Welcome to Eat Me!
Welcome to Eat Me!
Learning to love tomatoes, the best salty pie & feminist warnings we can't afford to ignore
Welcome to the new & improved Eat Me: Some of you are brand new, but lots of you are here from the old iteration of the newsletter - either way, hello!
What to expect: To start, I’ll send out an email newsletter once or twice a week. (These will also be available online, where you can comment and chat with me & other folks.) In a few weeks, after getting into the swing of things, I’ll start up with paid subscribers - people who sign up will have access to more content, more conversations, and my undying love and affection.
It’s gonna be great, so let’s get started.
DON’T @ ME (aka what’s happening online)
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how we’re not nearly alarmed enough at how radical the anti-abortion movement is - and just how far-reaching their agenda really is. I warned, as lots of feminists have been for years, that their next target will be birth control.
Lo and behold, Lila Rose - president of Live Action, a huge “pro-life” org known for making deceptively edited videos to target Planned Parenthood - tweeted about how birth control causes cancer and likened it to “Big Tobacco.”
(Btw, you know what else is a “group 1 carcinogen”? Bacon. Oh, and booze. Yet for some strange reason, conservative orgs aren’t arguing to limit their access.)
People who don’t really follow the movers & shakers on the anti-abortion side may not notice this - after all it’s just a couple of tweets - but it’s *super* important. Folks like Rose shape the conservative agenda; so watch out in the following months as more and more anti-birth control talking points start floating around.
WHAT I’M EATING
Why, yes, I will be eating away my anxiety about the above!
This weekend we had a BBQ with a few friends and a true angel named Natalka brought a salty honey pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds in Brooklyn. (If you’re not in NY and can’t get to them, they have a pretty amazing cookbook.) The best thing about this pie is that Four & Twenty includes a small bag of sea salt that you sprinkle over the pie before serving and it is fucking outrageous.
WHAT I’M COOKING
Alas, we didn’t just eat pie at this BBQ. My summer go-to for the last few years has been the NYT’s panzanella salad. I actually don’t like tomatoes generally - blasphemy for a nice Italian girl, I know - but this time of year, in this salad, I’m all about them. The best thing about panzanella is that it’s twice as good the next day for leftovers because the toasted bread has soaked in all the spices and tomato juice and such. Obviously, I use 50 percent more bread than the recipe recommends.
WHO I’M READING
Dahlia Lithwick on Elizabeth Warren: “Warren is, in brief, almost painfully serious precisely because she is banking on public seriousness, running on the notion that bread and circus have had their day, and it is time now to save the republic.”
This NYT explainer on the Hyde Amendment: “That [reproductive justice] movement is distinct from the more prominent ‘choice’ movement in that it focuses on social and economic factors that can make things like abortion inaccessible even when they are legal.”
Lili Loofbourow on Joe Biden: “It is not ‘generosity of spirit’ to lie about your past and your service and your bravery so a crowd will like you. Some might call that narcissistic and self-serving.”
WHAT I’M WRITING
Some of you may know that I’m in the midst of writing a book about misogynists. I’ve written enough books by now that I should remember how fucking hard it is, but here I am - surprised every time! What’s made this one particularly difficult is the subject matter; I’m tweeting and writing columns about horrible misogyny every day, and then I turn to my book and have to dig even deeper. I’m glad I’m doing it, but man I don’t recommend it for your emotional or mental health. All that said, I can’t wait for you to read it, and I’ll be sharing some snippets of ideas from the book here throughout the next few weeks.
CURRENT OBSESSION
This Aesop rinse-free hand wash, which I started carrying around after I read that study about public bathroom dryers basically doing nothing besides blowing poop particles all over your hands. Aesop is pricey af but the ten dollar bottle has lasted me nearly six months so far. (This isn’t sponsored, but I am not above such things if you’re listening, Aesop!)