm Never Going To See Them Again

[dawnpil]

first draft

summary: you were raised to be careful with your heart around witches, but one pretty word witch is determined to change that. pairing: young k x reader genre: fluff bc honestly what else do i write notes: a continuation to a series i started literally a year and a half ago, oops (stone witch!wonpil)

you know about the day house boys, of course

you’re starting your junior year and they’re the most popular people on campus, after all

hell, you’ve got one of wonpil’s hematite rings for focus

your favorite scarf is one dowoon knitted warmth into the fabric of

you’ve seen brian around the house, but you’ve never gone to him for his magic

out of the witches his magic can do the widest variety of things, which means he charges the steepest price, and you’re just a broke college kid

your friend, who goes to brian every full moon, tries to explain how his prices work

but you’re not having it; you need your voice too much to lose it for three days, and you’re not sure you have anything else he’d want

here’s the thing: word magic evolves constantly, and word witches always need to know what phrases are going in or out of style

so from what you’ve gathered, brian’s price for his magic is to take a customer’s words for varying durations of time

and you can’t have that, not with your three a.m. spot on the campus radio

besides, you don’t really have a need for his magic: you’re never in enough trouble that dowoon’s woven charms don’t work, or wonpil doesn’t have some sort of stone for your problems

you avoid his magic successfully for two and a half years, but you don’t avoid him

he’s in your fundamentals of linguistics course your second semester, soft black hair falling in his face as he takes diligent notes

when you go to pick up dowoon’s charms at the start of fall sophomore year brian’s curled up untangling thread with nimble fingers, and he throws a soft little smile your way

you’re not sure what makes you proceed to drop your wallet and dowoon’s charm four times before you make it back out the door, but your friend is convinced it was brian’s smile and won’t accept any other answer

you shove their arm, tell them that they shouldn’t be projecting their own infatuation onto you

but it happens again near winter break, when you’re selecting a few pieces of onyx and rose quartz for your friends back home

brian’s wandering wonpil’s shop, inspecting the little baskets of crystals, and when you turn to head to wonpil’s register you nearly run into brian

startled, you start to take a step back, eyes wide, but he reaches out to stop you

it’s a good thing he does, or you’d have knocked over the table of crystals, and you really don’t have the money for that

his hands are warm on your shoulders, his dark eyes apologetic, and this close his chest is a whole lot broader than you’d thought from a distance

“sorry,” he says, and his voice is more musical than you’d remembered from linguistics. “i should have been more careful.”

this time you don’t lose your fine motor skills, but you do forget how to speak

he’s just. beautiful, this close up

so you stare at him and try to remember how to form words and after a moment he laughs gently, the sound honey-sweet

“i didn’t even have to cast seen and not heard to enchant you. interesting.”

is he flirting? you think maybe so. your friend thinks definitely so.

that really kind of terrifies you; it’s not that you don’t trust the day house witches, just that you were raised with tales of enchantments and love potions and falsities, and that kind of cautionary bedtime story is hard to forget

so you take to avoiding him as much as possible; you send your friend to get your hematite and carnelian recharged, and even as the warmth charm in dowoon’s scarf starts to fray you refuse to go get a replacement

if you could never set foot in day house again you’d be perfectly content

despite this you still think about him, about the silk in his voice when you go to karaoke night, about the way you always seem to find him in the library hunched over his textbooks at odd hours with coffee cups littering the table, about the way sometimes you daydream about holding his hand on the way to the coffee shop just off campus

you try to ignore these thoughts, try to ignore him, and bury yourself in your work for the rest of sophomore year

but the thing about junior year is that your classes are getting more serious, and as a creative writing major you’re expected to have new work for two different classes almost every week, and it’s draining

your carnelian is losing its charge quicker than ever, because this far into the semester you’re struggling to find creativity this constantly and on top of all your other work

it completely loses charge a day before a ten-page story is due for workshop and you’re stuck with a blinking cursor and a blank page

your roommate looks over when you slam your head onto your desk and understands immediately

“go to brian,” they say. “he’s got a spell for writer’s block, according to momo.”

if you weren’t so tired, so frustrated, so desperate you would never have considered it

but it only takes a few minutes’ persuasion for you to be lacing your boots and shoving your laptop into your bag and heading for the familiar little house

jae’s the one to open the door for you, feathers in his blond hair, and he grins

“please tell me you’re here for younghyun. he won’t shut up about you, not after the open mic last tuesday.”

you consider turning around and leaving—the poem you’d read at the open mic was much more personal than you’re usually comfortable sharing, and to think brian was so focused on it terrifies you a little

but then you think about how close you were to crying out of frustration, about the days of staring at that blank page and ticking cursor, and you nod at jae

“he’s upstairs,” jae says, “third door on the left.”

brian’s playing guitar when you find his room, sitting on his bed plucking at chords with his black hair falling over his face as he bends over the instrument

you freeze, in the doorway: you had no idea the room jae was sending you to was brian’s bedroom, since wonpil has the shop set up downstairs and sungjin works out of the kitchen. this is oddly intimate, and you almost turn tail and run

before you can brian looks up, his fingers stilling, and he smiles, and your resolve melts

he beckons you in to sit at his desk chair, and he sets the guitar aside to look seriously at you. “what are you here for?”

“writer’s block.” you run your hand through your hair with a sigh of frustration, and he smiles sympathetically

“writer’s block like you don’t have any ideas or writer’s block like you don’t know how to start putting them into words?”

there’s no magic in his voice, not yet, but there might as well be, with the enchanting lilt in every syllable. you could listen to his voice forever, you think

“the—um, the second one,” you say, fidgeting under his dark eyes, and again he nods

“my price is your words for a period of time.” it’s your turn to nod. “with this spell it’s usually a day, but i know you’ve got the radio show in a few hours and i wouldn’t want you to not be able to do your job.”

he pauses, considering, and you tug at your sleeves as you try to find a way around having your words taken away

“why...why do you take people’s words? like, what about them is the reason they’re your price, when you could be making money or something?”

“it’s how my magic works,” brian explains. “the more people use a certain phrase, the more power it’s imbued with, so i take people’s words to see if they can give me new spells.”

this fascinates you—your parents had never let you learn about magic, and as a result hearing the littlest bit about it is making you think of questions you never knew you had, and you want to learn everything about this

it’ll be good for stories, anyway, you think, good world-building and maybe an opportunity for new types of characters and stories

and you might have a way out of this, a way to pay brian fairly while keeping your words

“what about languages other than english?”

he pauses at this. “i have a few korean spells i got from my mom, but i hadn't thought about other languages. which one were you thinking?”

you’ve taken spanish courses for a few years, and you speak it with your roommate and their friend, enough to be reasonably conversational, and when you explain this to brian he nods and you spend another five minutes hashing out a schedule for you to come over and teach him

finally the business has been arranged and you set up your laptop at the little table he keeps in his room for this purpose, and he sets a mug of coffee and a bagel next to your things

“odds are you’ll be writing for a while, and the spell makes it hard to take breaks. if you need anything else let me know and i’ll grab it for you.”

his eyes are soft obsidian, and despite your overall hesitation about magic you wonder if there isn’t some sort of enchantment that’s making your heart beat like this

but a second later he sets his hand on your shoulder and murmurs “use your words”

it’s like a dam bursts: suddenly your fingers are flying over the keys, your mind racing sentences ahead faster than your hands can manage, and the story you’ve had rattling around in your head is taking shape on the formerly blank page

when you resurface a few hours later, a completed draft sitting in front of you, brian smiles as you take a bite of the bagel

