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weasleyimaginewheezes · 6 years

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Fred x Reader / Stubborn (Part Two of Competitive)

Part One

Requested by Anon

A/n I actually love writing this story so if you want a part 3 just request and I’d be happy to write it :) Hope this is alright anon. I’m currently in the process of writing and brainstorming all the requests I've been sent but requests are still open for anything hp related A/n

Warning for swearing.

“(Y/N)! Look out!” Your eyes saw the oncoming bludger just in time to duck out of it’s way. Your fellow beater flew up next to you on the pitch as your captain put away the Quidditch equipment down below.

“What is going on with you today? Your usually so in sync.” You looked at her inquisitive expression and sighed. It was true normally you could spot a bludger from 10 feet away but something else had caught your attention at practise today. A certain redhead had been watching from the stands.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be more on it next time.” Your teammate patted your back, much harder than intended making you cough a little.

“You better. I mean bludgers aren’t just gonna stop in the path to break your neck.” You nodded along but watched the lone Gryffindor in the stand out of the corner of your eye. “I mean you remember what happened to that Weasley last match? He was stupid enough to not look and then BAM! Right in the schnoze.”

She lowered her broom to the ground laughing. Your face had gone a little red with anger at her insult towards Fred. It wasn’t his fault, you had sent the bludger after all. Since it was only you two practising with the help of your captain, you didn’t feel the need to join them on the ground so you headed to where your attention had been all afternoon.

“Hey Weasley.” The twin looked up as you flew closer towards the stand. You recognised it was Fred and smiled foolishly at him. “What you doing up here?”

“Came to scoop out the competition, clearly.” Fred smirked as he said it matter-of-factly but somehow you knew he had an ulterior motive than to simply watch.

You landed on the ground of the stand and dismounted your broom. Fred walked closer to you and you took in his appearance. He was wearing muggle clothing and was bundled up in a hat, gloves and his Gryffindor scarf. His cheeks were glowing with redness most likely due to the cold wind.

“So where’s George? I mean I thought you two were attached at the hip?” You smiled at him in a playful way and he laughed back, sounding slightly nervous. His hand rubbed the back of his neck and he avoided looking at you.

“Oh, um, y’know he- he’s got work to do.” Fred shrugged, his gloved hands darted into his pockets for warmth and oh god he looked cute. You mentally shook your foolish thoughts away and nodded before realising his words.

“George is doing work? As in homework?” Your voice dripped with skepticism and your eyebrows were raised. Fred looked unsure and just muttered a quiet yes.

“Actually he-“

“You doing anything-?”

You both laughed as your sentences overlapped. You each encouraged the other to speak before the argument rested on you to speak.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to practise?” You indicated towards the empty pitch. “If you’re not doing anything.” Fred looked slightly stunned at the request before picking up his cocky, confident attitude and smirking.

“Are you sure you wanna do that (l/n)? I mean after last time-“ he started moving closer and closer towards you.

“Need I remind you that I was the one that broke your nose?” You were impressed, you sounded confident, intimidating. Fred laughed, he was only a step away from being nose to nose with you.

“Are you saying you meant to break my nose because that’s cruel even for a small (y/h) like you.” His smirk grew wider and you gasped in outrage dramatically.

“Hey! I am not small! And of course I didn’t mean-“ But the rest of your sentence died in your throat as Fred took the last step to close the gap. Your heart raced at the thought of what he was about to do. And then the hope of finally kissing him was ripped out from under you as Fred darted away and began rising up into the air on your broom. You had been so wrapped up in him that you hadn’t noticed him steal it from your hand.

You stared at him in rage and ran as fast as you could down to the changing rooms where spare brooms were kept for practice. You found a cleansweep model and took it. You flew up to meet Fred but not before releasing one bludger from the box to practise with and collecting two beaters bats.

The ball zoomed around the goal posts as you passed a bat to Fred. You gave him your best competitive look before flying to the bludger. Fred raced you to it and hit it hard.

The ball spiralled to the other end of the pitch, you both kept up with it whilst throwing playful glances at each other along the way. You hit the bludger high into the air as Fred zoomed back to the opposite side of the pitch and poised himself ready to swing.

You smirked at him as you sent the ball in his direction. A part of you feared for his face again but he was ready this time. He swung his bat forcefully and the dangerous ball flew towards you. You prepared yourself for its force and then you saw Fred wink at you from a little way across the pitch. You mind went blank for a minute before you realised what was heading your way. You weren’t prepared to hit so instead you dodged it, sharply turning your broom to the side.

But the ball didn’t miss you as you had hoped and instead crashed into your broom, largely chipping the wood handle. The broom below you went out of control, not knowing what to do without half of it there. You had no where to grip and suddenly you were sliding off of the cleansweep.

You made the mistake of looking down and you yelled in terror as you began to fall. You closed your eyes in anticipation of the worst as the wind whipped your face. You were falling faster and faster and then it stopped. You opened your eyes carefully to see Fred’s ginger hair in front you. You were sat on his broom which was only a couple of feet off of the ground, instinctively your hands went around his waist and he lowered you to the ground, careful to dodge the still roaming bludger before catching and locking it up. Your heart was still pounding like a drum against your rib cage due to the fact that you just fell to what you were certain was near death.

