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hallmark-movie-fanatics · 4 years

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A Look at the slate of Countdown to Christmas Movies airing this year on the Hallmark Channel

Jingle Bell Bride Premieres: Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Julie Gonzalo, Ronnie Rowe Jr. Official synopsis: “Wedding planner Jessica Perez (Gonzalo) travels to a remote town in Alaska to find a rare flower for a celebrity client and is charmed by the small town during Christmas, as well as the handsome local (Rowe Jr.) helping her.

Chateau Christmas Premieres: Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Merritt Patterson, Luke Macfarlane Official synopsis: “Margot (Patterson), a world-renowned pianist, returns to Chateau Newhaus to spend the holidays with her family and is reunited with an ex (Macfarlane) who helps her rediscover her passion for music.”

Christmas With the Darlings Premieres: Oct. 31 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Katrina Law, Carlo Marks Official synopsis: “Just before the holidays Jessica Lew (Law) is ending her tenure as the assistant to her wealthy boss to use her recently earned law degree within his company, but offers to help his charming, younger brother (Marks) as he looks after his orphaned nieces and nephew over Christmas.”

One Royal Holiday Premieres: Nov. 1 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Laura Osnes, Aaron Tveit, Krystal Joy Brown, Victoria Clark, Tom McGowan Official synopsis: “When Anna (Osnes) offers a stranded mother (Clark) and son (Tveit) shelter in a blizzard, she learns that they are the Royal Family of Galwick. Anna shows the Prince how they do Christmas in her hometown, encouraging him to open his heart and be true to himself.”

Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater Premieres: Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Ashley Williams, Niall Matter Official synopsis: “Single mom Maggie (Williams) is facing Christmas alone until Lucas (Matter) crashes into her life and becomes an unexpected houseguest. Together they overcome Christmas while finding comfort in their growing bond.”

On the 12th Date of Christmas Premieres: Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Mallory Jansen, Tyler Hynes Official synopsis: “Two seemingly incompatible game designers team up to create a romantic, city-wide scavenger hunt themed for The 12 Days of Christmas.”

Christmas in Vienna Premieres: Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Sarah Drew, Brennan Elliott Official synopsis: “Jess (Drew), a concert violinist whose heart just isn’t in it anymore, goes to Vienna for a performance. While there, she finds the inspiration she has been missing, and a new love.”

A Timeless Christmas Premieres: Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Ryan Paevey, Erin Cahill Official synopsis: “Charles Whitley (Paevey) travels from 1903 to 2020 where he meets Megan Turner (Cahill), a tour guide at his historic mansion, and experiences a 21st century Christmas.

A Nashville Christmas Carol Premieres: Nov. 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Jessy Schram, Wes Brown, Wynonna Judd, Sara Evans, RaeLynn, Kix Brooks, Kimberly Williams-Paisley Official synopsis: “Vivienne Wake (Schram), a workaholic television producer in charge of a country music Christmas special showcasing newcomer Alexis (Raelynn), never lets personal feelings get in the way of business. On the verge of accepting a job in L.A., and with the return of Gavin Chase (Brown) — her childhood sweetheart and manager to the special’s headliner, Belinda (Evans) — she receives a visit from the ghost of her recently deceased mentor, Marilyn (Judd). Her mentor warns her current path leads to a dark future and has recruited both the Spirit of Christmas Past (Brooks) and the Spirit of Christmas Present (Williams-Paisley) to help her get back on track. The Spirits’ time-jumping adventures force Vivienne to take hold of her life."

The Christmas House Premieres: Nov. 22 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Robert Buckley, Jonathan Bennett, Ana Ayora, Treat Williams, Sharon Lawrence, Brad Harder Official synopsis: “Working through some difficult decisions, Wade family matriarch Phylis (Lawrence) and patriarch Bill (Williams), have summoned their two grown sons — TV star Mike Wade (Buckley) and Brandon Wade (Bennett) — home for the holidays. It is their hope that bringing the family together to recreate the Christmas house will help them find resolution and make a memorable holiday for the entire family and community. As Brandon and his husband Jake (Harder) make the trip home, they are anxiously awaiting a call about the adoption of their first child. Meanwhile, Mike reconnects with Andi (Ayora), his high school sweetheart.”

New movie to be Announced Premieres: Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: TBD Official synopsis: TBD

A Christmas Tree Grows in Brooklyn Premieres: Nov. 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Rochelle Aytes, Mark Taylor Official synopsis: “Erin (Aytes) is planning the town’s Christmas celebration and must win over firefighter Kevin (Taylor) in order to obtain the beautiful spruce tree from his property for the celebration.”

A Bright and Merry Christmas Premieres: Nov. 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Alison Sweeney, Marc Blucas Official synopsis: “Two competing TV hosts (Sweeney and Blucas) are sent to a festive small town over Christmas. While pretending to get along for the sake of appearances, they discover that there’s more to each other than they thought.

Five Star Christmas (Working Title) Premieres: Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Bethany Joy Lenz, Victor Webster Official synopsis: “After moving back to her hometown, Lisa (Lenz) plots with her siblings and grandparents to help her father’s new bed and breakfast get a five-star review from an incognito travel critic (Webster), but ends up falling for him, not knowing he is the real critic.”

Christmas by Starlight (Working Title) Premieres: Nov. 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Kimberley Sustad, Paul Campbell Official synopsis: “Annie (Sustad), a lawyer, must help her loved ones this holiday season. Her family’s restaurant, the Starlight Café, is slated for demolition. The heir to the development firm responsible, William (Campbell), makes her an unlikely proposition: He’ll spare the café if Annie spends the week ‘appearing’ as the legal counsel his father is demanding he hire in the wake of some costly mistakes.”