“got something finished?” you nod, and return the smile

“it’ll need editing, but i got the draft done for workshop, and that’s what’s important.”

a glance at the clock says you barely have enough time to rush to the dorm basement the radio uses as its studio, so you gather up your things and down the last of the coffee and clamp the bagel between your teeth as you tie your boots

you’ve got one foot out the door when he calls your name and you turn, a question in your eyes since there’s bread in your mouth

“call me younghyun,” he says. “younghyun’s for friends.”

is that what you are now? you debate this with yourself for a week; you’ve only gone to him for one spell, though the first of your spanish sessions goes well

he’s got plans for de nada and de tal palo tal astilla freaked you out a little bit when he used it to perfectly replicate the origami rose you got from a girl in one of your workshops last semester

you think if you aren’t friends yet you’d like to be, now that you’re losing your fear of his magic

on the nights you lie awake staring at the fairy lights strung above your bed thinking of obsidian eyes and nimble fingers and lilting words you let yourself admit maybe you want to be more than friends

it takes another two weeks for anything to happen

it’s the last of your spanish sessions, the last of your payment for the spell, the last of your excuses to spend time with brian

he seems nervous the whole time, too distracted to remember en boca cerrada no entran moscas and as a result he has yet to make the silencing charm work

no matter how much you coach him through the syllables slowly, his attention is elsewhere

to be fair, yours is as well: trying to figure out where his mispronunciations are is giving you an excuse to stare at his lips, and regardless of whether he works magic into his words his voice is ridiculously easy to lose yourself in

before you know it the time is over, and you sigh and remind him of the list of phrases you’ve given him so he can strengthen the spells without your help, and he hesitates with his backpack slung over one shoulder but can’t seem to bring himself to say anything

as you study his now-familiar features you give in, and this time you’re the one to stop him halfway out the door

“one more phrase,” you say, and he turns and you square your shoulders

“tú me gustas.” i like you.

he’s like a deer in headlights, eyes wide, but he recovers fairly quickly and crosses back to you

“i thought you weren’t a witch,” he says, a smile playing on his lips

“i’m not,”you say, though your voice barely makes it above a whisper; his hair is flopping into his eyes and all of your restraint is going into keeping your fingers out of the dark curls

“then how can one sentence be so enchanting?”

he grins when this time you’re the one to get flustered, and he reaches out and takes your hand and your words get stuck in your throat

“what kind of word witch am i if i can’t find the words to confess to the person i like?” he says, then shrugs. “since you confessed first, can dinner be my treat?”

the first time younghyun kisses you he meets you just offstage when you finish a reading of one of your short stories in the little student-run coffee shop: your papers are still clutched in the hands you throw around his neck, and there’s a smile on his lips as they press against yours, and the moment weaves an enchantment you know has nothing to do with younghyun’s magic and everything to do with younghyun and the way the two of you fit against each other like a perfectly-crafted metaphor

dating younghyun is coffee shop dates to people-watch and pick out threads of language, is borrowing his hoodies even when it gets too warm for them, is laughter and falling in love with the way he scrunches his nose when he’s acting cute, is resting your head on his shoulder at a poetry reading and pressing kisses to his jaw between poems

dating younghyun is him waiting outside the studio at 3 a.m. with hot chocolate and that assignment you needed to print, is running your fingers through his hair until he relaxes enough to sleep after getting anxious about a test, is teaching each other the languages you speak and rewarding each other with kisses when you remember vocab, is closing his laptop and pulling him to bed when he refuses to stop working, is coffee and ink-stained hands and switching languages mid-sentence

more than anything dating younghyun is like a story, a draft that gets better the more you pour time and effort and love into it, is the magic of surprising turns of phrase, is a collaboration you couldn’t ask for a better co-author for, and you know for a fact this is going to be your magnum opus.

[aspiratinganxiety]

Birthentine’s Day

@rock-x-kpop-fangirl:

Hey 💜🖤, first of all, I hope you are having a good day/night :) Secondly, could I please make a request for a fic/imagine with Jason Todd where the reader (his ‘partner’ in vigilantism and life 😂) dislikes Valentine’s Day because it’s also her birthday and she’s always found that awkward. Plus she claims to hate all the cliche lovey things because she tries to be dark but in reality has a soft spot for some things? I am so sorry if this is weirdly explained, I wasn’t really sure how to put it into words 😂😬 Thanks anyway 💜🖤❤️

 I got this fic done the night before so that I could be sure to get it up for you this Valentine’s!!! Have a good one, babe. I hope that this fic makes you feel the love.

Tag List:  @possiblyelven, @thepuckishrogue, @jinkies-its-a-writer, @queeniepearls (If you want to be tagged, let me know! For more fics, check out my masterlist.)

“I don’t like this,” you mumble again, squeezing your eyes shut too tightly in an effort to ignore the sticky sensation of Jason’s sweaty palms on your face.

He chuffs behind you, eager like a schoolboy and unperturbed by your repetitive negative comments. “You said the same thing last year, and we had a great time.”

“No,” you correct him. “You had a great time. I had an allergic reaction to the dehydrated strawberry powder that some asshole decided to sneak into hot cocoa mix.”

“Oh, right. I forgot that happened.”

“Yup, the same way you forgot that I was allergic to strawberries.”

Jason shrugs in response to your petulance. He directs you out of the elevator and down the familiar hall of your apartment complex with his hands still covering your eyes.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he says. “You get some itchy hives; it’s not like your throat closes up or anything. Also, I will remind you for the millionth time that I didn’t know the hot cocoa was actually chocolate-covered-strawberry cocoa. It wasn’t written anywhere on the packaging. I picked that basket for the flowers, not the other junk that came with them.”

You scoff, unsoothed. Not being one for overt gestures of affection, the contrariety of falling for someone like Jay isn’t lost on you. Jason Peter Todd remains the sappiest grown man you’ve ever met, even after years of being brutally teased by both Roy and yourself. Managing to tread water as the sole target of all his intense romantic focus is a wonder. That your sweet boyfriend never lets your mopey cynicism thwart his elaborate conglomeration of birthday and Valentine’s plans is nothing short of an incomprehensible act of God.

Back before you were dating he’d bypass all of the lovey-dovey pink shit and make sure February 14th was about nothing more than you racking up another year. It was nice to have a buddy willing to ditch girlfriends and ignore the pleas of other single friends not wanting to slog through an awkward evening of mockery and embarrassment alone. The memories of those previous birthdays are treasured far above any of the attempts Jason’s made to mix the two celebrations thus far.  

You genuinely appreciate Jason’s dedication to making your birthday special without overlooking the couples’ holiday of the year. However, you just aren’t in the mood to welcome any of his efforts this evening. The best shots he gets at sweeping you off your feet fall on anniversaries or during unexpected moments of spontaneity, not in observance of poorly-timed cesareans and crappy Hallmark holidays. Jason knows these to be your preferences, even if he doesn’t know your food allergies.

Your sense of dread deepens as the door to your apartment gets unlocked. Jason pushes you into the warm interior, and you half expect a repeat of the surprise birthday party he’d thrown for you almost five years before. When no one vaults from behind your furniture shouting, you take in the smells around you. No baking smell or tacos. Homemade dinner of champions had been a part of your birthday requests last year.