You stared off into space, your breathing still a little uneven from panic. A click sounded in front of your face and you shook your head to rid of your thoughts. Fred smiled at you with concern. “Are you okay (y/n)?” You nodded slowly at him, adrenaline was coursing through your veins, you felt near invincible. You looked at Fred in uncertainty. He just looked very confused and worried that perhaps you were in a state of shock.

Your heart kept racing faster and faster as you contemplated doing what you had wanted since the first match between (y/h) and Gryffindor. There was a short distance between you and Fred, you ran up to him and closed it quickly, pressing your lips against his. You could tell he had been shocked by your action. You stayed pressed against his lips until you realised he wasn’t returning the kiss at all, you felt hurt and hurriedly pulled away.

Fred looked on at you in a dazed state as you felt your eyes water and your heart drop to your stomach. Your hand covered your mouth and you shook your head.

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have-“ you cut yourself off to prevent him hearing your voice break. You walked quickly away towards the castle. You had just ruined everything and there was no turning back.

Fred entered the Gryffindor common room looking solemn and saddened. He sighed heavily as he sat down next to his twin on the sofa.

“You’ve been gone a long while.” George nudged his arm, a suggestive look on his face clearly oblivious to his brother’s mood. “So did you do it?”

Fred turned his head to look sadly at his brother. “No.”

“But the whole reason you went down there alone was to ask her out!” George looked astonished that his always confident twin hadn’t been ballsy enough to ask out the girl he’d been crushing on since their match. Fred just looked away towards the roaring fire. “Okay what happened? Why do you look like Ron does when Hermione won’t speak to him?”

“She kissed me.” Fred smiled a little at the memory of feeling her lips against his own. George grinned at him.

“I knew it! I told you she likes you back!” George exclaimed a little too loudly prompting some looks from the other Gryffindors. Fred shrunk back into the couch and glared at him.

“Yeah except she ran away before I even got the chance to kiss her back.” Fred looked at the ground defeated as George patted him on the shoulder sympathetically.

“I’m sorry mate.” George smiled sadly at his brother. Fred nodded before excusing himself to bed to take a nap.

It was a week later when Fred saw you next. You were just exiting your potions lesson when you ran into him head on, knocking your potions book out of your hand. You couldn’t avoid him like you had been all week as he picked it up and passed it back to you with the flicker of a small smile.

“Hi.” Fred smiled gratefully as you returned the greeting. You took a deep breath.

“I wanted to apologise for last week. It wasn’t cool of me to do that.” At Fred’s confused look, you leant in and whispered. “You know the kiss.” Fred nodded, laughing at the reminder.

“Don’t apologise. I liked it.” Fred wore a nervous smile as your breath hitched at his words.

“But- but you didn’t kiss me back.” You stuttered foolishly over your words in shock.

“You didn’t give me a chance to!” Fred’s eyebrows raised up and his eyes widened but he had a bemused expression written on his features.

You thought about how quickly you had run away and gave a small laugh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to runaway. I just- I was upset.” The last words came out as a hushed whisper and you looked at the ground out of embarrassment, pink rising on your cheeks. The colour turned quickly scarlet as Fred grabbed your hand.

You looked up at him in shock at the contact and he just smiled simply at you. You couldn’t help but return his infectious smile at him. “How about you make it up to me by letting me take you out to Hogsmeade.” He pointed to himself and back to you with his thumb and index finger before winking at you. You laughed whole heartedly.

“Okay Weasley it’s a date. You better kiss me properly this time.” Your confident side reared it’s head and you moved in closer to him, both stood in the empty corridor. Fred smirked mischievously and bit his lip making your eyes dart to watch. Your heart resumed its now usual pace around Fred, it hammered so hard you were surprised that he couldn’t hear it.

Both of your breathes came out faster as you stood practically nose to nose. You were both staring at each other’s lips, knowing exactly where this was heading but there was no way you were making the first move. You did last time after all. You raised your eyebrows impatiently, waiting.

Fred’s eyebrows did the same seemingly challenging you to compete to be most stubborn. You licked your lips a little and he narrowed his eyes. You were growing more impatient until Fred gave you a taste of your own medicine and licked his lips. You gave in.

“Of for fuck’s sake.” You pulled the collar of his shirt closer to you and crashed your lips together. Fred kissed back immediately and it was amazing. It was passionate and sweet, gentle and loving. Fred’s tongue eventually entered your mouth making you gasp a little. You did the same, continuing until you were both gasping for oxygen. Your heart felt content as you stared at Fred with a massive grin, you were still close enough to feel each other breathe. Fred pecked you quickly on the lips then on the cheeks and your nose. You giggled a little.

You knew Quidditch was going to be a lot more tough with Fred on the opposing team and with you being romantically attached to him but you were stubborn enough to want to beat him and you knew he felt exactly the same.

#harry potter #imagine #fanfiction #fred weasley #fred weasley x reader #fred x reader #fred and george #harry potter fanfiction #fanfic #Weasley twins #reader #my fic #request #requests open

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years

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‘Just Make It Home’: The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America

ST. LOUIS — Speak in short sentences. Be clear. Direct but not rude. Stay calm, even if you’re shaking inside. Never put your hands in your pockets. Make sure people can always see your hands. Try not to hunch your shoulders. Listen to their directions.

Darnell Hill, a pastor and a mental health caseworker, offers black teenagers these emotional and physical coping strategies every time a black person is fatally shot by a police officer. That’s when parents’ worries about their sons and daughters intensify.

“They’re hurting,” Hill said. “They’re looking for answers.”

