Latest news with #MarieSolis
New York Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Plot Twists
I'd just finished and loved Miranda July's novel 'All Fours' last year when my colleague Marie Solis wrote a profile of July with the headline, 'She Wrote the First Great Perimenopause Novel.' This was the first time I'd heard the book mentioned in these superlative terms. 'All Fours' is about a woman in her 40s who sets off on a road trip from California to New York but gets waylaid a few miles from home, rents a motel room and stays there for three weeks, during which time she reconsiders all the received ideas she's internalized about being a wife, mother, woman, artist. I'd read the book the way I consume most of July's work — quickly, excitedly, marveling at how her brain works, how she's able to take seemingly ineffable experiences and make them explicit. 'All Fours' spoke to me, but it didn't dawn on me until I read Marie's article that this was going to be such an important book to so many people. Soon, everyone I knew was reading it. It became 'the talk of every group text — at least every group text composed of women over 40,' The Times said. The Book Review named it one of its 10 best books of the year. And the conversation has continued. July has since started a Substack. There's a mini-series coming. Surely even more people will be reading and chatting about the book when it comes out in paperback on Wednesday. A couple of weeks ago, July was a guest on the Modern Love podcast. She reflected on the success of the book, how it was no accident that it became as big as it has. She deliberately set out to write a book that would 'change our conception of older women and their sexuality and just their lived lives and what goes on in their heads.' I was struck by one portion of the interview in which she mentions that, when she was working on 'All Fours,' she and her friend Isabel would 'meet once a week and eat and talk about the idea that we were always changing.' This set my mind racing: I meet up regularly with friends, but we seldom have an agenda beyond catching up. How exciting and productive to have a regular meetup with a theme! July and Isabel specifically focused their get-togethers on the biological changes they were experiencing during perimenopause — 'that we were actually pretty different at different times of the month and that we were kind of putting on an act of sameness' — but if that isn't applicable to your own circumstances, you could just talk about how you've changed generally, your outlook or your routines or your tastes. Imagine inviting a friend to coffee and telling them you'd like to focus the date on how you're 'always changing.' It's weird, but it would direct your conversation in a way that might be interesting. Who knows what you might discover? This is what I love about July's work: She seems to see the world as a canvas for creativity, her life as a space of possibility where just because things have always been done a certain way doesn't mean they have to continue along those lines. In the 1990s, she created a videotape chain letter of movies made by girls and women. In 2014, she created an app that allowed you to enlist a stranger in delivering an in-person message to a friend. And I was recently thrilled to find that one of my favorite pieces of July's audio fiction, 'School of Romance,' from the late, great WNYC radio show 'The Next Big Thing,' is available on SoundCloud. It's gorgeous, delightful, heartbreaking, and, like 'All Fours' and her other fiction and films, it makes me want to live my life a little more creatively. Like all good art, it makes me want to question things. 🎮 Doom: The Dark Ages (Thursday): The 1993 computer game Doom dropped players onto a Martian moon with just two objectives: Run fast and blast demons. It was wildly inventive, with graphics and gameplay that moved the medium forward. It was also, for its time, wildly violent; Germany restricted sales of the game for nearly two decades. The moral panic around video games has since subsided, and this new Doom is unlikely to cause much of a stir, even though its monster guts are far more detailed. But players who loved the original will be happy to find that, 32 years later, the objectives remain the same: Run fast. Blast demons. The Hunt: After years overseas, a couple came home for a quiet life in upstate New York with an $800,000 budget. Which home