Upon reflection, last year was a pretty great time. Strawberry debacle aside. Not that you’re willing to admit that to your boyfriend until he recognizes the danger of feeding you anything to do with those dastardly little fruits that are so popular this time of year.

Your jitters get the better of you, and you stop trying to guess. “Jason, lemme’ see.”

“You sure?” he teases, setting his chin on your head and weaseling up close behind you.

An impatient huff escapes your throat as you go about tugging his hands off of your face. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, having been covered for quite some time. The scene that greets you melts your heart along with your reservations about celebrating Valentine’s Day. Your couch is covered in a brand new plush throw blanket. Though it is pink, it looks soft enough to be worth the eyesore. Snacks are piled on the coffee table, a wide selection of everything from luxury chocolates to your favorite flavor of potato chip. The TV is paused over the opening titles of the Netflix original you’ve been trying to make Jason binge with you for nearly six months.

You are so touched trying to take it all in that you almost miss what Jason’s saying: “-so I figured, why not both? You told me that time we watched a ton of stupid 90s movies and ate garbage was your favorite birthday.”

“All of the snacks and colors are from Valentine’s day,” you observe, tilting your head back into Jason’s chest.

“Well, accept your cake. And the chips and popcorn. And those nasty frozen pizza things you like.”

“You got me the bagel pizzas?” Your eyes practically have stars in them at this point. This revelation, by far, is the most heartwarming part of the night. Jason loathes the quick frozen foods you’d been living off of before the two of you moved in together and he took initiative in the kitchen.  

Jason grumbles, pretending to be put upon where he’s victorious. “Yeah, I got you your damn gross bagel pizzas.”

“And you baked them in the oven?”

He speaks as though resigned to the childish back and forth, but he loves it. You know he does. “And I baked them in the oven.”

You swoon theatrically while Jason pouts in a good-natured fashion. He catches your weight easily, scooping you up and plopping you on the couch on top of a mountain of heart-related plush items and a bag of those chalky heart candies with corny sayings that nobody likes, but everyone remembers eating.  

You beam at him and snuggle close when he settles in beside you.

This is perfect. Low-key, just the two of you at home, good-bad food, and an awesome show.

How could you have ever doubted him? Jason Peter Todd is a genius, and he’s the best boyfriend with whom you could spend Birthentine’s Day.

[the-mysterious-human]

I was tagged by @i-write-hurt-not-comfort

Are you named after anyone?

My first name is after a netball coach my mum likes and my middle name is a variant of my mum’s name.

When was the last time you cried?

Two days ago because things reminding me of bad memories.

Do you want/have kids?

I kind of want kids but mostly just so I can host the best birthday parties for them and make all the other kids jealous that their mums don’t throw them as amazing birthday parties.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

No, and I’m terrible at detecting it so sometimes I needlessly get salty at people because I thought they were being serious.

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Me? Notice things about people? How out of character...

What’s your eye colour?

Blue.

Scary movie or happy ending?

Scary movie.

Any special talents?

Managing to look terrifying all the time despite actually being small and very sensitive.

Where were you born?

Australia.

What are your hobbies?

Reading and writing.

Do you have any pets?

No, but I want a black cat!

What sports do you play/ have you played?

Running... away from my problems, dodge-responsibility, high-standards jump, basket-case-ball, swimming... in deep shit, all the time.

How tall are you?

162cm. For reference see Astolfo Granatum or Oz.

Favourite subject in school?

Latin American Politics.

Dream job?

Writer or embassy worker (as long as I actually accomplish something in either of those).

I will tag: @d0nt-touch-m3 (thank you for being here for me to tag you) @the-back-row-bandits @the-twisted-otaku , @bagel-san and @kratqa even though I’m pretty sure you three will already have been tagged

[thundercaya]

Hey again, it's the anon that asked about the angst and James helping Thomas. Anyway, if you're more comfortable with it being non-angsty then go for it; you're the writer, I just wanted to give you an idea. I will admit though that I was kind of curious of how James would try to comfort Thomas.

Jefferson hadn’t done anything for Mother’s Day in years. Martha had never been able to have children and his own mother had passed when he was young, so aside from sending cards to his sisters and sisters-in-law, there wasn’t much else to do. For the same reasons, Father’s Day was no different. With no one to either please or disappoint, why bother?

Still, sometimes the onslaught of seasonal advertising got to him and he spent more time thinking about his parents than he’d prefer. He tried his best to busy himself with work and spend as much of his free time as possible with Madison, hoping to distract himself until both holidays passed, but when Mother’s Day hit and he realized he still had to endure for another month, he knew that if he didn’t do something about his feelings they’d come to a head.

A visit to the family plot seemed like a good start, though Jefferson hadn’t gone in quite some time. He didn’t like going alone, but he also didn’t want to ask one of his siblings to go with him. If they weren’t missing their parents at the moment he didn’t want to give them a reason to, and he also didn’t like for them to see that he was hurting. Martha used to go with him, but now she was someone else to visit.

Jefferson knew he should ask Madison directly, but he couldn’t seem to. Instead he simply asked the man to spend a weekend with him at his Virginia home.

Jefferson sat on his request for the duration of the drive on Friday night and all through Saturday. It wasn’t until Sunday morning over coffee and bagels that Jefferson got up the will to ask; “would you be willing to go with me to the cemetery?”

“Yes,” Madison said automatically. Then; “Wait. Who’s dead?”

“No one recently. I just haven’t been by to visit my parents lately.”

Madison stared down at his coffee. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to-”

“No, no, I want to go with you,” Madison assured, meeting Jefferson’s eyes. “Do I, uh, need to dress up? I didn’t pack for it.”

“No, you—have you never gone to a cemetery? I mean aside from a funeral.” Madison did have multiple deceased siblings, but not everyone wanted to be around departed loved ones.

Madison gave a half shrug. “I’ve been to a lot of cemeteries, but never to visit anyone. I’m really not sure of the protocol for that.”

“You don’t have to dress up. But what are you doing hanging out at random cemeteries for the sake of it?”

“They’re peaceful.”

Jefferson grinned. “Right. And you’re also a goth.

“I’m going to ignore that,” Madison said with a roll of his eyes “So, do we… need to stop anywhere? To get… flowers or something?”

Jefferson’s smile softened. “That’s an excellent idea.”

Jefferson placed a basket of chrysanthemums in front of his parents’ shared headstone while Madison stood back a ways, giving him space. Jefferson stayed silent; he didn’t think his parents were really there, or anywhere where they could hear him if he said anything. Realizing he might be a while, he looked over his shoulder at Madison. “You can sit down if you want.”

“No thanks,” Madison said. “There might be ants. And aunts.” In a rush he said; “sorry, reflex. That was in poor taste.”

Jefferson flashed a quick smile. “Aunt Judy’s on my cousin’s mantle, but she would have thought it was funny anyway, so don’t worry about it.”

“I take it you get your healthy sense of humor from your father’s family.”

Jefferson shoved his hands on his pockets as he gazed again at his parent’s headstones. “Well, on his side of the family, Aunt Judy was something of an anomaly. Dad was really stiff, honestly, but my mother was a fan of humor. She would have loved you, you know.”

Madison moved closer and set a hand on Jefferson’s shoulder. “Do you really thinks so?”

“Yeah, you’re exactly the kind of guy she was always telling my sisters to go for.”

“She encouraged your sisters to go for walking disasters?”

