🕵🏽 sherlocked (and other cool things)
Mooncakes, arepas, and why every restaurant is boring
Happy Friday!
Here are some things that I found inspiring, interesting, and just plain cool this week…
🎂 “I don’t know how to cut a cake”
2 am Threads stories are the best.
“I should have been asleep,” you say?
Nevertheless, I stumbled upon a growing trend called “sherlocked”.
Something about 🎂 cake…
I traced the origin (because my midnight sleuthing skills are not to be underestimated) and found a saga of this woman’s quest to not get volun-told into hosting or cooking for her niece’s birthday party. 👇🏽
Brings up the topics of:
🙏 People pleasing and ⚠️ boundaries with family members
😵💫 Invisible labor - the mental load of households (when and where things are, etc.), which predominantly falls on women
🫠 Weaponized incompetence - avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incapable or inept, which gets the other person to take on more responsibility
In addition to loving the messy drama of this, I thought that the trend was particularly interesting because it’s led to a whole bunch of women in the comments sharing their own stories of having roles like this (“The Host” or “The Baker”) foisted upon them and the boundaries they set (or wished they’d set).
Are people born party-planners, or do they have party planning thrust upon them? After all, they have other interests
(gotta do some nods to Wicked y’all, I can’t resist)
If you read it, the whole thing starts about 5 days ago…
She does her best to stay out of the party planning and hosting, and it all leads to my personal favorite part of the saga (weaponized incompetence at its PEAK)👇🏽
Def worth a break from the political content of your feed and an interesting way to think about how gender roles, people pleasing, boundaries, invisible labor, AND weaponized incompetence might show up in our lives.
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🍂 The Mid-Autumn Festival
We *just* missed the Mid-Autumn festival (Oct. 6) because I wasn’t paying attention to my calendar. It’s still on September tbh - don’t judge.
In penance here are TWO cool things about moon cakes
#1: 🥮 From folklore to reality, here’s a story about how protestors baked rebellion into mooncakes.
And #2: How this bakery makes thousands of mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival 👇🏽
🫓 Arepas
The contested ownership of arepas!
It’s National Hispanic American Heritage Month and we were talking about all about Colombian and Venezuelan arepas with our school partners!
🫘 Cinnamon Rolls and Chili?
“Some say the dish can be traced back to logging camps at the beginning of the 20th century, where hard-working loggers needed meals that were both high in calories and satisfying. Most others cite chili and cinnamon rolls as a once-essential part of their school lunch programs.”
Cheap and sweet, this article from the Smithsonian dives into a seemingly-odd pairing.
Photo by Andy Cross / The Denver Post via Getty Images. Accessed Smithsonian Magazine
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👅 How business consolidation is BORING our taste buds
Are restaurants all starting to taste the same?
Well, it might because scratch-cooking in restaurants (at least most affordable ones) is becoming rarer.
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Stay curious and stay inspired!
Rachel
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