I’m not a baker - I don’t have the patience or the sweet tooth for it. But driving upstate for the weekend (with a five hour drive on either end) made me hungry for a snacking cake. In those moments, I fall back on the timeless classic that is the gâteau au yaourt. This childhood cake is so easy we learn how to make it in kindergarten in France. The genius of the recipe lies in the single-serve yogurt cup doubling as the measuring tool.
Preheat your oven to 350ºF and dump one plain yogurt in a bowl (or use any cup to measure since the ratios are the only thing that matters). Then you use the same empty container to measure out 3 containers of flour (any kind), 2 containers of sugar (or maple syrup or honey), 1 container of oil (olive, canola, doesn’t matter). Add 3 eggs and one teaspoon of baking powder, mix it all up and pour into a loaf pan. Bake for 35 minutes and voilà!
You can add in berries, lemon zest, cardamom, eat it with jam, whipped cream, fresh fruit, the options are endless. It’s the perfect blank canvas - not too sweet, not to heavy, perfect for breakfast, tea time, birthdays… Make it anytime, eat it anywhere. Bonus points if you find the littlest hands to make it.
Every day, 321 people are shot in the United States. The past week has been a horrifying reminder of this. Survivor X Gonzalez’s incredible essay on the five year anniversary of Parkland shows just how little has changed. The formal memorial garden that sprung up in front of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has already been demolished and recreated as a smaller plot of painted stones. Everyone wants to move on and forget, or pass the baton for the younger folks to figure out. As X so eloquently writes: “How much pressure fell squarely on my shoulders with every hand that rested there, telling me to fix this problem, to take this chance and run with it.”
It reminded me of another recent conversation between climate activists Bill McKibben and Xiye Bastida, 40 years apart in age but united in the same struggle. They too discuss the cop-out of letting younger people handle current issues because they’re “so much better at it.” Instead, the hope lies in joining in to lift the collective burden.
Know high school students who want to become advocates against book banning? PEN America and Brooklyn Public Library are launching the first-ever Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute to share resources and fight against educational censorship.
I’ve been on a deep dive about a ferryboat that was repurposed as a methadone clinic in 1971. At the time the New York Times reported “every weekday, 450 former heroin addicts climb a gangway to the Gold Star Mother, a retired city ferryboat docked at Pier 1 on the Battery.” The boat was put into service in 1937 and named in honor of the American Gold Star Mothers, an organization that supported mothers who lost children during World War One. Three years later, she was auctioned off by the city. As the first supervised injection sites opened last year, and we hopefully move towards a future where care providers can prescribe methadone to patients who can pick it up at any pharmacy, I wonder where the Gold Star Mother sails now…
The siren song returns in me,
I sing it across her throat: Am I
what I love? Is this the glittering world
I’ve been begging for?
Partners in Abortion Care has reached their donation goal! Since they opened in October, they’ve provided care to dozens of patients. It’s is the only women-owned and operated abortion clinic providing abortions in all trimesters. Located in Maryland, it’s a safe haven for care up to 34 weeks of a pregnancy. They now are encouraging further donations to Baltimore Abortion Fund, Valley Abortion Group and Online Abortion Resources (OARs).
I’ve been rewriting my TV pilot “Ciao For Now!” which deals with immigration in Italy and mostly have this playlist to show for it. When we were living in Barletta this past spring, I fell in love with Priestess, a young rapper from the next town over, delightfully called Locorotondo. In her 2019 album Brava, she names each song after a different woman throughout every historical era of feminism.
Over 250 immigrants have arrived in Gowanus in the last three weeks without adequate food access, cooking facilities or resources. People are going hungry as the city response has not met the need. If you know of restaurants, food halls, BIDs, religious congregations, residential buildings, work places or block associations that can help with daily meals, packed in single or double servings, please email ps124mutualaid@gmail.com to schedule a delivery.
Till next time,
ASK