Hill, who is African American, learned “the rules” the hard way. When he was 12, he and a group of his friends jumped a fence to go for a swim in a lake. That’s when two officers approached them. One of the cops, a white man, threatened to shoot Hill and everyone else if he ever caught them there again.

“I was so afraid,” Hill, now 37, recalled. “He made all of us sit down in a line right by the lake.”

He still tells himself that the officer didn’t mean what he said that day. But Hill’s tone changes when he thinks about the second time white men threatened him with a gun.

Hill and his family moved to a small, mostly white town in Florida. He rarely left the house at night, but one day when he was a sophomore in high school, his grandmother, who wasn’t feeling well, asked him to take their car and drive to a convenience store for ginger ale.

He got lost along the way and asked two white men for directions. Instead of offering help, the men tormented him, Hill said. When he tried to drive away, the men followed him in their vehicle, chasing him around in the dark. He thought surely they would kill him if they caught him.

“They told me it was [N-word] season,” Hill recalled. “I was terrified.”

The traumatic event is hard to talk about, Hill said. His voice still shakes as he describes how the night unfolded. That’s one reason he’s helping teenagers unpack their trauma — and guard against experiencing more — as they try to cope with the mental health burden of other people’s racist assumptions.

His unofficial guide to what he calls “living while black” can be tough to remember under pressure. But Hill said the survival skills feel essential to many who grow up feeling that the color of their skin makes them vulnerable to becoming the next George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, an event that has prompted civil rights protests around the world.

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But well before Floyd’s death, Hill’s phone began to ring more. It was the start of the coronavirus pandemic and his young clients from the Hopewell Center, a mental health agency in St. Louis, needed help processing the closing of schools, loss of jobs, social isolation and loss of loved ones. So instead of working from home, Hill put a folding chair in the back of his car and started making house calls. He planted his seat in front yards and sidewalks while his clients stayed on their front porches.

The conversations Hill was having grew more complicated, though, after Floyd’s killing. Two months before Floyd’s death, Breonna Taylor was killed in Kentucky after officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department entered the black woman’s apartment dressed in plainclothes. Taylor’s boyfriend thought the officers were intruders, so he fired a single shot. Officers responded by shooting Taylor at least eight times. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was chased down and fatally shot while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia. Three white men were arrested.

The mental anguish for some black families exploded as they saw these images and stories repeatedly on the news.

“When these happen, we have to address them,” said Lekesha Davis, vice president of the Hopewell Center. “It’s having a direct impact on [black families’] mental and emotional well-being.”

Hill offers coping skills as he makes his rounds every week. His conversations during regular visits now include discussions about police brutality, civil unrest and how to survive. Part of Hill’s work is teaching the mechanics of navigating everyday encounters — from walking in a public space like a park to being stopped by the police or entering a business.

Isaiah McGee, 18, is a mentee of Darnell Hill’s. McGee has aged out of the program at the Hopewell Center where Hill works as a mental health caseworker, but Hill still checks in with McGee every other week. (Courtesy of Isaiah McGee)

Don’t make any sudden moves. Watch your body language. Don’t point your fingers, even if you’re mad. Don’t clap your hands. Listen. Know the law. But don’t say too much. Make eye contact.

While many black families have their own sets of rules, he hopes that following his “do’s and don’ts” will allow kids to survive as unscathed as possible to realize their life ambitions. “Let’s just make it home,” Hill tells them. “We can deal with what’s fair or not fair, what’s racial or not racial at a later date.”

White children and teenagers, meanwhile, aren’t generally taught these sometimes futile survival skills with the same urgency. They’re just as unlikely to learn about the systemic racism that continues to create the problems, and almost certainly not what it would take to undo it.

Hill knows his training sessions don’t guarantee a win. He’s a husband, father, nonprofit board member and the president of the parent-teacher organization at his youngest child’s school. His voice is friendly and his demeanor is calm. Still, sometimes none of that matters when Hill drives in a predominantly white neighborhood. While he knows not all white people stereotype him, he remains aware that his height and weight (he’s 5-foot-10 and over 300 pounds) and the color of his skin could turn him into a target — even when he’s trying to order lunch.

It’s impossible for him to prevent an officer from invading the wrong apartment. He can’t teach black boys how to sleep, jog or bird-watch in non-threatening ways. And he can’t stop a prejudiced cop from firing shots at an unarmed black man.

Hill’s just glad he can fill in the gaps when families need him. And he knows it has helped on occasion: A 16-year-old client recently told him he’d channeled his advice when he was stopped by two police officers near Ferguson, Missouri. The teenager had been walking around with his lawn mower to make some money cutting grass. On his way home, the officers stopped him and asked why he was outside and how he had obtained the lawn mower. The teen told Hill the next day his advice had helped him stay calm and defuse the situation so he could get home safely.

Another teen Hill has worked with, Isaiah McGee, 18, has aged out of Hopewell’s youth mental health program, but Hill still checks in with him every other week.

The teen recently graduated from high school and plans to study music in college this fall. “I’m just trying to make it somewhere in life,” McGee said. “Leave my thumbprint on the world, become a legend.”

‘Just Make It Home’: The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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stephenmccull · 4 years

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‘Just Make It Home’: The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America

“They’re hurting,” Hill said. “They’re looking for answers.”

“I was so afraid,” Hill, now 37, recalled. “He made all of us sit down in a line right by the lake.”