did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $625,000: A 1930 American Foursquare house in Newburgh, N.Y.; an 1810 house in Sandwich, Mass.; or a 1908 Craftsman bungalow in Portland, Ore. A big green sofa and real plants: See inside Antoni Porowski's Manhattan apartment. Travel: Spend 36 hours in Santa Fe. Touch grass and show vulnerability: This week the Well desk hosted the Well Festival, which brought together doctors, relationship experts, athletes, authors and celebrities to talk about maximizing happiness. Read takeaways here. Sleeves that keep the sun at bay I've found that 15 minutes between meetings is plenty of time to pull out a few weeds (especially with my beloved stirrup hoe). It's also plenty of time for me to get a sunburn. I rarely want to slather myself in sunscreen for these spontaneous outings. Enter: sun-protective gardening sleeves. These $20-ish sleeves not only prevent sunburn, but also offer scratch protection from the usual garden irritants. And the lightweight fabric is so pleasant to wear, I've even considered sporting them outside the garden, to baseball games or fishing. Best of all, I can easily slip them off when I return from the garden. I reassume my position at my desk with no evidence of my midday garden rendezvous. — Sebastian Compagnucci Boston Celtics vs. New York Knicks, N.B.A. playoffs: Knicks fans were surprised when their team overcame a 20-point deficit in Game 1 to beat the Celtics in Boston. There may not be an adjective strong enough to describe their shock — and their glee — when the team did the very same thing in Game 2. Can Boston figure out its 3-point shooting woes and get back into the series? Or have the Knicks figured out the formula to shut down the defending champs? Today at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were rowdily and wordily. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@
Axios
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
We've reached Peak Flavor
Bland food is out. Fully loaded flavors are in. If you've found yourself salivating over menu items or recipes infused with za'atar, saffron, black sesame, cardamom, raspberry-rhubarb or miso lately — you're not alone. The big picture: Since home cooking boomed among the cooped-up during 2020 lockdowns, palates have expanded and gotten more colorful. Businesses are trying to keep up with the hunger for hyphenated flavor combos and artisanal tastes. Add the TikTok virality effect, and you've got a whole generation willing to stand in line for the hottest matcha-infused drink or bakery item they can consume and, maybe, post. "Adding an ingredient that's perhaps, air quotes, unfamiliar to some people is an easy way to riff on a viral recipe," food journalist Bettina Makalintal told The New York Times' Marie Solis. "If tiramisu is having a moment on TikTok, then you might see someone doing matcha tiramisu or ube tiramisu." State of play: Evidence is everywhere that our flavor cravings are on overdrive, from the new Iced Lavender Cream Oatmilk Matcha at Starbucks to chef Alison Roman-inspired dinner parties. Our collective lust for more attainable luxury, particularly in a precarious economic moment, could feed the habit. The NYT also cites the rising profiles of cooks from Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas, like Yotam Ottolenghi's "Jerusalem" and Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat." Add to the list: Hetty McKinnon, Salma Hage and Priya Krishna. The intrigue: It's not just coastal elites. 100-year-old Missouri-based flavor forecaster Beck Flavors named miso caramel one of its flavors of the year, the NYT reports. "We're getting away from the boring flavors, for lack of a better word," Nick Palank, the company's marketing manager, told the Times. "Hazelnut, French vanilla, coffee." Case in point: Flavors like Japanese citrus yuzu are popping up everywhere, from Muji stores to mocktail menus. Pistakio, a 2023 upstart, has launched a pistachio spread to rival peanut butter and almond butter. Quickly expanding ice cream chain Van Leeuwen is usually ahead of the curve, with flavors like Earl Grey and hot honey long on the menu. And brand partnerships abound: see Jeni's Ice Creams and Fly By Jing chili crisp. Natalie's thought bubble: During the COVID lockdowns, I got interested in better connecting with my Lebanese heritage through food. I experimented with lots of flavors discussed here, and they've become staples in my household.