Jefferson patted the hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “No, she said to go for someone smart and successful, but make sure he’s funny so he won’t bore you to death. And make sure he supports you just as much as you support him. And if he’s good looking, consider it a bonus.”

“I’m maybe two of those things.”

Jefferson chuckled. “Well, you’re definitely funny. And more than that, you’re here with me right now, which I think would have gone the farthest for earning her approval.”

It was silent for a few moments, though when Madison spoke again it wasn’t difficult for Jefferson to imagine the thought trail that led to his next question.

“So… is Martha not in your family plot?”

“No, I would have given you warning before bringing you here if she was.”

“You don’t have to shelter me from–”

“Not from her. From my… demeanor while being around her.”

“Right,” Madison muttered, obviously berating himself.

Rather than continue to draw attention to the error, Jefferson returned to Madison’s question.

“She wanted to be buried with her family. These days, though, I kind of wish she’d chosen this plot. I….” Jefferson sighed deeply before going on. “Well, I know her relatives would let me in their plot, but… I wouldn’t be able to get you in.” He cleared his throat. “I-I mean, I’m sorry, that’s presumptuous. I’m sure your family–”

“My family does have a plot, yes, but honestly I don’t care about where I’m buried or who else is there. If you want to be with Martha that’s fine. After all, I get to be with you now.”

“Right.” Jefferson huffed out a laugh. “I think you mentioned that you wanted to be… loaded into a canon and blasted into the sun?”

“Just into space in general. Having a destination feels like too much pressure to put on someone who can’t do anything about it anymore.”

“Well, they could launch me into space, too. Would be easier than trying to decide where I want to be buried. I guess it’s kind of like being buried nowhere, but also being with everyone because the entire universe is connected.”

“No, see, I wanted to be launched into space because it’s not connected.”

“I guess it’s just a difference in perspective. But if it suits both our needs, it sounds good to me. Either way I think I’m ready to go.”

Madison stiffened. “What.”

“Home, I mean.”

Madison relaxed. “Oh. Are you sure? We can stay as long as you’d like.”

Jefferson shot him a crooked grin. “Come to think of it, did you know that Mary Shelley lost her virginity on her mother’s gr-”

“Time to go,” Madison said, turning away and heading down the hill.

Jefferson chuckled, and just in case his mother was somewhere where she could hear him he said “sorry, Ma, it was a joke,” before following.

[sunnyrosewritesstuff]

Okay so little known fact, I actually worked at a Panera Bread for like 4 years in college so I would be happy to help you out with this!

Okay first note: What is a Panera Bread?

So you guys have a place over there called Pret, and it’s really close to that! Fast food sandwich, soup, and salad. The difference is it has the atmosphere of a Starbucks: “Come in, pull out your laptop, and live here for the next 4 hours.”

It also has a bakery section (hence the “bread” part, and they are SUPER proud of that sourdough recipe. Like seriously, a piece of the sourdough starter is shared with the restaurant like every night.

A big marketing technique is the “You Pick 2” where you can pick half an entree and pair it with another half. So soup and salad, sandwich and soup, pasta and sandwich, etc. With that, they promote a drink with it (once again think Starbucks) and a bakery item for $0.99. This is very, VERY expensive! I have served people who end up spending up to $20 for a single meal. 😬

Anyways, moving onto: What is it like working for a Panera Bread?

BAKERY: So Panera Breads have 2 different ordering stations: in the cafe and in the bakery. This is your McDonald’s style ordering. Only if you’re working bakery you also have to promote the baked goods, consolidating, and cleaning…OMG you can not BELIEVE the amount of flour, bread crumbs, oats, nuts, and seeds that appear each and every night! There is a bagel wall that each basket has to be removed and cleaned under. There is a bread wall, same thing. Also, there is a machine that cuts the bread into slices that has to be cleaned. This easily takes 20 minutes to get between the teeth, clean the crumb catcher, and wipe it completely down. Baked goods leftover are donated at the end of the night, but you are allowed to take a couple home for yourself to promote “knowing the products”. Bread is taken to the food line to be cut into croutons.

CAFE: Cashiers: take orders, clean tables, sweep/mop. Pretty standard fast food job.

LINE/BACK: Prep and make the food. Clean dishes (Panera uses real ceramic for in cafe). Once again, pretty standard.

BAKER: OKAY! If you’ve stayed with me this long, this is where it gets interesting because this is what I think Guillermo’s job was. So Panera Breads close relatively early for a restaurant. Most are at 9pm, mine was at 10pm. But Bakers work overnight. They stay after everyone (including the manager) leaves for the night to hand prep all of the breads and baked goods for the next day. Their hours are 8/9pm-5/6am. It’s a LONG lonely night. Bakers have to be specially trained on how to work the massive ovens, the recipes, how the products should look. Because let me tell you those bear claws are pretty obvious when they have been proofed correctly (too long they are massive, too short they are small and hard).

But a lot of bakers do go on to be managers because they learn a lot of productivity v. profit on the job because bakers only work the night! If you run out during the day, it is the day managers job to bake more which takes them away from what they should be working on. So Guillermo’s comment of “I would probably be manager” coupled with his natural nightly hours just makes me think he was probably a baker.

Okay, I hope that helps?? I could probably go more in depth on any one subject if you have questions. Feel free to DM me! Always happy to help a fellow writer out. 😁

so I'm trying to write this fic, but I realised that I'm literally about to fall at the first hurdle, because I do not know what Panera Bread actually is.

I know it's some sort of restaurant, and I have a vague notion of something to do with soup in bowls made out of bread.

But if anyone has any information about what the fuck Panera Bread actually is like on the inside/behind the counter etc for this poor Brit, that'd be great cos it's about to get described like a McDonald's if we're not careful

[dodung4]

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If set for toasting, a toaster thermostat operates the higher and lower heating components as selected by the colour controller. If set for baking or broiling, the baking thermostat operates the heating elements as chosen by the temperature controller and probably by a timing mechanism. Although they share a reputation and a operate, toasters and toaster ovens are in many ways distinctive contraptions with their very own sets of professionals and cons to be thought of when deciding between the 2 countertop appliances. And from dwelling to home, cook dinner to prepare dinner, allegiances to both a typical toaster or toaster oven can run deep. Value to install a toaster oven or a traditional oven varies tremendously by region (and even by zip code). Toaster ovens are available in a wide range of sizes, however we narrowed our lineup by taking a look at those who had been large enough to operate as mini ovens—spacious enough to suit 6 slices of bread and tall sufficient to accommodate a 4-pound rooster. Ultimately we ended up with a lineup of 10 toaster ovens priced from about $forty five to about $270. Small cookie sheet. An eight-by-11-inch cookie sheet fits most traditional toaster ovens, however check your model's instruction guide for measurement guidelines. Don't need to head to the kitchen retailer? Aluminum foil all the time works in a pinch. I put this countertop oven to the check to see if it lived as much as the promise of quick, precise cooking. In the course of the Thanksgiving vacation, I put it by means of the paces, and I was happy with the results. It preheated quickly, and the whole lot we cooked — together with a corn casserole and roasted cherry tomatoes — came out completely. It's time to graduate from toast and frozen pizza. Your toaster oven can achieve this way more. Michael Sullivan has spent greater than 50 hours researching and testing toaster ovens for this guide since 2016. As a staff writer at Wirecutter, he has written critiques for all types of kitchen tools and devices, together with toasters This guide builds on work by freelance writer Brendan Nystedt. This Black+Decker is a great alternative if you happen to're in search of a convection toaster oven with standard controls and a large capability. One different thing to remember: Toaster ovens could be good in your mind because they supply precise nourishment. Nowadays, we can't all the time say that about cellphones. Heavy-Duty Equipment: A heavy-duty toaster oven just like the Breville Good Oven will set you again a pretty penny—on this case almost $250—however can carry out almost all of the important tasks of a typical oven in a more compact space. It is a notably great tool for those who are working with an ovenless kitchen. For those who intend to make use of the oven for one- or two-person dishes, reheating, or other easy duties such as baking a number of cookies, a smaller unit may be a smart choice. A number of shelf racks - Having options for positioning the oven shelf provides extra control over distance between food and the heating component. Toasters are typically superior at their main job—toasting—and will result in a more even and consistent brown on your bread or bagel than its counterpart, because the toaster oven depends on a rack, which might block the warmth source from portions of the floor area.

