Is Channing Tatum a communist? Hear what our expert panel had for dinner this week....
The experts agree... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You may be here with me today because you are not sure if this man is a communist. Good news! First we'll get that figured out, and then we'll move on to the good stuff—some assorted recipes from this week.
You might wonder, how could this man, a man best known for his role as "Mike, Magic Mike" from the terrible Steven Soderburg movie bearing his name, or the sensational sequel, Magic Mike XXL be a communist. Well, Noah has some really compelling arguments about why he's a communist, but unfortunately, he has to "do his job" and "study for the LSAT" so I'm going to paraphrase:
He played a communist really convincingly in the otherwise not very good Cohen Brothers movie Hail Caesar! Also, please watch this video of "No Dames"
He was in the Wachowski Sister's underrated, and borderline unintelligible masterpiece Jupiter Ascending which is a very capitalist hating movie, about how the rich are deeply untrustworthy and also are growing people to harvest their blood or something? This movie makes no sense but it definitely has commie vibes. It's a great summer movie, starring Channing Tatum as like, a dog man with wings I think?
Magic Mike is a working class hero. He's very sad in the beginning of Magic Mike XXL because he can't afford to cover his employee's healthcare, but he really wants to. This is clearly him subtly signaling his support for Medicare for all.
Logan Lucky is 1. a great movie about stealing from corporations, but also is about the importance of community healthcare... are you sensing a theme here? He's a communist.
One of his earliest movies after he made it big was Battle In Seattle, which is about cops being bastards (I think. I've never seen it.)
The first movie his production company made was a documentary about the French and Belgian colonialist influences that led to the massacre in Rwanda.
Also he was the executive producer and star of Comrade Detective. This show is ostensibly making fun of Communist propaganda, but honestly the line between ironically into Soviet propaganda and actually being into Soviet propaganda is... a really thin one. Ask most liberal arts students about this.
I rest my case. Channing Tatum, working class hero, also probably a commmunist.
Here's the moment you've all been waiting for...
The vegan ice cream comparisons. Now, we all know and... tolerate... tofuti ice cream sandwiches. They're a staple, a classic! But the mint chip is the only one worth eating and they were sold out of those at whole foods when I went to the store the recently. Instead I will compare for you two vegan ice cream bars that are more in the vein of dove bars than ice cream sandwiches. (Also, hear my plea: make a vegan klondike bar!!!)
The contenders are both from the So Delicious family of foods. One is a chocolate fudgesicle sort of thing, made with coconut milk, and the other is a mocha caramel crunch, made with almond milk.
The chocolate fudge is exactly like eating chocolate ice cream made with coconut. It is only slightly enlivened by being on a stick. There is not enough textural variety. That said, it is on a stick, which makes it more fun than regular vegan ice cream. Also, for some reason I feel less weird about eating it in bed, although I should actually feel worse.
The other one is better. It has a hard chocolate shell! If you have to choose between two ice creams on sticks obviously get the one that has textures other than solid cold coconut milk. This was good! Hooray for textural variety! Anyway, I come down firmly on the side of mocha caramel crunch.
One thing they both have in common is a weird "biodegradable" stick that is very satisfying to stick your teeth into, and won't give you splinters like a regular popsicle stick. Honestly, worth it for that alone, probably.
Recipe Talk:
Anyway, it's hotter than hades in my apartment lately, so I'm trying to make as much stuff as possible that uses relatively little heat. So far, I'm failing spectacularly at that. Oh well. I don't have any pictures this week because Dwayne and Brice were here so I wasn't cooking, I was at the beach with them eating fish and seeing seals up close and personal. Instead of pictures, or distinct recipes, here's a list of food ideas that I've been liking lately.
Quick Pickles
Here's a little side situation I've been making recently that I like a lot. It goes pretty good with all sorts of rice noodle/cellophane noodle dishes but also, they're really just better cucumbers so you can eat them however you want.
Take some hothouse or persian cucumbers or anything else with tender skin, just not the big nasty cucumbers with the very dark shiny, tough skin. I could say I bought these at the farmers market, but that would be a lie. They came wrapped in plastic at the grocery store, but they're fine!
Cut your cucumbers very thin. Not like, read a newspaper through it then, but still thin enough to seem like you mean it.
Toss your cucumbers with salt in a bowl (a good amount of salt but don't go overboard, I probably used about a half teaspoon for about two cups of cucumbers?) let it sit for ten minutes. Rinse it well.
Then, look and see if the scallions you assumed you had were still good. They aren't? They never are. I decided to use... nothing instead of scallions. If you have scallions or mint they are a great addition here! Toss your cucumbers with some unseasoned rice vinegar, and if you have it, ginger oil. If you don't have it, buy some ginger oil. It's the best thing. Also some white pepper, or I suppose black pepper, but white pepper is best here.
Smashed Cucumbers
Here's another cucumber thing to try. We went to get soup dumplings in Flushing while Dwayne and Brice were in town and everything we got was obviously great, but we had some very good cucumbers (this is exciting because cucumbers are often... fine.) Brice informed me that these are smashed cucumbers. They are delicious, here is a recipe that looks quite a lot like what we had. I've also seen suggestions that you whack the cucumbers with a cast iron pan or something which sounds... incredibly satisfying.
Too Much Salmon
My favorite way to cook Too Much Salmon in the summer is: take a piece of salmon, put it on some stuff (I've done it with a half cup of white wine, and a bed of herbs and lemons, but I've also done it, and I think it's better, with a soy glaze on top of a bunch of ginger and scallions) and stick in the oven for around 50 minutes at 225, or until it reaches 130 internally, or flakes easily. It does not make your house hot at all, and it also does not make your kitchen reek of fish, so I highly recommend this method. Here is the recipe, it's great. It's very good with like, everything. Rice, vermicelli, regular pasta, whatever, just add a bunch of vegetables and you're good.
Other hot weather things to try:
Leftover protein on noodles! Whenever I make Too Much Salmon, I put it on some fresh udon, with some sauce and some green stuff. (Or sometimes I do a layered thing to make lunches that involve no microwaving of fish: I do that with sauce on the bottom, then salmon, then vermicelli, then like, whatever vegetables.) Very little heat! I base it on this recipe. But I use udon, not soba, and I often will make the quick pickles above and have them with this, and also some other vegetables, whatever you have around, blanched or something. I like it with snow peas, blanched for about 30 seconds, then put into ice water.
Also, criitically for the lateness of my informal newsletter, Dwayne and Brice were visiting us from LA, so I was busy this weekend, and not cooking, because we were in Cape Cod eating lots of fried fishes.
Crazy Rich Asians is coming out tomorrow I think? Everyone should go see it, the book is really great, and it's the first movie with an all-Asian cast since uh... 1961.
Sorry for the lack of pictures this week: I didn't take any! I didn't even take any pictures of the seals, which was honestly probably a mistake, but I was sort of afraid of dropping my phone in the ocean, and also I was "in the moment" or whatever.