Indian Express
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
My matcha-dusted, lemon-scented, tahini-drizzled adventures in flavourmaxxing
By Marie Solis There are only a few things I've voluntarily waited in line to experience. To see the David, at the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy. To tour the Frida Kahlo home in Mexico City. To receive a COVID test a few times; at least twice for a vaccine. Averse to hype and wed to some vague notion of 'self-respect,' I have never waited in line for a Cronut, cupcake or TikTok-famous slice of pizza. And so I had initially decided to close my heart to the latest trendy bakery, which regularly sells out of pastries like a matcha-mango morning bun, shakshuka focaccia slice and French onion soup croissant well before its official closing time. Yet I could not deny my appetites. I love matcha, so I yearned for that bun. I was curious, too, about how the bakery seemed to fold so many flavours of the zeitgeist between layers of laminated dough. That's how I found myself shivering on a sidewalk in Brooklyn on a recent April morning, questioning the nature of not just my own desires but also those of the three dozen or so people in line in with me. How had our tastes become so discerning? When did, say, a blueberry muffin start to seem a bit meager, less sophisticated, compared with the multihyphenate baked goods that we all appeared to be craving? Somewhere along the way, I had unwittingly spoiled my taste buds. I was not a foodie, no. That identity category barely exists anymore. These days it is a norm, at least among those with disposable income, to have an ultrarefined palate and to embark on new culinary experiences whenever possible. I just happened to be another person alive in our overdetermined era of hyperflavour, in which many of us seek out increasingly elaborate combinations of ingredients and spices to satisfy — what exactly? A drive toward indulgence? An anxious need to project a certain worldliness to our peers? Maybe, like a hojicha maple miso cookie, it's many things at once. We might worry it was a sign of an empire in decline if we were not so busy savoring all of this complexity. It was 2020, and I was on my phone — more than usual. I was watching recipe videos on YouTube and admiring loaves of sourdough bread on my friends' Instagram pages. Like any coastal millennial worth her salt, I was also growing scallions in glasses of water on my windowsill and making Alison Roman's caramelized shallot pasta. My roommate, who had temporarily lost his job in fine dining, taught me how to fold a dumpling and make a Last Word cocktail. Confined to our apartment, we were in pursuit of novelty and feeling. The coronavirus pandemic is a big reason for the way we eat now, said Bettina Makalintal, a senior reporter for Eater who started her popular Instagram account, @crispyegg420, during the early lockdowns. Her first post featured a piece of buttery sourdough toast, wilted kale and a sunny-side-up egg with dollops of chile crisp, a condiment that quickly became a staple of quarantine cooking and started appearing on big-box grocery store shelves. It was just the latest addition to an arsenal of pantry items that the home cook had been slowly accumulating over years as hit cookbooks like Yotam Ottolenghi's 'Jerusalem' and Samin Nosrat's 'Salt Fat Acid Heat' introduced many people to new ingredients and ways of building flavour. At the same time, food publications like Bon Appétit and New York Times Cooking had begun to establish a larger presence online. Once the pandemic hit, novices like me became unwitting food content creators, sharing their culinary experiments on TikTok, influencing one another and iterating on cooking trends as they spread across the internet. In this increasingly flavour-curious environment, cooks from Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas found a wider and more receptive audience for ingredients that had long been staples in their kitchens. 'Adding an ingredient that's perhaps, air quote, unfamiliar to some people is an easy way to riff on a viral recipe,' Makalintal said. 