Our Toaster Oven Pan is the perfect size for reheating leftovers and heating up frozen foods like hen nuggets and fries. The unglazed cooking surface will provide you with the excellent results our stoneware is understood for each time you use it. Stoneware can be used in typical, convection and microwave ovens, and is freezersafe. Stoneware is heat-proof against 450°F (230°C). Don't use Stoneware under broiler or on direct warmth source. Comply with oven producer's guidelines.

From Cuisinart to Breville to Black & Decker, we've got a fantastic collection of one of the best toasters and toaster ovens in your kitchen. Creator Bio: I write bizarre, cynical, sarcastic, typically satirical stuff. Tech, social media, porn, video games. Question every little thing. Time is chaos. Chaotic impartial. Toasters rule. Finally, the oven's exterior can get sizzling throughout use, so again, it really works best in a roomy, ethereal kitchen. The $four hundred Breville Smart Oven Air , the equipment I used for this information, ships with loads of extras. They embrace a roasting pan (9 by 13 inches), broiling rack, and pizza pan (thirteen-inch). Breville even throws in a mesh basket rack for correct air frying. A more recent model” of the FlashXpress (the PAN-NB-G110PW ) is listed on Amazon, however it is just a white model of the identical toaster oven.

On the entire, it's probably the greatest toaster ovens in Singapore as a result of it is an amazing combination of value and high quality. The Good Oven Plus had low availability on the time of our testing, so we opted to not take a look at it. It is very similar to the Smart Oven Professional, which we have beforehand dismissed. There are a number of toaster oven models, every with its own options. Nevertheless, most operate in the same manner and can be diagnosed and repaired by making use of the solutions that observe. Convection toaster ovens typically have all the features of normal toaster ovens however may warmth food extra rapidly by circulating hot air. The 4-Slicer: For a barely bigger investment, you will get a more premium, 4-slice mannequin just like the Cuisinart Classic four-Slice Toaster While a larger-capability toaster can be useful if you happen to're preparing toast for multiple individuals directly, it would take up slightly more room in your countertop or in your cupboard. The toaster oven actually shines in its skill to brown more than simply toast. Look for an oven with a number of functions resembling broiling and baking, which let you make complete meals and baked deal with just with this one equipment. Advanced toaster ovens will actually have a defrosting choice for components that you take proper out of the freezer. Toaster ovens operate much like toasters. Nonetheless, a toaster oven is more complex and is typically dearer to purchase. The higher value signifies that repairs are easier to justify. may nuong banh mi sandwich 'll probably assume twice earlier than tossing a $75 toaster oven into the recycle bin. And since toaster ovens are much less compact, they're often simpler to work on than pop-up toasters. Beyond efficiency, there are different options that set the Panasonic FlashXpress apart from the competition. Hooks on the door assist eject the toaster's wire rack so you do not have to achieve your hand as far into the oven cavity to retrieve your food. Though this characteristic was frequent with some of the bigger, more expensive models we tested, the Panasonic FlashXpress was one of many few to include door hooks at a lower price. CR's take: The 1,800-watt Breville Sensible Oven Air Convection additionally garners a Very Good score in our baking test, like the Breville above, however it has eight rack positions and a wider temperature range (eighty° F to 480° F). It's terrific at toasting, however the slowest of the models featured right here. Past the fundamentals, it has a convection option, a setting that dehydrates vegatables and fruits for healthy snacking, and an air fryer that trims the fats from favorite foods. How? By using high heat and a convection fan to flow into scorching air to "fry" meals with little or no oil. We tried it, cooking fresh rooster wings, frozen curly fries, and a wide range of other foods, and found that they had been crispy outside and moist inside.

The most effective toaster ovens are extremely accurate at regulating temperature, even higher than some wall ovens, Bishop says. ATK's winning Breville model different no more than 2 degrees from its goal temps, as opposed to the typical 25 levels in a home oven (the poorer performing toaster oven models have been off by as much as 60 levels). Ruspino explains toaster ovens have particular wattage configurations to make sure accuracy and the precise sample of warmth relying on which perform is selected. That is useful for baked goods, such as muffins or cookies. In the event you're somebody who likes to stash cookie dough within the freezer to bake off just a few at a time, the toaster oven is the perfect solution to go. In truth, ATK discovered that sugar cookies made in convection-geared up toaster ovens by which a fan helps flow into hot air baked faster and extra evenly.

Our top-rated toaster oven was once again the Breville Sensible Oven , which prices about $250. This oven had very accurate temperature control, varying simply 1 diploma from our goal temperature over a 2-hour interval. The results of our cooking checks had been remarkably consistent: toast was evenly browned, rooster was bronzed and crispy, cheese melted simply, and cookies were completely golden and chewy. Its heating elements, that are made from quartz, heated up and cooled down rapidly. It is a reasonably large oven, and might accommodate a thirteen by 9-inch steel baking dish (with no handles) or our winning small rimmed baking sheet We also beloved its intuitive dials, nonstick inside, and black enamel pans that offered good browning but had been nonetheless straightforward to wash. The Breville Compact Sensible Oven is additional down our checklist as a result of we liked the compact design of the Mini Oven better. If you want a larger Breville toaster oven, you may think about the company's largest choice, the BOV800XL , which holds six slices of bread, a thirteen-inch pizza, and will nonetheless fit below most cupboards as a result of it's 16.25 inches excessive. With 1800 watts of power, it heats up shortly and toasts bread evenly on either side. On high of that, it employs refined-yet-user-friendly inside temperature compensation expertise, which suggests the ideal cooking time based mostly on the number of toasts. It additionally comes with a speed convection button, which lets you prepare dinner with out waiting for the oven to heat up first. The fairly priced Panasonic FlashXpress excels at making toast, cookies, and frozen snacks. In our assessments, it cooked meals evenly and didn't generate any hot spots that might otherwise cause inconsistent toasting. Impressively, it made toast faster than many of the other models we tried. At round 1 cubic foot in quantity, it takes up very little space on a counter, but it's nonetheless large enough to fit four pieces of bread or two slices of leftover pizza. We expect the Panasonic is greatest for people who just need to use a toaster oven for toast or different small jobs, like preparing a handful of frozen snacks. For engaging in greater duties, think about getting our different picks, the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 Chef's Convection Toaster Oven or the Breville BOV800XL Smart Oven , which hold nine and 6 pieces of bread, respectively. Rack positions: Most toaster ovens have two rack positions, but the largest have three. The added rack place permits for much more cooking versatility and usable house, particularly for air frying or dehydrating. As a common rule of thumb, the uppermost positions are used for broiling, while the middle are used for toasting bread and baking, and the bottom is used for baking large roasts or pizzas. This mannequin consists of nearly all of the options you'll find in our authentic Breville Sensible Oven pick. Nonetheless, the Good Oven Air has a roomier inside. It can toast 9 slices of bread, roast a 14-lb turkey, and fit either a 9×13-inch pan or a 12-cup muffin tray with ease. In addition to having a wide range of cooking functions and a vivid, easy to learn LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY display, this countertop oven contains a mild so you'll be able to easily examine on your culinary masterpiece — or your piece of toast. Either manner, it is one other useful characteristic to help ensure the cooking process goes easily.