Christmas Waltz Premieres: Nov. 28 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Lacey Chabert, Will Kemp, JT Church Official synopsis: “After Avery’s (Chabert) storybook Christmas wedding is canceled unexpectedly, dance instructor Roman (Kemp) helps her rebuild her dreams.”

If I Only Had Christmas Premieres: Nov. 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Candace Cameron Bure, Warren Christie Official synopsis: “At Christmas, a cheerful publicist (Bure) teams up with a cynical business owner (Christie) and his team to help a charity in need.”

Christmas in Evergreen: Bells Are Ringing Premieres: Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Holly Robinson Peete, Colin Lawrence, Rukiya Bernard, Antonio Cayonne, Barbara Niven Official synopsis: “As Michelle’s (Peete) wedding approaches, Hannah (Bernard) steps up to help finish the launch of the new Evergreen museum while questioning her relationship and future with Elliot (Cayonne).”

Christmas She Wrote Premieres: Dec. 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Danica McKellar, Dylan Neal Official synopsis: “When Kayleigh (McKellar), a romance writer, has her column canceled right before Christmas, she heads home to reconnect with her family. Kayleigh gets an unexpected visit from the man (Neal) who canceled her column who fights not only to bring her back to the publisher but also for her heart.”

Cross Country Christmas Premieres: Dec. 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Rachael Leigh Cook, Greyston Holt Official synopsis: “Former classmates Lina (Cook) and Max (Holt) are traveling home for the holidays, until a storm hits and they have to work together to make it home in time, no matter the mode of transportation.”

Christmas Carnival Premieres: Dec. 13 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Stars: Tamera Mowry-Housley, Antonio Cupo Official synopsis: “Emily (Mowry-Housley) is a top newscaster who has achieved her career dreams but still has regrets about the guy (Xavier) who got away five years earlier. When the Christmas carnival comes to town, a ride around the carousel takes her magically back in time to the carnival five years before... giving her a second chance at love before she must return to Christmas present.”

A Christmas Carousel Premieres: Dec. 19 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Rachel Boston, Neal Bledsoe Official synopsis: “When Lila (Boston) is hired by the Royal Family of Marcadia to repair a carousel, she must work with the Prince (Bledsoe) to complete it by Christmas.”

Love, Lights, Hanukkah! Premieres: Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel Stars: Mia Kirshner, Ben Savage, Marilu Henner Official synopsis: “As Christina (Kirshner) prepares her restaurant for its busiest time of year, she gets back a DNA test revealing that she’s Jewish. The discovery leads her to a new family and an unlikely romance over eight nights.”

Info from the ew.com article, Link HERE

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sexandwistfulness · 4 years

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l’esprit de l’escalier

During an emotionally draining conversation I had planned for days, rehearsing in my head like it was some stage play for the sole purpose of melodramatic slam-dunks instead of civilly airing my grievances, drawing some boundaries, and understanding each other better, Gallatin Girl (“Gallatin Girl, Gemini Girl, Guarded and Goal-Oriented Girl”) breaks down from sheer frustration — both of us stubbornly refusing to meet each other in the middle, despite acknowledging each other’s right to feel frustrated... without acknowledging that the other is actually, you know, right — and cries: “What do you want from me? What do you want me to be?”

“I want you to be you,” I say. “But I also want you to be fair to me and respect my feelings.”

“You don’t want me to be me,” she protests. “You want me to be... someone else. You want me to be this Alison Roman perfect white girl.”

It’s such an absurd exclamation that we both break and laugh, pausing, and the tension and frustration instantly dissipates. I remembered all the lines I had rehearsed: simmering for ages and prepping counterpoints to her gotchas, landing verbal blows meant to make her feel bad after all the times she had made me feel bad: and I instantly realize just how stupid I am for wanting that, how I had allowed myself to spiral down negativity and toxicity out of some misguided impression that it was me being just to my own feelings.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Relationships are built on shared languages, and my adoration of former New York Times food columnist Alison Roman was a particularly weird strain of relationship in-joke. One Saturday afternoon in the nicest, largest bed we had ever slept in, she parted her legs as I positioned myself above her and she asked: “would you fuck Alison Roman?”

“What?” “Would you. Fuck. Alison Roman.” “No.” “Liar.” We fucked. She came, hard, riding me and rubbing her clit while I instinctively matched the rhythm of her buckling up and down me, pushing in deep and sliding back, fondling her breasts. I came, hard, deep inside her, holding her down at her shoulders, driving myself into her. “Liar,” she teased, afterwards, as we both hopped off each other and went to the bathroom, like we always did. She listed a series of cooking media personalities, asking if I’d fuck them instead: the entire cast of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, with the glaring omission of Molly Baz, who we had always joked that we hated. “No. No. No. Okay, maybe. Yes. No. Yes, for sure.” “But not Alison Roman?” “Get out of here, I want to pee.”

“Alison Roman perfect white girl,” I laugh, back in the present. Canceled once in May 2020 for needlessly antagonistic comments against Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, both conspicuously Asian women; canceled again shortly after for a very awkward unearthed costume photo in arguable brownface (Roman later clarified it was an Amy Winehouse costume, but still in bad taste.) Criticized constantly for not acknowledging the cultures underlying the work of her famous, viral recipes, like #TheStew, a white person’s idea of chana masala featuring trendy kale and turmeric enough to horrify every South Asian recipe reader. How does that track with perfect? We all have problematic faves.