'If tiramisu is having a moment on TikTok, then you might see someone doing matcha tiramisu or ube tiramisu.' That's a tried-and-true formula for creating dishes that feel au courant, according to Nick Palank, the marketing manager at Beck Flavors, which develops flavour profiles for clients in the food and beverage industry. Based on its trend research and flavour development, Beck Flavors, a family-run company in Missouri that has been around since 1904, declared miso caramel one of its flavours of the year. 'We're a meat-and-potatoes country here,' Palank said. But even in the middle of the United States, consumers are looking for more adventurous flavours: 'More cultural, ethnic and specifically Asian flavours are doing really well. People want to experience the world without leaving home, basically.' Those flavours tend to resonate especially strongly if they pair a nostalgic ingredient (caramel) with one that may be more novel, at least to a white consumer (miso). 'We're getting away from the boring flavours, for lack of a better word,' Palank said. 'Hazelnut, French vanilla, coffee.' Once I began to pay closer attention, baroque flavour seemed to be everywhere. At Starbucks, I noticed an iced lavender cream oat milk matcha had returned to the menu for spring, along with a new iced cherry chai. For the erudite seltzer drinker, my local bodega had options like calamansi, hibiscus and rose, and Guava São Paulo, the favorite LaCroix flavour in my household as of late. Out of curiosity and probably masochism, I decided to stress-test my palate. How much had it grown accustomed to hypersaturated flavours? And how much could I flavourmax before I maxed out? I emailed Palank and asked if he and the flavour scientists at Beck could design a menu that reflected the tastes of the moment. I told him my boyfriend and I were planning a small dinner party for two of our most discerning friends in all matters of taste, Kevin and Dilara. I would need concepts for a cocktail, an appetizer, a main and a dessert. A few days later, Palank sent along a four-page document with several options under each heading. Reading some of the menu ideas gave me a vertiginous feeling, and an anticipatory stomachache. For drinks: matcha martini with a twist, spicy kimchi Bloody Mary, pistachio espresso martini. For apps: miso and truffle deviled eggs, gochujang-glazed chicken wings, tamarind and yuzu ceviche. For an entree: mala rose pasta, chicken pasta with a pistachio cream sauce, yuzu-and-miso-glazed salmon. And for dessert: miso-caramel brownies, turmeric and ginger ice cream, pistachio tiramisu. I skipped lunch in anticipation of my elaborate meal, which I had shopped for the night before after solidifying my scientifically designed, flavourmaxxed menu: a 'sweet heat' beet salad, a favorite of Palank's; salmon glazed with miso and gochujang, instead of yuzu (which I could not find at the nearest Whole Foods); and brownies with a miso-caramel drizzle. I took some creative liberties: I plated my beets with a swirl of labne, instead of goat cheese, adding sumac and lemon in addition to the requisite drizzle of hot honey. To my miso-gochujang marinade, I added a dash of sesame oil. I asked my boyfriend, David, to mix a classic Paloma but to add coconut water, a New York Times recipe. I added, too, jasmine rice with scallions and butter, and roasted broccoli finished with a tahini-lemon-garlic sauce. As I ate, I realized that I had expected to be overwhelmed, but everything on my plate just tasted like good food. The salmon had a deep umami flavour with just a little heat; the tanginess of the labne, boosted by the lemon and sumac, was the perfect accompaniment to the beets. Still, by the time I was adding a sprinkling of flaky Maldon salt onto my miso-caramel brownies, I had begun to feel a wave of fatigue, not just with flavour but with life. Even though Palank had promised me I would seem elegant and cultured to my friends, I had the hazy shame of trying too hard. My guests appeared to be enjoying themselves, though. And Kevin made a remark that I tried to take as a compliment — or at least receive neutrally.