He still tells himself that the officer didn’t mean what he said that day. But Hill’s tone changes when he thinks about the second time white men threatened him with a gun.

“They told me it was [N-word] season,” Hill recalled. “I was terrified.”

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

Please confirm your email address below:

The mental anguish for some black families exploded as they saw these images and stories repeatedly on the news.

Don’t make any sudden moves. Watch your body language. Don’t point your fingers, even if you’re mad. Don’t clap your hands. Listen. Know the law. But don’t say too much. Make eye contact.

Another teen Hill has worked with, Isaiah McGee, 18, has aged out of Hopewell’s youth mental health program, but Hill still checks in with him every other week.

‘Just Make It Home’: The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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dinafbrownil · 4 years

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‘Just Make It Home’: The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America

“They’re hurting,” Hill said. “They’re looking for answers.”

“I was so afraid,” Hill, now 37, recalled. “He made all of us sit down in a line right by the lake.”

He still tells himself that the officer didn’t mean what he said that day. But Hill’s tone changes when he thinks about the second time white men threatened him with a gun.

“They told me it was [N-word] season,” Hill recalled. “I was terrified.”

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

Please confirm your email address below:

The mental anguish for some black families exploded as they saw these images and stories repeatedly on the news.

Don’t make any sudden moves. Watch your body language. Don’t point your fingers, even if you’re mad. Don’t clap your hands. Listen. Know the law. But don’t say too much. Make eye contact.

Another teen Hill has worked with, Isaiah McGee, 18, has aged out of Hopewell’s youth mental health program, but Hill still checks in with him every other week.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/just-make-it-home-the-unwritten-rules-blacks-learn-to-navigate-racism-in-america/

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biofunmy · 5 years

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How to Tell if That Peach Is Ripe? Ask Southern California’s ‘Produce Hunter’

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Shopping at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, Karen Beverlin reached into a five-pound box of tart Belle Magnifique cherries, grabbed a couple and ate them.

Tart cherries are tricky to size up at a glance: Flavors can range from gently tangy to very sour, and just looking at them offers no reliable clues. All Ms. Beverlin had to go on was her palate. She ate a few more, and smiled.

She motioned to Tristan Aitchison, the chef de cuisine at Providence restaurant in Los Angeles. He hadn’t intended to buy cherries, but after seeing the look on her face — and tasting the cherry she held out to him — he decided he had to have five pounds. The stand, Andy’s Orchard, was already sold out, but Ms. Beverlin let him buy one of the boxes she had ordered.

“She’s the godmother of the market,” said Mr. Aitchison, who relies on her advice about what to buy as he plans his menus. Within a week, the roast duck entree at Providence sported a grilled cherry sauce.

Ms. Beverlin, who calls herself the Produce Hunter, tests, tastes and talks fruit and vegetables for a living: As the vice president of specialty sales for FreshPoint Produce, one of the nation’s largest produce distributors, she supplies schools, hospitals, restaurant chains and cruise lines.

Her job also includes forging relationships between small farmers and demanding chefs like Mr. Aitchison — “the ones,” she said, “who are known for their commitment to quality local produce.” They rely on her deep knowledge of the rhythms and quirks of Southern California’s bounty: what will be ready in days or weeks, and who will have the most flavorful crop.

On her Instagram, @fpproducehunter, she alerts followers to whatever is best in a given week — mixed summer squash, baby corn — as well as the dishes her client chefs make with them, like a salad of Little Gem lettuce and Cara Cara oranges at Tartine Bianco in Los Angeles.

Three times a week, Ms. Beverlin prowls farmers’ markets in Santa Monica and Hollywood, collecting intelligence and working with a handful of growers she has come to favor over time, while FreshPoint drivers load large orders onto two trucks parked at the market’s edge.

The Wednesday market in Santa Monica, the city’s biggest, runs one block by two blocks. Ms. Beverlin needs six hours to walk it.

At 59, after more than 30 years in the business, she is a market celebrity, interrupted every 50 feet by a young cook seeking advice or a veteran farmer eager to ply her with a sample. A tall, commanding presence with a rollicking laugh, she is easy to find: If a knot of people has gathered around a tomato or a plum, she is likely at the center of it, expounding.

Her first bit of advice, no matter where you shop: Don’t fall for a pretty face, because most produce has a different sort of “tell,” a visual giveaway that it’s ready to eat.

Tart cherries keep their secrets, but the best sweet cherries advertise with “tiny little pittings, in a cluster,” she said, and a matte finish rather than a patent-leather sheen. A great nectarine has “sugar spots, a bunch of little white freckles,” not a consistent hue.

As for peaches, she dismisses the red blush that may draw customers. The only color that matters, she said, is at the stem end, which should be yellow without a hint of green.

“Red exterior color was bred into peaches and nectarines,” she said, “because unripe fruit that’s red looks more attractive than unripe fruit that’s pale.”

Many people pinch fruit to gauge its ripeness, much to the horror of farmers. The standard five-fingertip squeeze bruises peaches, nectarines, apricots and avocados. Instead, Ms. Beverlin places a peach in her open palm, wraps her hand around it and barely flexes. If it gives just a bit, “firm, but not hard,” it’s ready.

On a recent Wednesday, she spent almost an hour at Andy’s Orchard — too much time, by her own admission — tasting and testing stone fruit with a portable Brix refractometer, which measures sugar levels in a few drops of juice. It’s the only objective measurement she relies on.