Over the next half hour, we de-escalate. “I just can’t handle the idea of not being important to you, not being important in your life,” I confess: vulnerability has never meant weakness to me, even if it is, strategically speaking from the toxic viewpoint of arguments serving solely to advance advantage, a concession of leverage and momentum in a debate. “When you broke up with me last year, I didn’t just lose my girlfriend. I lost my closest friend.”

The next night everything is water under the bridge. We meet at the Italian grocer across from her place. “Cocktail and a snack?” she asks, inviting me to join her. I get there, and we correct what she means, both knowing each other too well: “two carafes of wine and dinner, of course.” She has the eggplant parmigiana and I have the cannelloni. I can’t finish my food; she nudges the serving platter towards her and finishes it for me.

She has an intense tan, from a week away on a diving trip — I had spent that week diving, too, but into my own feelings: an ever-deepening well of dissatisfaction and uncertainty. I can’t stop looking at her. Sometimes, she would tell me that I was giving her a Look, an idiosyncratic gaze that she always told me meant I wanted to pounce her (not untrue). I would never have the right retort. We’d walk away and then my wit would return to me, but it would be too late, but in the real world, with real people, you don’t have to be so clever. Epigrams are for books. For her, and for everyone else, we have the shared language of relationships past and present and future.

#prose #writing #naive new era #personal

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sockparade · 4 years

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ill at ease

I can still picture the grin on Milan’s face that day as he walked into the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. I have a hard time remembering a day when Milan didn’t arrive at the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary. But it was noteworthy that day because the week before a video went viral of two Black men being arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia because a white employee was uncomfortable with them asking to use the restroom and sitting in the coffeeshop while they waited for a business associate to arrive. Something non-Black folks do all the time. People were calling for a total Starbucks boycott.

I raised my eyebrows at his drink, and he shrugged saying, “Look, I’m not going to let the actions of some racist white people take away my freedom to get whatever drink I want.”

And like, yeah, I objectively understand how that’s an imperfect political stance and maybe an ineffective strategy to create change, but also, man, I really felt that. In order to protest Black men being arrested for sitting in a coffeeshop (read: for being Black), was I really going to try to tell a Black man about where he should or shouldn’t get his substandard (ha) coffee fix? Try to convince him about the importance of voting with his dollar? Can’t a person just live?

I just didn’t have it in me to disagree.

I often think about that exchange whenever I hear a call to boycott such and such corporation or a call to cancel a celebrity. I mean, listen, I do believe in the power of an organized boycott or protest. There is concrete historical evidence and contemporary examples of how people have bossed companies and the government into doing what we demand. But I don’t want to keep pretending that it’s an easy switch to flip or that it’s a cost-free way for people of color to fight against the inequity in the world.

That Starbucks incident was just one in an endless number of incidents in which a white person says or does something that reveals their racism, forcing people of color to do the emotionally taxing, unending math, of just how much caucasity we’re willing to stomach.

This is a really old story. Marginalized groups of people have always had to bear the brunt of publicized racist behavior. For every racist incident, there are generally three major phases of emotional labor that people of color in the United States have to work through. At first I could only name two but then I realized it’s actually three. Let me walk you through them.

First, before any explicitly racist incident happens, we have to contend with the fact that there are generally such slim pickings in terms of choices that will allow us to exist ethically and stay true to our convictions. How do we earn a living? Where do we grocery shop? What authors do we read? Whose music do we listen to? Are there ANY electronics that are manufactured in an ethical way? Do we wear checks or not? Are the non-white teachers at this preschool treated with respect by the white owners of this preschool? How do I reduce my purchases on Amazon? Is this restaurant gentrifying the neighborhood? Wait which banks have divested from fossil fuels again? Can I truly be myself at this church? What athleisure brands haven’t been accused of overt racism yet? Where are the influencers that look like me?

When it comes to the consumption of and participation in… well, almost anything, we constantly have to make concessions because we live in a place that’s simply not built for us. It is so hard to name a single sphere of life that I enjoy that isn’t dominated by whiteness or the white gaze. I think my MO for some time now has been to assume that no brand, company, restaurant, actor, or celeb is truly *safe*. I’m generally always waiting for the other shoe to drop while also trying not to think about it too much. It’s a lot of mental gymnastics.

I was at a lecture a few years ago on the topic of the “doctrine of discovery” and the systematic oppression of Native American nations. It was a large auditorium in Berkeley full of neoliberal mostly white folks. The lecturer read a rather dismissive opinion rejecting the Oneidas attempt to reclaim land that was criminally stolen from them in violation of U.S. treaty (Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, 2005) as a shockingly recent example of how this oppression has continued. And then theatrically, he revealed the author to be none other than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. There was a loud, audible, collective gasp from the audience.

I mean, no, I didn’t know the Notorious RBG had that in her. But also, I’m not over here clutching my pearls. I’m not saying I’m proud of my jaded mentality. I’m just accustomed to it. As Tressie McMillan Cottom says in her essay “Know Your Whites” in Thick: And Other Essays, “I am not disappointed. If you truly know your whites, disappointment rarely darkens your door.” I’ve been seeing more and more of this language with the virality and frequency of racist actions being caught on video and circulated on the internet. People will say, “I’m not surprised, but I’m mad.” It’s too overwhelming to feel shock and pain every single time. So we steady ourselves for the eventuality, we brace for the pain. Know your whites, y’all.

