Search Results for: Apple

In Praise of Polarizing Food

Canned sardines turn many Americans off to fresh sardines, which is a shame. In Tin House‘s 2009 Appetites Issue, Jeff Koehler shares the little fish’s pleasures, describing how eating canned sardines in his vagabond youth led him to savoring fresh sardines as an adult, which culminated in years of culinary experimentation in his adopted home of Barcelona. Koehler’s essay was reprinted in the Best Food Writing 2010 anthology and is for anyone who’s ever loved something other people find gross.

Sardinas en escabeche became part of my repertoire, and I still enjoy it in autumn when the hues and scents of the dish feel right for the cool, clear days. Eventually, I learned to prepare sardines in many different ways. At home we like them pan-grilled and eaten with plump grapes. Or grilled and crowning a slice of toasted country bread piled with strips of roasted red peppers, eggplant, and onions. Or batter-dipped and fried with slices of acidic apple. These days, my two girls love it when I bury a mess of sardines whole under a mound of coarse sea salt, and then bake the lot in a hot oven for 15 minutes. They enthusiastically take turns breaking open the salt crust with a wooden mallet while my wife and I scramble to dig out the succulent fish—moist and completely cooked in their own juices—before the girls crush them.

But, without a doubt, the most pleasurable way to eat fresh sardines is a la brasa, grilled outside in the open air over hot embers. The flavors are at their robust finest, the flesh sparkling and briny, shaded with smoky oils. Inside, that distinct smell of searing sardines is overpowering, even pungent (and immediately alerts every neighbor as to what’s on the stove), but outside, among green leaves and dusty loam, or on a sandy beach with sea breezes, it’s evocatively, stirringly aromatic.

Read the story

Longreads Best of 2015: Under-Recognized Stories

We asked all of our contributors to Longreads Best of 2015 to tell us about a story they felt deserved more recognition in 2015. Here they are. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2015: Investigative Reporting

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in investigative reporting.

* * *

Lauren Kirchner
Senior Reporting Fellow at ProPublica.

The Price of Nice Nails (Sarah Maslin Nir, The New York Times)

I can’t remember another investigation that had as much widespread and immediate impact as this one. Through a year of persistent and patient reporting, Nir uncovered the ugly truth of New York’s nail salon industry: the labor exploitation, institutionalized racism, and dire health risks faced by its manicurists. It was an explosive story, but Nir told it with restraint. When this came out, everyone I knew was talking about it. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio both pretty much immediately launched emergency task forces and investigations to address the problems Nir described. Reforms continue to roll out for salon owners who put their workers at risk.

But I noticed a subtler impact, too: some real soul-searching among New Yorkers about the ethics of indulging in cheap luxuries—for many of us, the only luxuries we can afford. A lot of readers were asking themselves, how could we have not have seen it? “We hold hands with this person for a half hour; we look into her eyes,” as Nir later put it. “I think my investigation revealed that we are not seeing them.” Read more…

Longreads Best of 2015: Under-Recognized Books

We asked our book editors to tell us about a few books they felt deserved more recognition in 2015. Here they are.

* * *

Anna Wiener
@annawiener

Rules for Werewolves (Kirk Lynn, Melville House)

I read this book in one fast gulp, anxious fingers poised to flip the page. In Kirk Lynn’s debut novel, a band of young runaways moves swiftly through the suburbs, squatting in foreclosed houses and in the homes of unwitting vacationers, wild eyes trained on the promise of a self-made utopia. The thrills and pleasures of this new society are the benign trappings of suburbia (well-stocked refrigerators, lavender soap, the privacy of closed doors) coupled with the first bright licks of freedom. As the pack grows tighter, defining the boundaries of its own morals and ideology, it also grows more feral. Unbridled idealism and independence begin to unravel into violent and irreparable ends.

Structurally, Rules for Werewolves seems to borrow from Lynn’s background as a playwright: the book is composed of alternating sections, some of which are monologues from shifting perspectives; the rest is raw dialogue, high velocity and high stakes, deftly capturing the insecurities, intoxication, and desperation of people determined to survive on their own terms. From the pack’s pastoral vision to Kirk’s unsettling depiction of the waning American suburbs—littered with empty houses, an echo of unrealized aspirations—the book reminds that utopia’s volatility comes always from within. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism. Read more…

John Hope Franklin: Race & the Meaning of America

Longreads Pick

Drew Gilpin Faust on the work of John Hope Franklin, who would have turned 100 this year. “Only if we understand and acknowledge this past can we grapple with the conflicts of the present and the promise of the future. ‘To confront our past and see it for what it is.’ Franklin’s words. The past ‘is.’ Not the past was. The past lives on.”

