Summer isn't cancelled after all
A month ago, I thought this summer was going to be ruined: we’d still have to practice social distancing and wear masks, and everything in New York would still shut down for the foreseeable future. Quarantine was already challenging during the colder months of March and April, but by May it was starting to feel cruel that it was so nice out but we still had to stay home and that we might miss out on the whole summer. I felt like I was missing the things that make summer in New York what it is: patio dining, day drinking at outdoor bars, weekend trips to the beach or upstate with friends.
We still can’t have… many of those things. But I’ve been finding a lot of joy in other things, summer activities I might not have paid much attention to otherwise. We still can’t go to restaurants, but I’ve been having distanced picnics in Prospect Park instead. We can’t enjoy a sunny day at a beer garden (yet — outdoor dining is opening up this week 🤞🏽), but instead we can get to-go cocktails from a bar window (it’s practically New Orleans here now) and take a walk around the neighborhood with our drinks. We can’t travel to some far-flung vacation spot, but we can enjoy a day at one of NYC’s nearby beaches and feel like things are almost, sort of, just like a normal summer. It’s made me learn to appreciate some of the smaller joys of summer that might have overlooked before. And yeah, it’s not the summer we thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty good — just in a new, different way.
Cooking
It’s officially too-hot-to-turn on your oven weather, so week I made one of my fave summer recipes: Smitten Kitchen’s garlic lime steak and noodle salad. I also did use my oven to make a batch of these Vietnamese-style pork and ginger meatballs at the beginning of the week that I used in grain bowls all week. And I’m currently making this Greek pasta salad for dinner tonight, plus I made the NYT’s new strawberry spoon cake for dessert and I CAN’T RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH GO MAKE THIS RECIPE NOW!
What I’m reading
A tale of two New Yorks: those who left during the pandemic, and those who stayed, Vanity Fair.
Our lives happen in restaurants, New York Times.
Revenge of the suburbs, The Atlantic.
Welcome to the glass cliff, 2.0, Vox.
Why you’re constantly misunderstood on Slack, and how to fix it, OneZero/Medium.
The power of the bake sale, Taste.
The Trayvon generation, The New Yorker.
The millennial mental health crisis, The Atlantic.
Not so vain: C.A.R.L.Y.s love Crocs, memes, and social justice, GQ. Perhaps you’ve heard of financial planners refer to “HENRYs” — high earner, not rich yet — but here is the anti-HENRY: CARLY, aka can’t afford real life yet.
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