The second phase of emotional labor is related to the actual injury. We feel the deep pain of injury even if we don’t know the person that was harmed or the person who caused the harm. I think people are sometimes quick to dismiss the behavior of rich and famous people as irrelevant and reduce discussion of it as simply celebrity gossip. But I think there’s pain whether it’s a murder, an arrest, or a racial slur. I know it can be hard to tell by the overwhelming amount of white tears shed on social media after each viral incident but the marginalized group targeted by the offense carries the pain so differently than anyone outside of that group. Try as we might to muster our empathy and our vague-ass Christian lament, it’s just. not. the. same. It’s not. Sometimes it’s so painful that I don’t even fully let myself go there. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read in detail about the recent hate crimes against Asians since COVID-19. I feel squeamish about it. I feel pain when I read stories and see pictures of families being separated, detained and deported but I know for a Latinx person that pain must be so much deeper. And I absolutely cannot fully imagine the pain that Black and Indigineous folks in America endure living in this place.

And then finally, there’s the third phase of labor. This is the part when we’re called upon to react, call it out, bring awareness, advocate for change, and make swift changes (big and small) in our own lives. Sometimes I feel judged (by others and by my own conscience) when I don’t boycott or abstain. And sometimes I just try to skip to this third phase because I don’t want to deal with the grief of the second phase.

After this past week’s twitter feud, lots of folks are ready to cancel Alison Roman for the trash comments she made about Chrissy Teigan and Marie Kondo in her recent interview in The New Consumer. It feels like there’s a sudden clamoring to point out just how white Alison Roman is, and how there’s new evidence that she’s racist. And I guess what I want to say is, um, it’s not really much of a reveal nor is it brand new information. Right? Roxana Hadadi in her recent article titled, “Alison Roman, the Colonization of Spices, and the Exhausting Prevalence of Ethnic Erasure in Popular Food Culture” gives a pretty detailed explanation of just how unshocking it is.

Prior to reading this interview in The New Consumer, did anyone really think Alison Roman had an astute analysis of her white privilege and her accompanying habit of cultural appropriation that she’s benefitted from her entire career? No! While certainly gross, was I shocked that she mocked imperfect English (regardless of whether it was in reference to Marie’s accent or a Eastern European cookbook)? No! Am I shocked when any person mocks an accent? No! We’ve *allowed* it in TV shows, in movies, in corporate settings, and in social settings. I cringe every time but I’ve been forced my whole life to accommodate it. I’ve heard mockery of accents maybe most often from second generation immigrants mocking their own culture’s accents! And If I’m completely honest, I still sometimes find myself guilty of laughing along. (Curiously, Alison Roman’s lengthy apology made no mention of that part of her interview. Perhaps she, and/or her PR team, realized there was no easy way to walk that one back.) Race relations are a fucking mess in our country, y’all. Let’s please stop pretending like it’s just the occasional ultra-public celebrity slip-up.

Hear me when I say I’m not defending her fuckery. What I’m taking issue with is the lack of nuance and the self-righteousness in how we respond to these public brouhahas. Both the shocked reactions and the gotcha reactions expressed by people feel equally tiresome to me. This reflection, written by Charlotte Muru-Lanning, is one of the few three-dimensional, unflattened, and self-searching reflections written by a person of color on this whole drama. While I don’t agree with how defensive she is of Alison Roman, I appreciate the way she refuses to act as if she doesn’t exist in the world that she’s critiquing and I love that she recognizes the complexity in herself as a woman of color.

I’ve become pretty comfortable in my understanding that everyone white in our country is racist. I say racist in the fullest, most comprehensive definition of the word. Some are hateful in their racism. And some are actively trying to fight it even as it exists in themselves. As Ijeoma Oluo explains so succinctly and precisely in her book, So You Want to Talk About Race, racism is “a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power.” And then she goes on to say, “Systematic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.” It’s in the water. And we are all impacted by it, no matter what part of the machine we’re in. Me included. As a Taiwanese American who grew up in Houston, Texas, I wasn’t magically immune to the anti-blackness that was/is prevalent in the Asian American community. Whether it was comments made by my parents, my relatives, my friends, or comments from acquaintances/strangers, it was pretty consistent. You don’t bake in that environment for all your formative years without it damaging a part of you. It’s something I still find myself fighting to unroot and discard from my psychology and my bias despite spending my non-profit career trying to address racial disparities in education and employment. I might spend the rest of my life working on it. We can’t keep pretending it’s an occasional affliction or it’s a disease that only Trump supporters suffer from. I suspect the people who are *shocked* at Alison Roman’s racist comments are also people who believe there are good whites and bad whites. #notallwhites?

Lots of folks have written reflections on cancel culture so I don’t feel the need to rehash it all here. Cancel culture exists for a reason. And it also has its various pitfalls. On one of my favorite podcasts, Still Processing, Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris do an excellent job of examining the limits of cancel culture in their episode about Michael Jackson (content warning: child sexual abuse). One of their most compelling arguments against cancel culture is that while it attempts to hold an individual accountable, it can also be harmful because it allows people to look away. It allows us to skip the hard work of scrutinizing our broken systems beyond a single individual and it allows us to give ourselves a pass and not search ourselves for the ways in which we are complicit. We can’t look away. We have to interrogate what we consume and why. It’s the only way things will change.

I want to attempt to do some of that hard work here. Beyond organized boycotts, I do subscribe to the idea that there’s value in the individual choices I make to abstain from something. Not just in service of a desired economic, political or societal outcome, but because of the impact it can have on me, as an individual. So let me push past my annoyance that I even have to do this when I’ve already done two other phases of emotional labor and get to work.

A question I’ve been asking myself this week is: Did I somehow make peace with Alison Roman’s cultural appropriation for profit? And if so, why? The answer is, yeah, I think I did. And here are my thoughts on why.