[canaryatlaw]

okay. well today was fine I guess. nothing special. I woke up sometime after 12 i think, probably around 12:30, changed into real clothes and went downstairs. had some food and went outside for a little bit enjoying the sun. after that nobody was around for a bit, so I took this as an opportunity to watch this week’s Batwoman episode on my laptop with my earbuds in (so nobody else knows because my brother’s are giant homophobes and my mom isn’t too great with it either). I liked the episode, I feel like the last two have been really strong and are hopefully leading up to an epic grand finale. I’m not sure what the plan is as far as airing the final episodes that may or may not have actually been finished before all this started, so we’ll have to see what happens there. after that there wasn’t really much else to do, so we’re just kinda hanging around for most of the day, but with important conversations thrown in there about things and trying to get things done, because there is a lot of stuff that needed to get done. at this point it seems like I’m no longer going to have the financial backing I’ve had thus far from my family, which is something I’ve expected to happen basically when all of this happened and started trying to put more in my savings, and I know I was extremely lucky to have that support in the first place, so while it’s somewhat inconvenient, I’m all that upset about it, I know I’m still in a better financial situation than a lot of other people and I should be grateful for that. Prior to this though I had started covering most of my expenses myself, the only thing that was charged to the parents credit card (the accounts of which are closed now) were eating out, health care/insurance stuff, and amazon purchases lol. but I don’t think it’ll be a big deal, we will have to cut down on eating out but I have a plan that will hopefully work for that, and I’m getting onto my job’s health insurance next month anyway. but yeah, we kinda chilled out for a bit. someone brought dinner, coincidentally from the same italian restaurant from last night (it’s close to our house so people probably thought it was convenient) but with slightly different dishes (penne alla vodka instead of baked ziti, veal marsala, and also chicken parm which was just dang good so I was fine with having it for two nights). all the food has really been great, but honestly at this point I want to eat some pizza, I’m only here so long and want to take advantage of that while I can, but it seems dumb to order extra food when we have a plethora in the kitchen anyway. oh well. I realized tonight I could get bagels delivered, so I will DEFINITELY be taken advantage of that soon, probably tomorrow and if not the next day. it’s weird though, because there’s all this stuff around the house, gift baskets, flowers, fruit arrangements, cards, and virtually a never ending string of comments and likes on anything I post. I haven’t even posted anything with any actual feelings yet, it’s just been more basic stuff, but it gets blown up anyway. and I just sit her and look at all of this and everything that’s being done, and while I’m grateful for all the ways people have reached out, I can’t help but feel that in the end it’s all useless, and I would trade all of it in a heartbeat for even just one more minute with my Dad. I just kind of feel numb with all of it, knowing I should be happy that people care, but I feel like there’s nothing right now that can actually help me where I need it right now. words are great, words of comfort are great, but there’s nothing that can be said that actually makes any different. I very much appreciate support from everyone who has reached out, though typing out “thank you, I appreciate it” to people I don’t actually know or people I haven’t spoken to in ten years. it’s all a lot and I know it’s going to take a while to process all this trauma, and I am going to start therapy when I get back to Chicago (I’m leaning towards trying virtual therapy and have done some research on that which is a hell of a lot cheaper and honestly is a lot less awkward than having to talk to someone in person). but yeah, sigh. anyway. after dinner I hung around the living room for a bit until Legends came on at 9. I liked the episode a lot, the last few have been really good, and it was just so entertaining and daring in the right ways. I was absolutely losing it when it became apparent that (spoiler alert) the culprit was GARY’S DOG who turns out he “rescued” from Hell???? the son of sam shout out there with him claiming a dog made me do it was absolutely hysterical, and I applaud the writers for that stroke of genius. I really like getting to see Mick interact with Lita, which I can’t say is a plot line I’d been really interested in up to this point, but I really enjoy getting to see him grow into more and more of a father the more interactions he has with her and having the kind of character growth that led him to push his daughter out of the way so the demon dog will attack him instead. that was such a great moment for me. but yes of course, we need to talk about Sara’s “power.” it’s going to be interesting to see from here how it’s actually going to manifest and the ways in which it will function (like she had the vision about killing Gary right before she had the impulse to, but then they use it as a locator when tracking Mick down with John, so it looks like it could work a few different ways. I think it’s fucking hysterical that Sara is really not inconvenienced at all by not actually being able to see, it makes total sense with her league of assassins training and watching he kick butt even without it was fantastic. but yeah, liked the episode. afterwards I just let the news play for however long while on my computer, then I eventually turned it over to Jimmy Kimmel when his show started and watched some of that before going upstairs, showering, and starting to get ready for bed and now I am here and it almost 2 am so I definitely need to be getting to bed, which I will do so now. Goodnight lovelies. Sweet dreams. 

[vlkwsouthpens]

THE COVER SELLS THE BOOK!!

I am thrilled to share with you an interview I did with my cover artist. And she is an artist. I found Karen Kalbacher on Fiverr, as FuzzyM, back in 2013 when I wrote my first book, Now Arriving…Sister Station 1. She has become more than an illustrator, I’m proud to consider her a friend as well. I thought it might be interesting for you to discover what goes on during the creation of a book cover. I hope you will enjoy the interview. I’ve included some samples of her work. I’m sure you’ll agree this woman is loaded with talent!

      1. I see you are also a children’s writer and ghostwriter (so many talents!). Which do you enjoy more, the writing or the illustrations? At heart, I’m a writer. I love seeing a plot come together and creating new and interesting characters and worlds. It comes a bit easier for me, so that helps. That doesn’t mean I don’t love being an artist and creating illustrations, I do. The fun is in the challenge. I like taking another person’s idea or world and bringing it to life for them. It also involves a lot of communication with the client and feels more collaborative. I’ve always had a hard time choosing between them and took several English courses before choosing to major in art. Who knows if I made the right choice? 2. For a new client, what services do you offer when creating a book cover, and how much input do you like from the client? I create covers based on the client’s needs. I can do photo editing, add titles to an existing image, or I can create an entire design from scratch. I normally design in Illustrator to create vector-based graphics. This has the distinct advantage of being easy to resize while maintaining quality and being editable. When a client is new, I like a lot of communication. We are both feeling one another out. I can’t see inside the client’s head, so I ask a lot of questions about style, colors, feel, and often ask for images of covers in a similar vein to what they want. I want the author to love their cover. It’s important to me that we both love it at the end of the project. It’s a lot easier for us to get into a grove if the client has ideas. Blank canvases are intimidating. I can work a lot faster if the client hands me something. It can be as simple as a list of wants and a color they hate/adore. 3. What is your favorite genre to create covers for and why? Wow, I specialize in Cozy Mysteries at the moment. I love them because the settings are always new and intriguing. There are often a lot of elements that have to be balanced like red herrings, Easter eggs, and pets. It makes it like a jigsaw puzzle to assemble and balance. That appeals to my artsy side. My second favorite is children’s books. I love bright colors, the characters are kids or animals and they are deceptively simple. I’d love to break out into more fantasy covers. I don’t get to draw unicorns nearly enough for my taste.