New York Times
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Dark Comedy
There used to be a multiplex near my house that we called the 'Babysitter 12' because it felt like, no matter the film on view, the theater was always full of people laughing, screaming, horsing around. I stopped going there after a while because while it was fun to be part of a boisterous crowd during, say, a Marvel movie, the constant din during more serious films grew distracting. The Babysitter 12 closed during the pandemic, when people's living rooms became their theaters. My colleague Marie Solis recently wrote a story for The Times about a 'laugh epidemic' in movie theaters. People are chuckling aloud during violent, sexy and scary scenes in movies like 'Anora,' 'Babygirl' and 'Nosferatu.' For some moviegoers, this behavior is appalling, disconsonant with what they think the appropriate response should be. Marie puts forward some theories as to why some people are laughing at moments that others think require more gravity. Perhaps we became accustomed to watching movies at home and forgot our theater etiquette. There's been such genre collapse in movies that it can be hard to tell what's meant to be funny and what's not — is 'Babygirl' an erotic thriller or an erotic comedy? Maybe we're uncomfortable with a scene so we laugh nervously, or we laugh to show we get a reference. I saw a fairly serious movie about a violent relationship in the theater last summer and was surprised at how much laughter there was during tense scenes. I had the sense that groups of friends who'd been laughing and joking before the lights went down were having a hard time switching gears, that their laughter was almost like a glitch in their software as they went from the delight of a high-spirited night out to the sober nature of what they were watching onscreen. I remembered the experience of the Babysitter 12, how part of the reason I stopped going was because I didn't like myself when I felt that others were misbehaving. My inclination was to be the busybody who shushes strangers who are just having a good time. I like the rules of the Alamo Drafthouse theaters, where they declare that anyone who uses a cellphone or talks during the film will be expelled. (I have never seen this happen and imagine that the threat of such a sanction is enough to scare potential rowdy patrons straight.) The point of going to the movies, though, is other people, as intrusive and perplexing as they might be. The reactions of other moviegoers to the movie is part of moviegoing. Yes, there are shows now designed to be streamed alone, at home, on a small screen. But when I'm at the theater, I want to be generous, to take in the fullness of the audience, the community. I want to let it all in, to subscribe to the view that one person Marie talked to put forth: that experiencing emotions not just about the film you're watching, but also about your fellow audience members, is 'what makes film-going really exciting.' You can't get that in your living room. 📺 Cobra Kai (Thursday) What is the sound of one hand tapping out? That not-quite-a-Zen koan fits 'Cobra Kai,' a not remotely Zen show, which concludes its sixth and final season with five new episodes for Netflix. A maturation of the 'Karate Kid' franchise, the show found the original movie's characters (played now, as then, by Ralph Macchio and William Zabka) settled uncomfortably into Southern California midlife, and it quickly made them senseis of rival dojos. Now they'll fight common enemies in a climactic worldwide karate tournament, in which teeth, lives, karate whites and dignity are all imperiled. For more: Macchio spoke with The Times about what drew him back to the iconic role. Cheesy Green Chile Bean Bake A pot of savory canned beans is a speedy winter staple, a satisfying go-to on a cold February night. In her cheesy green chile bean bake, Ali Slagle makes them even better by covering a skillet full of pinto beans, poblano and salsa verde with Monterey Jack. The mild dairy softens the bite of the green chiles and adds a gooey texture with cheese pulls galore. Serve it for dinner over rice or with soft tortillas. Or leave it in the skillet and plop it on the coffee table to serve as a Super Bowl-friendly appetizer with tortilla chips for scooping. No utensils required. Devastation: After the wildfire comes the emotional toll of listing every object inside a destroyed home. What you get for $3,500 in Los Angeles: Rent a loft in Long Beach, a Spanish-Style house in La Quinta or a condominium unit in a Baldwin Park building designated as a landmark. Keep up with the Kardashians: Kris Jenner put the family's longtime home on the market. The Hunt: After years of renting, a young couple in Manhattan went looking for a co-op unit they could buy. Which one did they pick? Play our game. Travel: Go for cheap to the Caribbean. Get on a streak: Accomplish your goals by making them a habit. Egg safety: It's unlikely that your dozen eggs are carrying bird flu. Playlist: Listen to Doechii and other new songs on our critic's playlist. How to sanitize your kitchen sink After the effort of cooking a meal and clearing a sink full of dishes, cleaning the sink itself may be the last thing you want to do. Unfortunately, it's important: It kills pathogens from produce and raw meat, and it helps keep the kitchen from getting smelly. Luckily, cleaning your sink can be an easy, two-step process. Scrub off grime with a bit of dish soap on a brush or sponge and then rinse the sink down. Next, sanitize it with a spray containing bleach, making sure to cover the faucets and handles. Let the spray sit for the recommended time (or about 30 seconds if no time is specified on the bottle), rinse with water, and voilà. A truly clean sink. — Abigail Bailey Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was quieting. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@