I like Alison Roman’s recipes. I have both of her cookbooks and I only have three cookbooks in my kitchen so that’s something. It’s pretty rare for me to crack open a cookbook when I’m in the kitchen. I mostly just google for specific recipes I’m craving or I’ll look up what temperature is ideal for roasting cauliflower. Almost all the dinners I cook for my family consist of rice/noodles, a meat, and a vegetable and I don’t use recipes for those anymore. Each week I do like to have one “more complicated” dinner recipe and that’s when I’ll sometimes open a cookbook or scroll Instagram. I spend an unreasonable amount of time reading recipe comments (often contradicting) about modifications or adjustments they made and that’s after wading past all the comments about how excited people are to make the posted recipe-- it’s all very confusing and time consuming.

For someone who was not taught how to cook and who didn’t spend much time in a kitchen until maybe 3 years ago, I appreciated Alison Roman’s insistence that she had figured out the “best way” to make classic dishes (usually dishes I did not grow up eating, like Shrimp Louie or Shallot Pasta), the way she suggested using spices I’ve never cooked or eaten before (Aleppo pepper), and her encouragement to use new techniques that I was unfamiliar with (slow roasting tomatoes in the oven for six hours). It was kind of like finding a cooking lifehack.

While I found her IG persona mostly grating and self-congratulatory, I was charmed by her vision in her first cookbook for lowering the barrier to entry for making a really great meal that you can be proud of and her push in her second cookbook to host dinner parties that bring your friends together in a memorable way. For a generation that has relished mostly eating out all the time and then ordering in all the time, following an Alison Roman recipe could sometimes feel like permission to try shit out in the kitchen without the pressure to be a master at it. It was a good feeling when the recipes turned out well and it was fun to talk about which recipes I’d tried with other folks who were also working their way through her recipes.

Okay, and this part might sound ridiculous but I sort of thought that Alison Roman was someone who could maybe teach me how to make white food. Haha. You know what I’m talking about? Like the food that might be on a menu at a restaurant tagged as “American (New)” on Yelp. I mean yes, she has a recipe for “Kimchi-Braised Pork with Sesame and Egg Yolk” in Nothing Fancy but that kind of bastardized Asian dish has been popping up on white restaurant menus pretty consistently for some time now. But a question I’m now asking myself is why I wanted to make white food in the first place? Did I subconsciously think it was fancier and would make for a more interesting menu when hosting dinner parties?

In her introduction to that Kimchi-Braised Pork recipe she says, “I am calling this a braise, but it is really a stew (an homage to the Korean Jigae) in which meat is braised--but isn’t that most stews?” How do you react when you read that sentence? I think she avoids triggering my usual alarm bells because she doesn’t attempt to be an expert in Korean cuisine. She feints left by throwing in the homage line. She’s not aiming for authenticity in her recipe. It might actually be worse if she gave a mini lecture on Korean cuisine. I don’t know. When I read that line in the cookbook, I don’t find myself immediately questioning the proper origins of the recipe. I don’t have the same knee jerk reaction as when a white chef publishes a whole cookbook of recipes from just one specific region of the world and presumes to be the expert or the ultimate curator.

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to work harder to stay in the habit of questioning recipe creation and curation. Kind of like the way I’ve learned to question books like Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt. Fifteen years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about white authors writing the stories of people of color. Wasn’t that the whole of literature? Or so I thought. What a gift it’s been to pivot my reading to mostly authors of color! What would happen if I demanded more from the food media I was consuming?

It gets a bit more complicated for me though. Alison Roman has a Chinese-inspired recipe called “Soy-Braised Brisket with Caramelized Honey and Garlic” that I really like. In her introduction to it she writes, “... the tangy, spiced braised beef noodles available at a few of my favorite Chinese restaurants around New York, which I’ll order every time. While not a replication, this brisket is my interpretation: salty from soy sauce, sour from vinegar, lightly spiced from a few pantry all-stars.”

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I am personally so confused by Chinese food. What is Chinese food? What is Taiwanese food? What is Americanized Chinese food? Is that still Chinese food? What was the food my mom cooked at home throughout my childhood? It took me awhile to allow myself to just fully enjoy Americanized Chinese food without feeling hung up about it. A few years ago my mom made a new dish that I loved and I naively asked her whether it was a recipe she grew up with. I think I was secretly hoping it was a family recipe that she learned from her mom so I could check that immigrant kid fantasy off my list.

She laughed and said, “Do you know where I learned it from? I learned it on YouTube!”

I mean, this is the thing with the Asian Diaspora. Things are pretty disjointed for me. I know some Asian Americans are super locked in and schooled on their origins, heritage, and culture but I honestly don’t know much. I don’t know what region or city in Taiwan my favorite kind of Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is from. I think I’ve learned to make a version of it that I like better than anything I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant or in someone’s home. I don’t say that to brag, I just say that to point out how confusing it is to try to connect that Taiwanese dish with my heritage when it’s something I learned how to make in my thirties using a recipe I found on a stranger’s website. I feel like I’m trying to connect with a culture I didn’t really grow up in myself. I’m chasing phantoms.

You know what, I feel like some white lady in the Midwest on the Instant Pot Community Facebook group might legitimately be the world expert on the best way to make General Tso’s Chicken in a pressure cooker at home. After I made the Butter Chicken recipe from Two Sleevers, I looked up who authored the recipe and was so relieved to see that Dr. Urvashi (affectionately nicknamed The Butter Chicken Lady) was Indian. I loved that Butter Chicken recipe. I was super excited to try cooking more Indian food and I was happy that I could do it with a clear conscience. Haha, it’s all so convoluted, I know.