  4. Give us a glimpse into the process of creating a book cover. I like to talk to a potential client before we get a gig going. It’s a chance for us to feel each other out and see if we’re a match. So, generally, I will have a short conversation with you about the size of your cover and what your needs are. After that, we set the price based on the amount of work involved. The client will then send me all the pertinent details. I’ll look at everything sent to me. If there’s a mood board, I will consider what elements are similar in the images the client likes. This could be as simple as colors, shapes, or composition. If there’s no mood board, I will sketch out a thumbnail with the elements the client has requested. This is mainly to see how to balance them on the page and for me to get a feel for the image. Then I’ll sleep on it and let my subconscious work on it. I might also send it to the client if I think it will help them visualize what I’m doing. After marinating, I’ll take the sketch into Illustrator. I’ll hunt for reference photos to help me create the detailed versions of what I’ve sketched. I tend to start with the backdrop. It’s usually complete so I can move the elements around on it like a stage. I add the main element (body, sleuth, kid, dragon,) and move them around until I like it. Then I detail it. I add bagels to the sleuth’s breakfast plate. I add toys around the dog. I find the light source and shadow everything. I might also add highlights. Finally, I drop the titles on top. I will send an almost done version to the client to get their input. The client and I normally go back and forth a bit to shape it into their vision. I’m done when the client is happy.

  5. What has been your most challenging cover/client to do and why? Every cover is challenging, that’s why I enjoy doing them. Sometimes you and the client can’t see eye to eye and that’s frustrating for both. I used to ghostwrite for a client. When she asked me to also create the cover, I was excited. But it just didn’t work. We couldn’t get on the same page. I would send what I thought she wanted. She wouldn’t like it. She would try to describe it better. I would try again. We just ended up aggravated. She wasn’t a bad client. She was a good person. She had just chosen the wrong artist for her vision. We weren’t a match. We went on to ghostwrite together for a while after that. I think an artist is like a psychiatrist, you need to shop around for the one that really gets you. 6. Describe for us the perfect client. Most clients are perfect clients for me. It’s not hard. They need to have a vision even if it is stick figures on a piece of paper. Anything to work with is better than nothing. They need to communicate with me. I’m friendly, I promise! Most importantly, they need to respect me. I will make a zillion changes for a good client. A rude client gets whatever is stated in the deal. They should be enjoying the process. We should have fun together. 7. Life can’t be all about books; what other interest do you have. Did I read something about knitting doll? Hobbies? Who has time for hobbies? I’m kidding! I love walking. I’m lucky in that I live near a little park and within easy driving distance of a dozen more. I am a knitter! A corner of my living room had a laundry basket overflowing with yarn. I have created doll patterns from scratch and I do a lot of fingerless gloves, scarves, hats, and the occasional baby blanket. I have a podcast called Eh, it’s Something to Do that I record on Wednesdays with Rick Connor. I’m also an avid reader. My apartment is brimming with books and art supplies. It’s a bit chaotic. 8. What is on the horizon for your business? Right now, I am looking to expand my client base. I would like to expand into pet portraits, do a few more children’s books and possibly start publishing my own line of books. I would like to do more writing gigs for individuals or businesses. I would like to branch out and so a horror story cover or fantasy. On the practical front, I am constantly learning new Illustrator tricks to improve the quality of my work. 9. Give us a few samples of your work.

  10. How can you be reached? Share your links below. Find me on Twitter: @1fuzzymonster Find me on Instagram: @1fuzzymonster_Karen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1FuzzyMonster/ Blog: https://karenkalbacher.com/ Direct link to my portfolio: https://1fuzzymonster.wordpress.com/portfolio/ 11. Any final words for us? Choosing someone to flesh out your vision is an important decision. A good artist/writer will take the time to get to know you. They’ll be enthusiastic about your project. I love my clients. I consider them friends. I look forward to working with them on multiple projects. It’s very rewarding.

Be sure to check out the above sites and see for yourself just how talented Karen is! I know my readers love her covers.

A Special Interview! THE COVER SELLS THE BOOK!! I am thrilled to share with you an interview I did with my cover artist.

[michaelfallcon]

In Cyclist Mecca Girona, La Fábrica Is A Bike Cafe For Everyone

The commingling of coffee and cycling has been documented assiduously here, there, and everywhere. For the pros, caffeine is a legal, globally accessible performance booster. For those of a more athleisurist bent, cafes and bicycles offer a gentle, seated opportunity to take in the world while still getting a dose of vim and vigor.

These circumstances were surely relevant to the founding of La Fábrica Girona. It helped, too, that the business filled a major market gap in Girona, a city in Catalonia, some 60 miles north of Barcelona. Having little to no specialty coffee or breakfast and brunch culture is not unusual for smaller-town Spain, but it must have disappointed Girona’s growing international crowd. That includes professional cyclists—many of whom have, like Lance Armstrong, been sojourners, taking advantage of the dry weather, tranquil roads, and varied terrain—along with culinary travelers building trips around a precious reservation at the tri-Michelin-starred El Celler De Can Roca, and more recently, fans of Game (and Gay) of Thrones, the sixth season of which was filmed at spots across Girona.

And yet, a more personal matter urged the March 2015 opening of the pioneering specialty coffee enterprise. It was the commingling of its owners. When Christian and Amber Meier arrived in 2008 from their native Canada, he was on a professional cycling contract. After the couple married in 2010, they decided to settle in Girona permanently. The years went by, Christian Meier did a Tour de France in 2014, among other races with impressive results, and Amber grew tired of playing expat housewife.

She recalls her frustration, saying to him: “I don’t want to have to resent you for living your passion, so I’ll go back to Canada and we’ll do long-distance.”

Christian demurred and proposed the idea of establishing their very own watering hole. After all, they met at a cafe in Metro Vancouver, where she worked and he was a customer, and they had been pining for comfort foods and drinks.

“There was nothing,” Amber remembers of Girona back then. “We lived here for so long, and maybe two or three times a week, [we’d realize]: ‘Oh I wish we could go for a coffee. I wish we could go for brunch.’”

But, she stresses: “The reason we opened La Fábrica is because I needed something to do. It was never about the money. It was never about success. It was just: I want something to do a few hours a day while my husband is out cycling.”

Christian and Amber Meier

Intended or not, their success is surging. Christian, once on the road 170 days a year, has since retired, nowadays channeling the focus of a competitive athlete into roasting for their own label, called Approachable Coffee. Amber, who is approachableness personified, manages much of the daily operations with equal parts meticulousness and merriness.

Open daytime hours from 9am to 3pm, La Fábrica offers dining options in sol y sombra: outside at tables arranged on a landing between steps, visitors can take in sun; inside, the converted carpenter’s workshop provides a cool, stone-walled sanctuary. With a tire pump at the door and a basket of borrowable cable locks, the peloton is welcome, though, the Meiers emphasize, non-cyclists are, too.

Toasties and artisanal pastries are par for the course, but so are bagels and breakfast bowls. The kaleidoscopic spread of tropical fruits surrounding violet sugar-topped yoghurt must be the most edigrammable breakfast on the Iberian Peninsula.