“It helps to communicate what I’m tasting,” she said. “All the chefs understand the Brix numbers, so it provides a baseline.”

She wasn’t looking for what most people think of as peak ripeness. She wanted fruit just shy of that point, when sugar levels are higher and it has the most flavor.

“It took me years before I realized what I was seeing: Tree-ripe fruit that’s firm tastes better than what is traditionally identified as ripe, when fruit is soft,” she said. “I think some consumers give up flavor to get juice running down their arms. But they don’t know what they are missing.” (She buys fruit that’s fairly firm, then lets it sit on the counter at home until it starts to yield. At that point it goes into the refrigerator so it won’t get soft.)

Ms. Beverlin headed down the street to visit her preferred group of stands — one for the best Burgundy plum, another for green beans, though none so far this season for “machos,” which is what farmers called male zucchini blossoms.

All the while, she kept up a running commentary: If the green cap at the stem end of an eggplant was starting to turn brown, it was getting dehydrated. If an artichoke wears a red heirloom sticker, which happens only in the spring and fall, “grab it,” she said, because it will outshine other varieties.

The farmers and chefs Ms. Beverlin works with consider her essential to their success, not only for her recommendations but also for logistical help.

Robin Koda, a farmer in South Dos Palos, northwest of Fresno, brings her rice to the market, but her truck is too small to handle 2,000-pound pallets for larger sales. So Ms. Beverlin arranged to send a FreshPoint truck once a month to pick up one or two pallets of rice and rice flour, increasing and stabilizing Ms. Koda’s business.

Mr. Aitchison said Ms. Beverlin is the main reason he and his boss, the Providence co-owner and chef Michael Cimarusti, order from FreshPoint. The restaurant buys all its organic dairy products from the company, as well as staples like garlic, fresh ginger, chives and shallots.

While Mr. Aitchison likes to shop the farmers’ markets himself, Ms. Beverlin occasionally adds special produce to his order — “an incredible advantage,” he said, for a chef who might not otherwise know that there were only two boxes of a particularly delicious nectarine.

When told of all the praise, Ms. Beverlin shrugged.

“These people,” she said, “are my family.”

She did not plan to end up here. At 18, she enrolled at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, intending to become a large-animal veterinarian, only to find, she said, that “I didn’t like the science and wasn’t good at it.”

During her senior year, she landed an internship at the nonprofit Fresh Produce Council (now the Fresh Produce & Floral Council), which led to 20 years on the shipping side of the business and 10 years at her current job. At first, it worked well for a single mother: Buying produce is an early-morning business, so Ms. Beverlin was able to be home when her young daughter returned from school.

That daughter, Amy Beverlin, grew up to be a lawyer. Last year, she gave her mother a birthday present: a two-tiered wheeled market cart, complete with cup holder and bell.

As Ms. Beverlin worked the market, she got an urgent text from Hector Salas, a FreshPoint driver, saying that someone had dropped a zero from an order for 100 pounds of lemon cucumbers. The farmer had set aside only 10 pounds. What should he do?

She dispatched Mr. Salas in one direction and lit off in the other, rattled. When he reported that he had found 80 pounds from another farmer, she asked him what color they were.

“A good lemon cucumber should be a lemon-chiffon color, a light yellow,” she said. “Then the yellow turns darker, like the highlighter on my computer. The skin gets thicker. They’re overmature.”

If the cucumbers were a dark yellow, she told him, “I’d rather not fill an order.”

The cucumbers were light in color, Mr. Salas said. They had saved the day.

Ms. Beverlin’s last stop of the afternoon was the Munak Ranch stand, which in her opinion grows the best tomatoes at the market. Tomatoes, like tart cherries, can be inscrutable, but Ms. Beverlin knows what to ask farmers and is happy to tutor anyone — a young chef or the overwhelmed customer standing next to her.

The first thing to figure out about tomatoes, she said, is your personal preference.

“You have to learn what you like. If you like a low-acid Japanese tomato, you’re not going to like a high-acid Sungold or Pineapple,” she said, because the flavors are so different. She prefers the assertive flavor combination of high-acid, high-sugar tomatoes and fruit, “the holy grail, the ones that make your jaw tingle,” but allows that others might prefer a more subtle taste.

“The point is to try different varieties,” she said, “so you can walk up to a farmer and say, ‘What do you have that’s low- or high-acid?’”

Geography and farm practices matter, too. The ideal climate for tomatoes is hot days and cool nights, which describes Paso Robles, where Munak Ranch is located. To enrich the soil, Munak plants cover crops for three months every year, a formula the farm foreman, Hugo Gomez, keeps secret even from Ms. Beverlin, though she believes it involves peas and vetch. The process loosens the soil, provides better drainage, yields stronger plants and produces more flavorful tomatoes.

She checked in with Mr. Gomez about the Celebrity tomato crop, which was supposed to arrive in two weeks. When he told her they might be ready sooner, she flipped into acquisition mode on behalf of her chefs: Could she have them in a week? Could he bring some to the weekend markets?

She could; he would.

“Bye, Pumpkin,” said Ms. Beverlin, who reserves that nickname for a select few.

“Mamacita,” said Mr. Gomez, who has been farming longer than Ms. Beverlin has been placing orders.

