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Made from “immature pine cones”—great phrase—this is just what it sounds like. I encountered it for the first time in Tbilisi, and it seems like it’s sort of hard to find outside the region (as far as I’ve tried), but it’s worth it. I’d never thought about immature pine cones before, but they’re delightful in texture and size.
Jun 6, 2024
Related Recs
my god it’s so good. Slightly salty, sweet, and rich. Brins’ cherry chai is another favorite and goes well with Greek yogurt.
Jul 18, 2024
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This jam is so good. My favorite is cherry chai, but also like the strawberry lemongrass and forbidden fruit. Put it on toast or add it to some greek yogurt.
Mar 21, 2024
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I had a particularly rough Thanksgiving Day this year and processed some of that stress by making a cranberry sauce with actual fresh cranberries, a thing that is incredibly easy to make and my fave holiday food by a significant margin. I was only making it for myself so I used slightly less than half of the sugar called for in whatever recipe I found online (I wanna say it was a variation on the NYT “red wine cranberry sauce” but I only used a tiny bit of wine and no cinnamon?) THEN at the end of the day I just put a bit of it on top of some pistachio ben and jerry’s I had leftover. It is so so good and I’ve made it twice again since then. I would also suggest fucking around with a bit of cardamom or maybe black sesame seeds?
Jan 11, 2024
Top Recs from @lauren-oyler
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These are the most French perfumes you can possibly imagine: niche and completely over-the-top in terms of scent, price, and packaging (sorry, flacons). They have a collection of perfumes inspired by paintings, which are printed on the bottle. For other scents, you can replace the cap—which I think must always come with a tassel around the neck—with a small classical bust, which I believe is also theoretically aligned with the perfume’s notes. This costs an additional 100+ euros or something, so I did not do it on my bottle of Invasion Barbare, which I bought only partly for the name. It makes you smell like George Clooney and stays on for about 20 hours.
Jun 6, 2024
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Even if you’re not a huge fan of lap swimming, indoor pools are often really special examples of national architecture—my favorites are from the first half of the twentieth century—and it’s surprisingly interesting to observe the pool etiquette of different cultures. Italians, while somewhat impatient and in-your-face on land, are incredibly courteous and respectful of relative speed in the water; they’re gracious and accommodating if you need to pass them. In Milan I always make a point to go to Piscina Cozzi, which had a huge Maurizio Cattelan mural on the back wall featuring a tacky Ophelia in red lipstick. It was there in October of last year, but I think they’ve since taken it down, which is a shame, but apparently he swims there, too.
Jun 6, 2024
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This is a West German ensemble film about a loosely connected group of travelers who are stranded at West Berlin’s Tempelhof airport one night in 1962 due to fog. While obviously an allegory for the city’s experience of being suddenly surrounded by East Germany—which, if we pursue the analogy, here is presented as professional and personal annoyance that allows our characters to indulge in industry-specific narcissisms—the movie can also be enjoyed on the level of script and character. What happens when you suddenly have a stretch of free time? You often squander it. There’s a great talking-past-each-other adultery scene, and the musical numbers at the end are joyous and lightly surreal. When I saw it in the theater everyone was smiling and laughing, which is not typical of Germans. I’m able to access it on YouTube with English subtitles from Germany (for now).
Jun 6, 2024