I think maybe I feel reluctant to hold others accountable for being more respectful of food origins because my understanding of my own cultural heritage (as it relates to food, but also in many other ways) feels spotty and incomplete. I find myself feeling unsure of what I am defending. But ultimately I think this has been a flimsy excuse. It’s not so hard to google a bit more to find a chef that’s sharing a recipe from their particular culture. I think I need to confront the hidden grief I feel about being disconnected from my culture.

In The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, Anne Anlin Cheng puts it this way,

“If the move from grief to grievance, for example, aims to provide previously denied agency, then it stands as a double-edged solution, since to play the plaintiff is to cultivate, for many critics, a cult of victimization. So the gesture of granting agency through grievance confers agency on the one hand and rescinds it on the other. As a result, for many concerned with improving the conditions of marginalized peoples, the focus on psychical injury and its griefs is strategically harmful and to be studiously avoided. But this also means that we are so worried about depriving disenfranchised people of their agency that we risk depriving them of the time and space to grieve. A final problem is that since justice based on grievance and compensation tends to rely on the logic of commensurability and quantifiability, it is ill-equipped to confront that which is incommensurable and unquantifiable. In short, we as a society are at ease with the discourse of grievance but terribly ill at ease in the face of grief.”

So yeah, I guess the part I haven’t said is, when I read those comments made by Alison Roman in that interview, it hurt me. And when she deflected and didn’t take the initial pushback seriously, that hurt too. It was such a familiar feeling. I know that feeling because I’ve been there before. I’ve had my feelings brushed off with a laugh or a weird, unsatisfactory explanation. I’ve been told that someone was just punching up and didn’t think about it in the context I was. I’ve experienced that basic othering so many times in my life.

Okay so the theory here is that if I do a better job of facing the first and second phase of emotional labor head on… if I can somehow process the pain and grief of living in a racist society, then being a thoughtful consumer will feel less like a sacrifice. It’ll be easier for me to stand by choices I’ve made because I’ll know I’ve made them with integrity and in a way that is true to myself. And I can get to a place where that doesn’t feel like a loss of freedom but rather a true liberation. Man, I want that.

I also want to get in the habit of asking myself whether my desires, the same desires I am so reluctant to give up, are not actually just byproducts themselves of suffering in this machine for so long. Like, do I really believe it’s coincidental that I bought into Alison Roman’s brand and that I also do a good amount of my shopping at Madewell? And then they happened to do a collab together?

I need take a magnifying glass to the way I’ve been subconsciously trained to prize dominant white culture. It is so uncomfortable for me to even type that out because it feels like I’m admitting that I like white culture. Like I’m somehow admitting to an inferiority complex. I’m not saying I wish I were white. I definitely don’t wish that. But I am guilty of believing that my taste, my style, and my preferences are somehow invincible to the whiteness of million dollar marketing campaigns in this country. I like to pretend that my brain is somehow impervious to the terrifying industry of engineered social media algorithms and psychological branding strategies. And that’s bullshit. I don’t think anyone really wants to be white these days. Even white people themselves seem uncomfortable. But a white person enjoying wonderful things created by people of color? We eat that shit up. Why do we do that?

We have to spend time recognizing, no matter the discomfort, why our pleasures align so easily with the dominant culture. My hope is that when I start interrogating the way my tastes align with whiteness I’ll begin to cherish the ability I have to move into a place of misalignment. Maybe it won’t be so difficult to give up things I’ve taken pleasure in, because I’ll find pleasure in the process of detaching. Maybe it’ll eventually stop feeling like I’m abstaining and it’ll feel more like I’m just making powerful choices.

I think the shallow analysis of white supremacy and consumption in this country instructs a person of color to believe that liberation means having the freedom to consume as we please, disregarding the impact of our choices. You know, a chance to live the way many white people live. But I think a more thoughtful analysis instructs us to believe that our choices have consequences in terms of whether it supports or dismantles the machine of racism -- both in ourselves and in society.

Instead of the performative handwringing of trying to decide whether or not we buy another Starbucks coffee, hit next when MJ starts playing on a Spotify playlist, or keep cooking that Alison Roman brisket, my friend Milan has taught me over the years that it’s more important to be attentive to what we are desiring and why we’re making the choices that we make. Yeah that will often mean boycotting things or making different choices, no doubt. The difference is that it won’t be from an exhausting place of trying to achieve blameless optics. It’ll be from a genuine realignment. There’s freedom in that.

And yes, I see it too. That our pleasure and the way we experience culture is so closely tied to consumption is fodder for a whole other damn essay. Ugh.

#alison roman #chrissy teigan #marie kondo #cancel culture #cultural appropriation #food media #asian diaspora

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viranlly · 4 years

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#VGetsAround: his own damn dining room. At this time six weeks or so ago, I was laying by the pool, tits-deep in passionfruit gimlet in a hip and happening new--ishly opened day club somewhere in the island of Bali. Little that I know, that the world was ‘bout to go on a ride. And damn, it has been one *literal* hell of a damn ride.

Here we are, in the present day, where the word ‘travel’ is now almost taboo (just ask what Anna Wintour told Adam Rapoport of Bon Appetit). Flights are cancelled, borders are closed. Bid adieu to Coachella and your festival plans this year. This is depressing even for somebody who hates crowds and usually comes up with bazillion excuses to cancel plans *ME*.

The world, as we know it, is upside down and inside out. People losing their jobs, businesses scrambling, trying to make it one day at a time. Bars and restaurants, those who survived that is, had to make the switch to strictly delivery and take out services just to keep their doors open. Gyms are closed while my pants, on the contrary, are not able to.

Let me just say it, I miss my friends. I miss putting on my subtly loud Thom Browne suit to sit on a crowded bar, sipping overpriced exotic martini(s), while watching people watching me. I miss the feeling of getting buzzed after polishing the 4th bottle of wine over dinner at a restaurant, where you don’t have to do the dishes after. And I miss ordering the round(s) of tequila shots I probably shouldn’t even think about. I also, deeply, miss travelling.