Only one thing gnawed at her as she headed for the parking lot. Two farmers had asked, incredulous, if she was about to retire. They had heard a rumor she might, though neither remembered the source. Maybe it came from a competing distributor, she said — who else would have floated such a ludicrous idea?

“I’m going to die at this market,” said Ms. Beverlin, with a defiant smile and that laugh. “They’re going to call my daughter and say: ‘Hey, Amy, your mom just went down. Can you come by to pick her up?’”

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fadingfartconnoisseur · 7 years

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My Plan for 2017: A Commitment to Fitness

For years, I lived my life with one solid focus: to travel the world as much as possible and build my career as a travel blogger. And it was good. Lord, was it good.

But over time, I learned that being singularly focused means that everything else in your life suffers to a degree. Relationships. Other interests. And most importantly, health. Case in point: almost every travel blogger who has given up full-time travel has cited health as a reason.

When I finally felt the travel desire waning, it was a blessing. For the first time, I felt the freedom to create a fixed life in New York. Now that I’ve been managing that for a year, it’s time to turn my efforts toward improving my health.

The Background

I grew up very thin, put on weight throughout my twenties, then lost 20+ pounds in 2010, just in time for me to start my travels in Southeast Asia. How? I basically starved myself. It wasn’t healthy.

You can see in the pics from back then that I was super thin but had no muscle tone. I was the epitome of skinny fat.

After Southeast Asia, the weight packed back on. And while I would lose a few pounds here and there, I was never able to commit to anything. Yoga? BORED. YouTube workouts? MAYBE FOR A FEW WEEKS. Paid video workouts? DIDN’T LAST. Running? HURT MYSELF AND STOPPED. Walking a ton? NOT ENOUGH CARDIO.

And so I found nothing that worked. As a result, my weight stayed the same. And I am so fucking sick and tired.

I’m tired of contorting myself into the skinniest position possible while posing for photos.

I’m tired of traveling with gorgeous friends with hot bodies and feeling like the resident lump.

I’m tired of hiding on beaches behind sarongs and caftans.

I’m tired of traveling with brilliant photographer friends and ending up photos of a fat girl I don’t recognize.

For five and a half years I’ve been looking at photos of myself and thinking, “That’s not me.”

So I’m finally taking action. In a big way. Here is how I am going to change my life with fitness.

Exercise Goals:

Join Equinox.

Yes, I drank the #committosomething Kool-Aid. There was a promotion in December where there was no initiation fee for joining Equinox (usually $300-500), so that was the incentive that brought me in.

(Note: this January you can still join Equinox with no initiation fee if you work out 12 times in your first 30 days! Tell them Kate McCulley recommended you.)

I held off because I wanted to join a gym like Healthworks Back Bay, where I went in Boston. Healthworks is a luxurious all-female gym and I went all the time because I loved the atmosphere. And there actually isn’t an equivalent in New York. I went back and forth — did I really want to work out with boys who used all the heavy weights and made me feel inadequate?

Turns out a coed gym wasn’t the problem. My core issue was that I didn’t want to feel intimidated. And I lucked out — I go to the Equinox on West 92nd St., which is in a residential zone and thus reflects the locals: there are a lot of older people. Classes tend to be young and nearly all female, but usually at least two thirds of the floor is filled with people in their fifties and older. The kind of people who say, “Why, thank you, young lady!” when I hold a door for them (so sweet). And because of that, I don’t feel intimidated at all!

For what it’s worth, not every Equinox is like that. I’ve heard the downtown locations have a hotter crowd and the SoHo location in particular is popular with models.

And to acknowledge the elephant in the room — yes, it’s an expensive gym. I wish it weren’t. But for someone like me who has tried and failed so many different fitness plans over the years and has only succeeded staying in shape when she has a fancy gym to go to? GIVE ME THE FANCY PLACE WITH THE COOL CLASSES. All day. I need that as motivation. And their app. God, Equinox has an awesome app.

Honestly, if I joined Planet Fitness or even NYSC, I wouldn’t be motivated to go. Equinox is super nice and fancy and I love going there. Spending that money is worth it because it’s keeping me in shape.

Get a personal trainer.

I didn’t see this on the horizon, but surprise — I have a trainer now! Equinox matched me with Gayle, a trainer who met the criteria I asked for (female, not a drill sergeant type, wouldn’t mind my sporadic travel schedule) and I see her twice a week for strength training.

I went into the gym as a fitness newbie — I have no clue how to work out on the machines or what my form should be or how hard to push myself or how to design a circuit. Even when I went to Healthworks in Boston, I avoided the machines because I didn’t know how to use them. This way, Gayle is helping me go from an unshaped ball of clay to a very fit human being with a routine customized to all my personal strengths and weaknesses.

Try 20 classes at Equinox before the end of the year.

I am a class junkie — I love group fitness, especially fast-moving dance-y classes, and it’s one of the best ways to motivate me to go to the gym. Equinox is known for its excellent classes and instructors. I’m already impressed at what the difference can be between an average Zumba instructor and a great Zumba instructor.

I *could* take 20 different classes at my gym on 92nd St., but that would mean taking virtually every class they offer, so I may look into expanding into a global membership, letting me check out other clubs and classes.

Get up the nerve to take a spin class.

The idea of spinning, or indoor cycling, has always terrified me, especially after hearing accounts of intimidating instructors from friends. It seems like everyone yells at you, and I don’t feel strong enough to join in yet!

I will get up the nerve, and I will do it. Maybe in a month or so.