The espresso machine is a two-group Rocket R8. While the brand is less common in commercial settings, it is no coincidence that the company’s founder, Andrew Meo, is a former pro cyclist and someone the Meiers call a friend. The Compak grinder holds one Approachable Coffee roast at a time—a “people-pleaser,” according to Amber, that works well alone or with dairy. Ask for a café con leche, a cappuccino, or a flat white, and you get the same double-shot of espresso with foamed fresh milk. Order a café amb gel—espresso poured over ice as Catalonians traditionally do it—and you get instead a cold brew because Christian hates the thought of his flavor profiles being shocked on the rocks.

Remarks Amber: “In the nicest way possible, we’ve wrecked coffee for a lot of people because now they can’t drink it anywhere other than here or Espresso Mafia.”

Her reference is to the Meiers’ second cafe, which opened in March 2017. For all of La Fábrica’s Middle-earth coziness, Espresso Mafia, which is a two-minute walk away, sparkles in a Pearly Gates palette. Its whiteness with metallic accents simultaneously index the place’s designation as, in Amber’s words, “the experimental laboratory.” Of its branding, “we could’ve done a little bit more research into the sensitivity of the word ‘mafia,’” she admits. “A couple people don’t like the name, but you learn and you move forward.”

Here a custom two-group Sanremo Cafe Racer and two Victoria Arduino Mythos One grinders facilitate the serving of up to five different coffees. Menu highlights are a tasting flight, cascara, and summertime nitro. Open til 7 PM most weeknights and an hour later Fridays and Saturdays, it attracts aficionados as well as the spandex set.

When not kitted and cleated himself, Christian is regularly found next door, where he roasts green beans from Falcon Coffees and Mare Terra on a 15-kilo Joper. Approachable Coffee’s wholesale business is expanding, notably in Barcelona. The most like-spirited venue so far seems to be specialty coffee-serving bike rental shop On Y Va, whose French name means, most aptly, “Let’s go!”

La Fábrica is located at Carrer de la Llebre 3, Girona. Visit their official website and follow them on Instagram.

Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge.

The post In Cyclist Mecca Girona, La Fábrica Is A Bike Cafe For Everyone appeared first on Sprudge.

In Cyclist Mecca Girona, La Fábrica Is A Bike Cafe For Everyone published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[mrwilliamcharley]

In Cyclist Mecca Girona, La Fábrica Is A Bike Cafe For Everyone

The commingling of coffee and cycling has been documented assiduously here, there, and everywhere. For the pros, caffeine is a legal, globally accessible performance booster. For those of a more athleisurist bent, cafes and bicycles offer a gentle, seated opportunity to take in the world while still getting a dose of vim and vigor.

These circumstances were surely relevant to the founding of La Fábrica Girona. It helped, too, that the business filled a major market gap in Girona, a city in Catalonia, some 60 miles north of Barcelona. Having little to no specialty coffee or breakfast and brunch culture is not unusual for smaller-town Spain, but it must have disappointed Girona’s growing international crowd. That includes professional cyclists—many of whom have, like Lance Armstrong, been sojourners, taking advantage of the dry weather, tranquil roads, and varied terrain—along with culinary travelers building trips around a precious reservation at the tri-Michelin-starred El Celler De Can Roca, and more recently, fans of Game (and Gay) of Thrones, the sixth season of which was filmed at spots across Girona.

And yet, a more personal matter urged the March 2015 opening of the pioneering specialty coffee enterprise. It was the commingling of its owners. When Christian and Amber Meier arrived in 2008 from their native Canada, he was on a professional cycling contract. After the couple married in 2010, they decided to settle in Girona permanently. The years went by, Christian Meier did a Tour de France in 2014, among other races with impressive results, and Amber grew tired of playing expat housewife.

She recalls her frustration, saying to him: “I don’t want to have to resent you for living your passion, so I’ll go back to Canada and we’ll do long-distance.”

Christian demurred and proposed the idea of establishing their very own watering hole. After all, they met at a cafe in Metro Vancouver, where she worked and he was a customer, and they had been pining for comfort foods and drinks.

“There was nothing,” Amber remembers of Girona back then. “We lived here for so long, and maybe two or three times a week, [we’d realize]: ‘Oh, I wish we could go for a coffee. I wish we could go for brunch.’”

But, she stresses: “The reason we opened La Fábrica is because I needed something to do. It was never about the money. It was never about success. It was just: I want something to do a few hours a day while my husband is out cycling.”

Christian and Amber Meier

Intended or not, their success is surging. Christian, once on the road 170 days a year, has since retired, nowadays channeling the focus of a competitive athlete into roasting for their own label, called Approachable Coffee. Amber, who is approachableness personified, manages much of the daily operations with equal parts meticulousness and merriness.

Open daytime hours from 9am to 3pm, La Fábrica offers dining options in sol y sombra: outside at tables arranged on a landing between steps, visitors can take in sun; inside, the converted carpenter’s workshop provides a cool, stone-walled sanctuary. With a tire pump at the door and a basket of borrowable cable locks, the peloton is welcome, though, the Meiers emphasize, non-cyclists are, too.

Toasties and artisanal pastries are par for the course, but so are bagels and breakfast bowls. The kaleidoscopic spread of tropical fruits surrounding violet sugar-topped yoghurt must be the most edigrammable breakfast on the Iberian Peninsula.

The espresso machine is a two-group Rocket R8. While the brand is less common in commercial settings, it is no coincidence that the company’s founder, Andrew Meo, is a former pro cyclist and someone the Meiers call a friend. The Compak grinder holds one Approachable Coffee roast at a time—a “people-pleaser,” according to Amber, that works well alone or with dairy. Ask for a café con leche, a cappuccino, or a flat white, and you get the same double-shot of espresso with foamed fresh milk. Order a café amb gel—espresso poured over ice as Catalonians traditionally do it—and you get instead a cold brew because Christian hates the thought of his flavor profiles being shocked on the rocks.

Remarks Amber: “In the nicest way possible, we’ve wrecked coffee for a lot of people because now they can’t drink it anywhere other than here or Espresso Mafia.”

Her reference is to the Meiers’ second cafe, which opened in March 2017. For all of La Fábrica’s Middle-earth coziness, Espresso Mafia, which is a two-minute walk away, sparkles in a Pearly Gates palette. Its whiteness with metallic accents simultaneously index the place’s designation as, in Amber’s words, “the experimental laboratory.” Of its branding, “we could’ve done a little bit more research into the sensitivity of the word ‘mafia,’” she admits. “A couple people don’t like the name, but you learn and you move forward.”

Here a custom two-group Sanremo Cafe Racer and two Victoria Arduino Mythos One grinders facilitate the serving of up to five different coffees. Menu highlights are a tasting flight, cascara, and summertime nitro. Open til 7 PM most weeknights and an hour later Fridays and Saturdays, it attracts aficionados as well as the spandex set.

When not kitted and cleated himself, Christian is regularly found next door, where he roasts green beans from Falcon Coffees and Mare Terra on a 15-kilo Joper. Approachable Coffee’s wholesale business is expanding, notably in Barcelona. The most like-spirited venue so far seems to be specialty coffee-serving bike rental shop On Y Va, whose French name means, most aptly, “Let’s go!”

La Fábrica is located at Carrer de la Llebre 3, Girona. Visit their official website and follow them on Instagram.

Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge.

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