But until the world recovers, what can we do but our part? Stay at home, wash your hands, and support our local favourites as much as we can. The upside, if any, is the fact that our group chats have never been more lit, we do our dinners and drinks over video calls - I even find out, that you can be hungover during quarantine. Little and simple things have now become something we all admire and crave every single day.

And for the travelling part, I keep telling myself, if I can’t bring myself to the destination, Imma bring the destination to me, right here to my dining room.

In an ideal world, I would’ve been roaming the streets of Mexico City two weeks ago and stuffing myself with tacos of all kinds. For the time being, the folks at La Taqueria get me covered with their build-yo-own-taco-bar at home. If you’re in the mood for a little trip to Japan, lucky for us Vancouverites, we have plenty of amazing sushi out there: Miku for their Aburi party tray for 3, which, I finished in one seating, twice; Yuwa if you feel extra fancy, even Coast offers make-your-own sushi kit (super fun date night idea, if you’re a couple or something). Mak n Ming also does really good bento boxes too, btw!

Fancy a trip to Spain? Take a #Como2Go for your tapas, conservas, and fun tipples (G&T kit, wine and vermut too!) OR if you want something more substantial, give Paellaguys a try. While we’re in Europe, might as well bring Italy in via. Ask for Luigi, Di Beppe, and Italian Kitchen. I heard Pepino’s and Caffe La Tana are also doing amazing take out. You cannot, well, more like, should not, miss what L’abattoir is doing during this time - a rotation of fancy-esque French cooking AND their iconic pastry baskets for the weekend. And while we’re on the topic of pastry... Leave it to Beaucoup Bakery for some flaky, buttery croissants (among other stuff) to go with your morning coffee. If you’re in the mood for more comforting Quebecois-French cooking, of course, there’s St. Lawrence Restaurant.

I don’t know bout everyone else, but I do get cravings for fried chicken from time to time (by time to time, I mean at least twice a week). This is the moment when I call up on some friends at Downlow Chicken, which just so happens to make incredible burgers. *ahem* Speaking of burgers... Transam does a pretty killer one too! And juuuust in case you’re still craving meat, Elisa Steak and the legendary Gotham are now doing steak take out (their wildly popular cheese bread is now on the take out menu - you’re welcome).

*I sound like a hungry kid with ADHD trying to decide what’s for dinner as I’m eating my second lunch, don’t I?*

And when ordering in gets overwhelming - trust me it does. Take the opportunity to brush up your cooking skills. Your trusty friends like Bon Appetit Magazine (both Healthyish and Basically too, obvs) and The New York Times Cooking got you. Spend the time making BA’s best bolognese, Alison Roman’s ‘the stew’, or the extra comforting brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies for a change of pace.

I truly believe that great food can help us going through this less-than-ideal time. Soon we will be able to share a meal with our friends again, and soon we don’t have to do our dishes 70 times a day again. Until then, stay at home, support your local gems, and for the love of all things that’s good and pure, wash your damn hands.

‘Til next time!

instagram @viranlly

Food | Travel | Vancouver

#travel #travelblogger #covidー19 #coronavirus #pandemic #Vancouver #Vancouver food #foodblogger #food blog #bon appetit #recipe #wellness

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jeremystrele · 4 years

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Times Like These… With New York Times Food Columnist And Author Alison Roman

Times Like These

by Sally Tabart

Spread from Alison Roman’s new cookbook Nothing Fancy, published in Australia by Hardie Grant and available now. Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

New York Times bestselling author Alison Roman. Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Alison Roman’s new cookbook Nothing Fancy, published in Australia by Hardie Grant and available now. Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Left: some photos from ‘the commune’ with Alison’s self-isolation partners! Right: An image from ‘Nothing Fancy’. Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Photo –Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

Alison Roman is a food columnist for The New York Times, and a contributor to Bon Appetit, who is beloved for her casual, just-throw-it-together approach to cooking.

I hadn’t even made any of Alison’s recipes before kind of falling in love with her. Visiting her Instagram or reading her cookbooks feels like dropping by a friend’s house, and being invited to share the dinner or lunch or breakfast they were already making (but your friend also happens to be an incredible chef and best-selling cookbook author). It’s Nothing Fancy. But it is something special. Thanks for letting me repurpose that title.

So many people were disappointed when Alison’s trip to Australia was cancelled – she’s amassed quite the cult following here – but I feel so grateful to have had this conversation with her about how life has changed for her lately. Instead of the chat we likely would have had – one sandwiched between dozens of others I’m sure she had scheduled for her book tour – I spoke to Alison about feeling all the feelings, finding the motivation to work, and (of course) cooking as a tool for connection.

Hey Alison! How are you feeling today?

Today I’m good, yesterday I wasn’t so good. It’s a day-by-day situation for sure. I think the mentality of truly taking it one day at a time and allowing yourself to not feel good when you don’t feel good, and not feel inspired when you don’t feel inspired, is key to surviving this.

Totally. What’s the vibe like in New York?

I’m actually upstate in Hudson right now. I had gotten a house sitter for my apartment in New York because I was supposed to be in Australia. So I decided to get out of town for what I thought would be a week or so, and then as things progressed it kind of became like, oh shit, this might actually be a longer term living situation.

The vibe in Hudson in mellow. People are staying home, there’s no sense of panic necessarily but it’s definitely eerily quiet.

So you were supposed to be in Australia right now, I imagine you’ve got a lot of time on your hands at the moment now that’s obviously not happening. What are your days looking like?