Figure out how to keep up exercise while traveling.

This is the one that stumps me the most. Everything I’ve tried while traveling has not worked long-term. I think my best solution may be trying to find Zumba classes when traveling in the US or major cities.

Lose 25 pounds by Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is the last weekend in May and the unofficial kickoff to the summer, non-American readers. And I think losing 25 pounds a week, which works out to just a little over a pound per week, is a very reasonable goal.

My body assessment calculated that my optimal goal should be to lose 33 pounds of fat and add 11 pounds of muscle. So losing 25 pounds will get me to a good, bikini-worthy weight, but I think I can lose another 5-10 pounds beyond that.

Get sexy, defined clavicles again.

I want my clavicles to be sharper than a serpent’s tooth.

Diet Goals:

Aim to eat paleo 80% of the time.

I’ve always thought the paleo diet made the most sense — lots of vegetables with meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds, while avoiding processed foods, sugar, dairy, and grains. It sounded so healthy — I just didn’t want to commit to it.

Then I promised my trainer I would give up sugar and carbs (not all carbs, just bread and pasta and rice). And then I dropped dairy as well and didn’t miss it. I guess this is what I’m doing now.

Doing it 80% is a smart choice because it keeps me from being miserable and it makes socializing easier. I went out for Vietnamese food at Anchoi on the Lower East Side and enjoyed pho and summer rolls with rice noodles and rice paper, and didn’t care. I had a little shaved parmesan on a kale caesar salad at Sweetgreen and loved it, too.

I’m not going to splurge aimlessly — I’m going to save them up for really good reasons. Like a Salty Pimp at Big Gay Ice Cream in the Village or the fettuccine al’amatriciana at Emilio’s Ballato in SoHo.

Commit to cooking paleo at home.

I love to cook. And there are so many great paleo recipes on the internet! I’ve been experimenting and having a great time. I made a grass-fed beef chili so good that I nearly cried. And my new favorite things are date-almond-coconut bars made with nothing but those three ingredients.

In the process, I’ve also started shopping at the Trader Joe’s on 72nd St. more often, rather than relying on the subpar markets in my neighborhood. Not only is Trader Joe’s shockingly cheap (like, cheaper than Amazon cheap), they also have a nice selection of organic options and cool store products. (The only thing? The checkout line stretches for AGES, even on a random Tuesday afternoon.)

Make smarter choices about alcohol.

I’m still doing a sober month once a year (though I didn’t write about it in 2016), which I recommend to everyone. It’s good to give your body a break and remind yourself how to socialize without booze. It made my skin clear up so much, too.

I’m not giving up alcohol entirely, but I’m making smarter choices about what I drink. I don’t drink at home to begin with, and when I go out, I choose wine (usually red or champagne) or spirits, ideally low-cal vodka sodas with (a lot of) lime.

And if I get a cocktail, I try to get a relatively clean cocktail. At Attaboy on the Lower East Side (amazing speakeasy and one of the best cocktail bars I’ve ever been to), the bartender made me a Bee Sting: gin, lemon, honey, ginger. At Red Rooster, the restaurant that literally made me want to move to Harlem, I got an Earl of Harlem: bourbon with Earl Grey tea and lemon.

Off the menu are beer, sugary cocktails, and anything involving soda or high-cal mixers like tonic.

Make smarter choices about caffeine.

I’ve become a latte-a-day girl, and as much as I love them, they’re not the smartest choice. They add a lot of calories and the dairy isn’t great for you. Plus, I don’t mind drinking (good) coffee black!

When I go out to cafes now, whether to work or for a pick-me-up, I restrict myself to either black coffee or herbal tea. No sugar, ever, but I didn’t use sugar anyway.

I’ve also been experimenting with bulletproof coffee: a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of organic unsalted grass-fed butter and a tablespoon of organic coconut oil. I only do it pre-workout, but it makes me feel like I have rocket fuel in my veins.

Make smarter choices about animal products.

This year I’m going to make a bigger commitment to cooking only with organic, free-range, antibiotic-free eggs and poultry, grass-fed beef, and wild-caught fish. These kinds of animal products are so much healthier for you than the conventional options.

Unfortunately, meat this good comes at a price — it’s very expensive. I’ll try to get what I can for cheap at Trader Joe’s, but they don’t have everything. I plan on making lots of visits to Harlem Shambles, one of the best butcher shops in the city.

Mental Health Goals:

Meditate more often.

I pay for the Headspace app but don’t use it nearly enough. It’s funny how I can while away ten minutes on Facebook without noticing but ten minutes of meditation makes me think, “Do I really have time for that?” Hell yes, Kate, you have time for that!

The truth? Meditation always helps me relax, focus, and feel more in control. Sometimes it even cures my headaches! There’s really no reason not to do it. I’d like to do it a few times a week.

Let go of the body baggage.

I grew up in a thin family. I graduated from high school at 5’4″ and 109 pounds and didn’t start putting on weight until later in college, then kept adding more and more in my twenties and thirties.

My family members are wonderful, smart, funny people. But nobody’s perfect, and looking back, I realize that when I was growing up, we were not as kind and accepting of overweight people as we should have been. It never lapsed into mocking or cruelty, but there were constant negative comments when talking about people heavier than we were.