Published: Nov 30, 2015
Length: 17 minutes (4,482 words)

Temptation, Purity, and High-Stakes Evangelism in a Texas Town

Johnny was more honest than most about his salvation. Other teens said they’d felt so lost in the secular world that they’d attempted suicide. When pressed for details, they produced accounts of the angry boredom of being sixteen in the suburbs: “attempted suicide” meant driving too fast, going for a too-difficult dive, getting dangerously drunk on dad’s Jack Daniel’s. One boy told me had resolved to strangle himself and would have, too, had not Jesus invisibly pulled the boy’s hands from his Adam’s apple. For Johnny there had been no special signs, no spiritual lows. It was simple as this: he was on a ski trip, and Jesus got him—shouldered into Johnny’s heart and said, “You’re mine, buddy.” It felt “wicked awesome,” better than eight girls in a Hummer all at the same time.

Jeff Sharlet, in Lapham’s Quarterly, on a day spent with the sexually pure teens of Battlecry Honor Academy in Garden Valley, Texas — where he learns that renouncing your sins doesn’t mean redacting their memories.

Read the story

Stories of Syrian Refugees: A Reading List

I am not a political scientist, an aid worker, nor a refugee. I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of Syria’s politics or the motivations of ISIS completely. I read, share, and little by little, I learn.

Broadsided Press has collected statistics, resources and articles about the conflict in Syria, and Sarah Grey’s essay for The Establishment (included below) had this synopsis:

…More than 240,000 people have been killed since the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad turned into a nightmarish civil war. Four million have fled the devastated country and 7.6 million more are internally displaced, according to a UN inquiry. An estimated 2,000 people have died at sea while attempting to enter Europe. Syria is now 83% darker at night. The outlook is bleak for a country that was once known for taking in refugees.

Broad strokes, to be sure, but important context for the following six stories. You’ll meet a teenager preparing for her wedding, queer lovers separated by bureaucracy, war and thousands of miles, and four women who defended their Kurdish city to the death. There are artists and activists and archeologists, all working together to preserve Syrian culture and the lives of its citizens. Read more…

The Early Days of Midnight Movies

Prior to the ’70s, midnight shows were the realm of the occasional horror release and exploitation distributors who used the slot to attract night owls to seedy fare. But the midnight movie as we know it — as a Friday- and Saturday-night staple featuring cult films — came into its own as the ’60s turned into the ’70s.

The ‘60s saw a flurry of activity in underground film as Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and others made movies way outside the Hollywood system, films that took avant-garde forms and featured content too extreme for the mainstream. That didn’t mean there wasn’t an audience for them, though. Warhol’s 1966 film Chelsea Girls played New York for months, for instance, and in the latter part of that year, Mike Getz of Los Angeles’ Cinema Theatre — after having success in Los Angeles playing experimental films at midnight — hit upon the notion of sending a package of films on the road under the name “Psychedelic Film Trips #1.” They played at midnight across the country in theaters owned by Getz’s uncle Louis Sher, and they did well, making Getz something like the Johnny Appleseed of the midnight movie.

Keith Phipps, writing for The Verge about the rise of midnight movies as cultural institution, and the tradition’s uncertain future. For further reading from an unlikely source, the Wikipedia entry for “Midnight movie” is surprisingly great.

Read the story

In Search of a Separate Peace: Five Stories About Communes

What is the purpose, the lure, of communal living? Why have the residents of different communes in United States chosen isolation over convenience? In these five stories, you’ll meet men and women—many, members in the LGBTQIA+ community—who have chosen, with mixed results, to dedicate themselves to their chosen families.

1. “They Built It. No One Came.” (Penelope Green, New York Times, May 2015)

They changed their names and called themselves the Harmonists, rescuing and repurposing Colonial-era dwellings in Pennsylvania. Their numbers never swelled more than two. Can Zephram and Johannes make peace with their failed enterprise? Read more…