newyorker:

A cartoon of the day about modern-day gatherings.

So true. So sad.

Orthorexia Nervosa

For my masters project at Columbia I wrote about the eating disorder orthorexia nervosa, the unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. It was published this week on Health.com.

Naturally I spent a lot of time editing this story while eating Oreo cookie cake at the Cake Shop in the Lower East Side.

An excerpt:

Alena’s obsession with healthy eating started in 12th grade, when she found out she had Candida (a type of yeast infection) and a homeopathic doctor asked her to stop eating yeast, wheat, sugar, and dairy for several weeks as part of her treatment. She was already a vegetarian, so she mainly ate rice and vegetables. (Alena did not want her last name published.) Then, when she was 19, she went to a naturopathic doctor with a collection of stomach symptoms, including nausea, constipation, and indigestion, and was again instructed to avoid processed grains, sugar, soy, dairy, and nuts. “And that’s when I went crazy,” says Alena, now a 22-year-old student at NYU. “I basically cut out everything from my diet. I convinced my mind that food made me sick.”

Alena still goes through bouts where she swears off those food groups, and her forbidden list now includes carbohydrates, beans, tropical fruit, sugar, farmed fish, and potatoes that aren’t from her own garden. Meat, nonlocal produce (such as bananas), juice, beer, and dairy are all “evil,” she says. “What I do eat are a lot of vegetables. I have to have vegetables in every meal or I feel sick,” she says. “I eat whole grains like barley, whole-grain kasha. Not rice, because it really hurts my stomach and for political reasons, because it is shipped from too far away. I eat seasonal fruits, fish, and eggs.”

Read the full story here.

PS The photo of the broccoli quinoa salad is from the blog 101 Cookbooks. One of my sources told me she loves this blog. I made a few of the recipes from it and found that I love it too.

PPS The image of the cake is from the blog My Baking Addiction. I’ve never made it, but I definitely should.

Jew Food Plus Some Pig

Jew food is so beautiful. Gothamist writes about the Jew food renaissance with chef Zach Kutsher. His restaurant sounds magical. A lovely quote from the article:

“our gefilte fish is…made with wild halibut and a beet and horseradish tartare. I love our Romanian steak, which is a prime skirt steak with caramelized onions and our wild mushroom knish is amazing. Our roast chicken I could eat every night. We take a pletzel, which is kind of like a Jewish focaccia that we make in house and that’s part of our stuffing along with maitake, black trumpet, and royal trumpet mushrooms and it adds this umami flavor and this earthy goodness and levels of complexity that most people don’t expect from roast chicken. And I love our rainbow cookie Sundaes.”

And on another un-kosher note, check out chef Anthony Myint carving up this pig at the McSweeneys holiday celebration:

Photo by Molly Schildhause.

Bikram Sues Donation Based Studio Yoga to the People

You know Bikram? He’s the yoga man who started the sweaty 105 degree yoga sequence. Now he is suing Yoga to the People, a donation based studio with locations in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. So I wrote about it for Business Insider. Read all about the lawsuit here.

Also, about a year ago Details magazine wrote an interesting article about what goes on during Bikram’s training.  An interesting man indeed.

The DMZ

Now that Kim Jong Il is dead I thought it would be most appropriate to share images of that time I stared at North Korea. 

This is me, having a ball at the DMZ.

Here are some tourists snapping photos of North Korea, land of barren trees. One is prohibited to take photos beyond the yellow line.

The soldiers were there to enforce this rule, which I accidentally broke.

This is North Korea. This photo was taken legally behind the yellow line.

The End.

Cooking in the 1960s

I made this Brussels sprout pizza. Homemade dough topped with rosemary, thyme and sage infused olive oil, Parmesan cheese, garlic and roasted sprouts. I also make the best tacos in the world. No joke. Green chili corn tortillas, pinto beans, spicy sautéed mushrooms and onions with a homemade tomato hot sauce. Garnished with cilantro and lime of course.  Also, check this out - sautéed reindeer recipe. Sounds fun.

Peeing in SF

My guide on where to go when you have to go for The Bold Italic. Read it here.

Bear tooth engagement ring

Ring designed by BloodMilk. These would go well with my human wisdom teeth earrings.

One of my new favorite songs from The Simpsons. It’s right up there with this classic gem.

Before Facebook there was Purple Moon

There was a time when I enjoyed buying CD-ROM computer games packaged in cereal-sized boxes. And I had a good collection of computer games in my youth. These games gave me great experience (resumé worthy experience really) in the challenges and nuances of multiple careers. I have designed clothes for Barbie, have directed her in various independent short films, and have created my own teen magazine empire.
   
    There was one game I would play called Rockett’s World, released in 1997, which gave me absolutely no career skills whatsoever. It involved watching various scenarios of an 8th grader named Rockett.

Throughout her day the game would stop and you could hear three thoughts in Rockett’s head. You would click on the thought you liked best and whichever attitude you picked would reflect Rockett’s next moves. Here’s the intro to Rockett’s New School.

The game was released by Purple Moon and like any cool company in the late 90s they had a website.

Purple-moon.com was the original social network. In 1998 the website was the destination for cool girls ages 8-12. You could set up your own profile page where all of your interests could be viewed by other people. Here are a couple examples of what a profile looked like:

And here is what the website’s main page looked like on December 10th, 1997:

After judging people based on their astrological sign, favorite food and concerns you could decide whether to persue internet friendship or not. To initiate a friendship you could send messages, or “postcards”, to other members as a way to make long lasting internet relationships. You could also play games, which would allow you to collect treasures, like this retainer:

These treasures were then put on display on your profile so you could show-off to everyone how many cool and rare treasures you had. My friend Hannah Betterton and I quickly found a way to hack into other member’s accounts and steal their rare treasures making the website even more fun.

It was all grand, until one fateful day. On that winters day, as I stayed indoors on the computer away from the snow storm outside, I went to Purple Moon to log-in. I  was anticipating the messages I may have received since the previous day, the treasures I could collect, the accounts I could successfully hack. As I snuggled into the big black computer chair I was disappointed to see this message on my screen.

I checked back periodically. Those Purple-Moon characters were outfitted in winter gear well into Spring. Purple-Moon never returned.