sing out, louise

bread for all, and roses too. often thinking about 18th-century england

[glintglimmergleam]

imagine bridgerton if eloise had a gun

[sexybritishllama]

just finished this month's book club book, went skimming goodreads reviews afterwards as you do, got my breath taken away by this absolutely brutal ending to one of the multi-paragraph 1 star reviews

[bebemoon]

if you're not playing mermaids with me then i have to assume you're playing mermaids against me

[glintglimmergleam]

someone else can answer the tag queries about montreal bagels bc as a non-canadienne it does not feel right for me to do so. ;)

[glintglimmergleam]

The Thirteen Principles of Bagel Faith

Recently a non-Jewish friend asked for my opinions about bagels. Thus have I endeavored below to record the fundamental truths of my religion. Other Jews with differing regional and culinary minhags are welcome to make their own post.

BEST BAGEL FLAVORS: (in no particular order) sesame, poppyseed, onion, garlic, egg. Consider the toppings you're choosing as well.

THE EVERYTHING BAGEL: Like pumpkin spice, a creative flavor somewhat overexposed. A reliable choice if you fear the bagel is mediocre, as the spice combination may mask other flaws.

CINNAMON RAISIN/BLUEBERRY/SWEET BAGELS: Foolish. Cinnamon raisin bread already exists, why sully a bagel with it?

'RAINBOW' BAGELS: Marketing trick.

CREAM CHEESE FLAVORS: Plain, scallion, or vegetable only. Lox spreads are inevitably a mistake, because if the fish were good quality, they wouldn't waste it on a mix-in. Strawberry cream cheese is for children. Other flavors are for apostates and heretics.

DEPTH OF THE 'SCHMEAR': Not thicker than the height of one bagel half, or the length of your thumbnail.

LOX: Of course, if it's fresh. If the deli calls it "Nova" or "Gravlox", you're in good hands. (Whitefish: yes. Herring: better on crackers.)

CAPERS: Yes, if assembling the works (lox, tomato, red onion...)

TO TOAST OR NOT TO TOAST? Contextual. Toasting a freshly-baked bagel is a sin. Toasting a stale or sub-par bagel is a necessity.

SUPERMARKET BAGELS: Pointless. Just buy a loaf of bread instead.

SUPERMARKET CREAM CHEESE: Perfectly reasonable, but if you're catering an event you will save the stress of broken plastic knives if you buy whipped instead of block.

NEW YORK BAGELS: You can find excellent bagels outside of New York and you can certainly have disappointing bagels in New York, but the best bagels in NYC are better than anywhere else. Sorry.

MONTREAL BAGELS: A separate food group to be evaluated on its own terms, as deep-dish pizza is to thin-crust margherita. When in Montreal, I did not enjoy mine but that was an error of perspective, not of the bagel. I hope to visit again someday and correct this.

Bonus: a good bialy is much harder to find, but better than a bagel.

[parkchanwoohoo]

Tough but fair....... I do hope you can reevaluate the Montreal bage' because you're right it's not like the ones in NY and should be evaluated differently

[glintglimmergleam]

#is it just a vocabulary difference between peppers and capers btw? or is there a taxonomic difference? #usually I only hear non-americans call them capers which is intriguing linguistic anthropology that makes sense for NY

Definitely a taxonomic difference, because here in the USA capers and peppers refer to unrelated foods! Capers look a lot like green peppercorns (small round tasty) but they come from the caper bush, not a pepper plant.

Capers are often sold in jars already brined, ready be added to dishes as a salty topping. If you like vinegary tastes, they provide a fun, sharp contrast to the sweetness of the cream cheese. Thus I have ruled that capers are not essential on a bagel, but they are delightful.

[glintglimmergleam]

my concentration is so shit today. a task that should have taken 45 minutes has instead taken *checks watch* 3 hours...

[glintglimmergleam]

Asking for your Paris muséum thoughts was my fairly unsubtle way of asking for recommendations and I wanted to let you know that we had a really great time at the museum of Jewish art and history today :)

OMG I'm so glad to have helped!!! Were there any specific art works or objects you enjoyed? (Something for me to remember for the future!) Hope you have a wonderful rest of your trip.

[pealeii]

❌ “friends don’t look at friends like that” devalues friendship/platonic forms of love, pushes amatonormativity

❌ “historians will call them friends” devalues historians and forces complex relationships into modern simplicities, also devalues friendship/platonic forms of love

✅ “do they know its legal now” suggests the characters are stupid, poorly suggests that this is the only barrier to their relationship—both of which are funny as hell

[glintglimmergleam]

do you all ever focus on a longform meta draft too hard for too long? by the time i sat down at the computer to type it, i ran out of think.

[vortexstreet]

Saul Steinberg, Mask Series, 1961, Photo by Inge Morath 

[taggsvansen]

[glintglimmergleam]

there's something darkly funny about using page views as a measure of fic popularity given that i've "read" certain fics 29 times according to my account history. when i was simply accidentally refreshing a multi-chapter fic's open tab several times in one day.

and yes since the kudos : hits ratio is pretty large, the number of kudos is not an accurate indicator of how many people have actually READ the fic. but it IS a decent indicator of how many people thought it was good enough to pay their respects.

[thomasmomwell]

can't get over having "is one of the most popular Men’s Hockey RPF writers on Archive of Our Own, with over two million words and twice the page views of the next most popular writer" as your author bio on Penguin Random House dot com. girl at any point as you sat there collating other writers' page views did you doubt yourself or

[madebykyra]

My sister took more photos of my dress. I am very happy with how this turned out :)))))

Only one more weekend until the Renaissance Faire!!!!

[glintglimmergleam]

once again i have failed in obtaining a decent chai latte and instead received frothy cinnamon sugar milk. i live in hope.

[mysharona1987]

[glintglimmergleam]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Arabella is the manic pixie dream debutante romp that every modern Regency romance novelist is trying to imitate, and half of them don't even know it. Photocopy of a photocopy, some of them. When you want that comic zaniness ending in chaste kisses, an anti-child labor subplot, and A CUTE DOG, nothing hits like the original.