Hi! While I was away I read so much that my eyes crossed, and walked miles and miles of Colorado sunshine, and I’ve come back to tell you that, well, I just don’t have it in me to share anything serious or grim this week. So here’s another round of the nice and the interesting:

1. A Toast to When Harry Met Sally..a Romantic Comedy for Grown-Ups, Vanity Fair. This week was the 30th anniversary of one of my favorite movies! This author expresses my affection for the film well: “Watching When Harry Met Sally… as an adult, it feels as if the movie spills some secrets that grown-ups aren’t supposed to share—about the messiness of attraction, the circuitous path of romance, the erotic tension in spirited antagonism. It’s about how another person can become a part of you despite your best intentions. Behind the film’s wryly entertaining tone, there’s a wild liveliness that animates the characters, a combination of deep-seated longings and carnal passions.” I also really love this line, about the author’s marriage: “When Harry Met Sally… has served as this example I could keep in my pocket of what love should feel like—an endless, unspooling conversation with a partner who, like a counterweight, provides equilibrium.”
2. In the Future, Everything Will Be Made of Chickpeas, The Atlantic. “In a country increasingly wary of meat, more open than ever to non-Western ingredients, and anxious about climate change, the chickpea’s expanding role in the American diet is less a trend story than a logical inevitability.” Chickpea!! David loves a hummus and I am experimenting with other uses for chickpeas in our cooking too, so if anyone has any recommendations I’m listening! Also this makes me smile: “Chickpeas just aren’t an intimidating bean,” Kennedy says.”
3. The Frankfurt Kitchen Changed How We Cook — and Live, CityLab. “the only fully-outfitted kitchens were, prior to the 20th century, true workspaces where household staff labored in the service of a well-to-do (or even middle-class) family. For the poor and working class, dwellings generally had no discrete kitchen. In a one- or two-room home, be it an apartment or a farmhouse, a large cast-iron stove was likely to be the only major appliance, and might also be a family’s primary heat source. A table or set of shelves might serve to house utensils and tools, but there were no standardized cabinets or kitchen “furniture” as we know them today.” Interesting look at the history of something I’d never considered! The original designer of the apartment kitchen took inspiration from the dining cars on trains. There are a few photos in this piece worth checking out. It’s also cool how gender politics comes into play as architects design kitchens — Schütte-Lihotzky created a kitchen for the working wife and mother to do housework more efficiently, and in the 1920s that was liberating on its own.
4. Where’s Simba’s mom? In real life, female lions run the pride, National Geographic. “Females define their territory. They’ve grown up there and have been listening to neighbors roaring their whole lives […] And if their pride gets too big, the females will even carve out a new territory next door for their daughters to take over and start their own pride. Ninety-nine percent of all the members of a lion pride are related females.” Lionesses are so cool.
5. The Truth About Cast Iron Pans: 7 Myths That Need to Go Away, Serious Eats. This article busts a bunch of myths about cast iron pans, which I use but barely understand. “Cast iron is tough as nails! There’s a reason why there are 75-year-old cast iron pans kicking around at yard sales and antique shops. The stuff is built to last and it’s very difficult to completely ruin it.” That’s a big reason why I like them! Although he also points out that they don’t conduct heat evenly, so it’s good to have other cookware too, in my opinion. Some controversy here about soap though. Read with caution.

Bonus features:

• This is a short video of a set of subway stairs in Brooklyn where one of the steps is juuuust a bit taller than the rest, which makes most people trip on it.
• Baby trying mango for the first time (video)
• The 96-year-old painter who saved a village