I’m finishing up some stories for the New York Times, and trying to work on a book proposal. Well, I say I’m working on it, but it’s on my To Do list, I haven’t actually started it yet. But it’s on the docket.

Right now I’m just trying to finish this Passover article that I basically had to rewrite, because we kind of have to rethink and redo all the stuff we’ve been writing about to be sensitive and mindful of the situation at hand.

It’s the same for us, it’s been pretty crazy having to completely rethink our content for the next few months because nothing we had planned is relevant anymore. Are you finding yourself inspired or creative?

It’s a true ebb and flow, you know? I’m staying with two of my dear friends, and we all cook and talk about food, and being around them has helped me stay considerate and mindful. We’re all trying to figure out how we can all help people during this time. It’s nice to have that.

But there are times I sit in front of my computer and I stare at a blank word document and I just refresh Twitter repeatedly because that’s all I have the energy for. I feel a bit defeated, like what’s the point of writing any of this stuff? Which isn’t really the spirit.

It kind of is the spirit right now.

Yeah. There’s also a real insatiable appetite for people going live on Instagram and answering questions, being there for the general public, fielding troubleshooting tips and being a resource to people. But also if I do that then I’m not writing or doing other things, and it’s a fine line between how can I be helpful and how can I preserve an ounce of my own space, and not feel like I’m pedaling myself. I don’t want to be like, self-promoting.

I feel like watching people cook has always been very soothing, so I’m sure that a lot of people are turning to you for comfort in a way. What are you doing to feel comforted and normal?

Cooking! It’s just something that I really enjoy doing – even though I do it for work, it’s still enjoyable to me not doing it for work.

Something that’s been hard to watch is the decline of the restaurant and hospitality industry. It’s the lifeblood of cities like Melbourne and New York. What do you think it’s going to look like after this?

I don’t know. It’s really sad. I think the ones that have a lot of money behind them will figure out a way to survive, but I think that for the most part the whole landscape has changed. It’s going to continue to change because they don’t have any infrastructure in place to protect them against something like this happening.

The whole industry is so precarious, I don’t think people realise that if a restaurant doesn’t do well three months in a row then they’re going to close. There’s not a tonne of safety for small businesses in general, but the margins for restaurants especially are so, so small that every bit counts. Especially in cities like New York, Melbourne, San Francisco, London, where the rent is insanely high and you just can’t afford to stay open.

I was listening to a podcast you did with Hilary Kerr on Second Life where you said something that really resonated with me – ‘I genuinely appreciate the bad because it means I can feel the good’. I know that was pre-COVID-19, but are you still able to feel that? What good are you taking from this time?

I still maintain that. I’m staying with my friends, and I’m spending time with them that I don’t normally get to. We’re really taking our time cooking and taking care of each other, and everybody’s being really considerate in a way that we usually try to be, but it feels extra nice. I’m FaceTiming with people that I haven’t spoken to in a long time, which is awesome. I’ve spoken with my family more than I have probably ever in the 16 or so years I’ve lived away from home.

People are more tense and edgy in one way, but more tender and vulnerable and open in another. I think that’s a real sign of progress when we’re able to be more honest and open with each other, and kind of level with one another when things aren’t going well. Because we were spending so much of our time being like, ‘Everything’s great! This is my life! This is so cool!’ and I think we’re being forced to come down and admit that things aren’t.

I can’t help feeling like there is some sort of prophetic energy that counters this #blessed life we were starting to feel was inauthentic, and now we’ve been confronted with this total authenticity that you can’t escape from. I feel good about that stuff too. You said your quarantine group has been cooking for each other, what have you been making?

We’re pretty much really going for it every night! We did steak night, baked potato night, fried chicken night, we had leftovers night, last night we took a break and did a vegan vegetable soup with mushrooms and noodles and broth. Tonight Amiel is making Chile Colorado, which is probably very American. Lauren’s making rice and I’m making beans. So it’s a real family affair. It kind of feels like we’re living in a commune.

What is the biggest challenge for you personally right now?

I would say trying to stay focused, which is something that I struggle with anyway. But also purposeful, because it feels a little bit defeatist to be like, ‘Is this the most important thing? Does anybody care? Will this matter?’ when you’re trying to plan anything more than a week in advance because everything’s changing so quickly.

And just staying motivated with regards to work. The three of us in this house have kind of unconventional jobs and schedules anyway so we work from home a lot. Self-motivating is the name of the game. But now it just feels more intense.

What are people making from ‘Nothing Fancy’ right now?

Everything, it’s crazy. Stuff that they weren’t making before, that’s for sure. People have time on their hands and they are just making it all.

What are you hopeful for?

I’m hopeful that this is going to repair the planet. I’m hopeful that we’re going to emerge from this a lot more compassionate to one another, and excited to actually be with each other once we can. I hope that it ushers in a new era of how people treat and communicate with each other, and value actual human connection. And like, going outside and going to the store and taking pleasure in things that we aren’t able to do right now.

I just hope that it restores a bit more gratitude for the boring, everyday stuff that we can no longer participate in.

Are you Listening to, watching or reading anything good right now?

I’m not a podcast person. I brought five books to my friend’s place and I haven’t read one of them! We’re watching old movies that are reliable and not going to make us sad.

Nothing that involves dogs dying or anything.

No. No dead animals, no romantic comedies that make me wish that I had a boyfriend.

The commune sounds pretty great though.

The commune is great. But I can’t wait to have sex with a person once this is over.

Nothing Fancy is the second cookbook from New York Times bestselling author Alison Roman. Find it here and keep up with Alison via her Instagram!

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