10 Things: Rendering, Depending, Endings
My recommendations on what to try, read, celebrate, ponder, think about, listen to, cook, and more this week
Hello! Whether or not you noticed, I took last week off to celebrate LEAVES. This has to do with an experimental semi-druidic calendar that I tried out over the past year, and am now rounding the final lap with (conclusion: it has been worthwhile), and I’ll write more about that on Wednesday.
For now, here are your ten things! The first three are free; paid subscribers get a surprising recipe, some songs that will definitely make you cry, and a deeply important video.
1. TRY: Rendering
We went to a party last week where a beautiful human woman pulled from her bag four jar-bottles of syrup.
ME: Wow. Where did these come from?
HER: [My partner] and I decided to have a RENDERING DAY this week.
ME: …
HER: A RENDERING DAY!
ME: …
HER: This is a day where you take all the things you’ve grown over the summer and you render them into syrups.
ME: …!!!!!!!!!
HER: Rendering Day.
ME: Can I take a picture of this?!
HER: Of course.
I mean, render is an odd verb, isn’t it? It means a lot of things. verb ; (1) · to reproduce or represent by artistic or verbal means : depict ; (2) · to give a performance of ; (3) · to produce a copy or version of.
Here, it actually has to do with oil. (I had to look this up. I actually looked up, “How can fruit be a bacon as in render.”)
THE INTERNET: “The crudest method of rendering oil from oleaginous fruits, still practiced in some countries, consists of heaping them in piles, exposing them to the sun, and collecting the oil that exudes.”
Hey, did you know about the word oleaginous?
Anyway, these syrups were amazing. I’m not sure how our other friend turned them into a cocktail that got me very happy-drunk (on just one), but it had vodka in it. Probably also soda water? I don’t know. My point is: why don’t you have a rendering day? Head over to this recipe at The Kitchn about how to turn any fruit into a shrub, which is a non-alcoholic drink that would benefit from this syruping process. (It also explains the syruping — or rendering — process.)
We all deserve sweet things.
This book is such an incredible, wonderful gift. I appreciate so much when an author is this vulnerable and also this funny at the same time, and such a thing is incredibly rare. This is a book about codependence, and it teaches a lot about that; it’s also a memoir, about Lila Ash’s history with love and sex, and she doesn’t hold back. She is one of my favorite New Yorker cartoonists, so I waited until I had time to sit and read this in a single sitting, which I did, and it was worth it. Trust me when I tell you that this is wonderful. It is. It’s somehow an incredibly fun graphic novel-book about codependent and borderline abusive relationships. I don’t know how she manages this. I guess … because she is a genius?
CELEBRATE: Bats and Birds in the News
BIG NEWS in the bird world, and let’s lead with it!
DOZENS OF BIRDS WHO WERE NAMED AFTER WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE BEING RENAMED! I actually did not think I would see this change in my lifetime, and I am so excited to make a poster about it. I will make a poster and maybe even a shirt!
Also, after some devastating bird news last fall migration (a big building in Chicago killed thousands of birds in one night and it made the national newsmedia), a Change.org petition CHANGE DOT ORGED its way into the heart(s) of the building’s leadership, and, officially, McCormick Place Lakeside Center Will Close its Blinds Every Night To Protect Migrating Birds!
Also, not necessarily GOOD news here, but my partner Bob told me that there are officially a lot of bats in Chicago.
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