Two examples of that? I remember when I was in a play and one 15-year-old girl had to do a move where she flung her arms outward. I noticed nothing unusual about it, but I remember my mom saying, “If I had a daughter whose arms jiggled like that, I’d have her on a workout plan so fast.” (And because I know a lot of people from home read this blog — she wasn’t talking about someone from Reading. This was at summer camp.)

And I remember once at church when a family of three came in. Both of the parents were obese and each used two canes to walk. Their son, probably around 12 at the time, was overweight. “That kid is doomed,” I remember my dad saying as soon as we were home.

It was during college when I realized that making negative comments about overweight people was neither kind nor common. I spent a few years rewiring my brain and trying to become a better person.

So, what’s it like to grow up thin in a family where thinness is prized but you end up heavy? It’s been rough. I’ve felt like an embarrassment to my family for many years now, especially after being a heavy bridesmaid in two weddings. My weight is frequently a topic whenever I’m home, but it’s more along the lines of, “So what are you doing to work out now?” They’re not mean about it, but it’s tough to know that they would hold a better opinion of me if I lost it.

I need to keep working through that.

Use the SELF Journal for fitness goals.

I supported the SELF Journal on Kickstarter and got one of my own but haven’t even started using it yet! Talk about the height of laziness.

It’s part day planner, part bullet journal. It helps you set your daily and weekly goals and lay out the steps you’ll take to get there.

I particularly like that it has sections for daily gratitudes, both in the morning and the night.

Make peace with the fact that I’m going to lose my boobs.

Because, really, they’re exceptional. And I don’t say that lightly.

Get up early — perhaps a monthly challenge of getting up early.

I got this idea from Lauren of Neverending Footsteps — she wants to spend a month waking up early, like at 4:00 or 5:00 AM.

I love getting up early, but I rarely do it — I feel like I’m wired to do my best work at night, especially when it comes to writing, and it’s not unusual for me to be putting the finishing touches on a blog post at 2:00 or 3:00 AM. Even though I don’t want to.

So perhaps I should make a concentrated effort to get up at 5:00 AM for a month and see how it goes. That would be easy to take on the road, too!

Put phone on airplane mode long before bed until long after you’re up.

C’est Christine recently posted about doing this and I’m a big fan — it’s nice to know there are no distractions when you’re trying to get to bed. And this way, my eyelids start fluttering while I’m still reading and I fall asleep immediately.

It also helps me get up in the morning and get things done before getting sucked into social media.

So, how’s it going so far?

Well, we’re 17 days into the New Year, so I’m well aware that I’m in the “This is awesome!” stage of things and keeping it up will get more challenging.

So far, though, I feel amazing. I don’t know whether it’s the workouts or the diet, but I feel so focused and aware and light and I have an easier time getting work done. My skin is soft, too.

And the big one: I’ve lost five pounds in two weeks and my jeans are loose in the butt region. Five pounds is a lot of weight to lose that fast, but it’s common to lose fast at first, and I’m certain the weight loss will soon taper down to a more-reasonable one pound per week.

I plan on doing little fitness updates in my monthly recaps and a bigger post around Memorial Day or once I hit a major milestone.

But what I really, truly hope is that this is the beginning of a major lifestyle change for me. I’ve waited long enough.

What fitness goals do you have for 2017? What has worked for you? Share away!

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Ale02/Shutterstock We’re all tired of cooking. Just cut up some fruit and call it a day. It feels like the 4,000th day of March, and it’s 95 degrees out. I’m standing in line at my local grocery store, six feet away from the next person, slowly melting. Why even bother with my carefully plotted list? I’m done with sourdough starter, done with experimenting with bagels and baked goods, done with meals that take hours “because now I finally have time!” Instead, I lug home a gigantic $10 watermelon I can barely lift, listening to it roll around my trunk with every turn and stop sign. I buy a crate of peaches shipped from Georgia, a bag of cherries, and a pint of blueberries. I buy more tomatoes than one person really needs. I’m eating fruit salad for dinner, just because I feel like it. Humans have been making fruit salad — mixing more than one fruit together in one dish — for millennia. “Julius Caesar certainly ate fruit salad,” says University of North Texas history professor Mike Wise. “Every generation has their fruit salad.” Traditional American cookbooks included fruit salads for decades, but early versions leaned savory as appetizers or to pair with larger roasted meats. “It’s presentable, it’s fancy,” says Smithsonian curator Paula Johnson, who found references to fruit salad as we know it today — a mix of bananas, grapes, berries, and whatever fruit is on hand — in cookbooks as early as 1901. The 1927 Pillsbury Cookbook’s version calls for “2 oranges, 3 bananas, ½ pound white grapes, 12 English walnut meats, 1 head lettuce.” Cooks tossed these early fruit salads with a vinaigrette. By the 1950s and 1960s fruit salad went from appetizer to dessert, ensconced in gelatin or covered in newly available aerosol whipped cream. “A lot of these kinds of fruit salads were marketing initiatives,” says Wise. “It’s an inventive tradition.” Fruit salad became even more popular with the availability of frozen and canned fruit, from strawberries to kiwis. “When you look at any of these women’s magazines or community cookbooks, [they had] Jell-O salads with different kinds of fruits, and those were so easy to just pull out and try,” says Johnson. “There’s this paradox where it’s historically been [viewed as] a processed food, when fruit is viewed as healthy and fresh,” says Wise. Ambrosia, a popular mid-century take on fruit salad that was loose on the fruit and heavy on the whipped cream and marshmallows, represented the peak of what dessert fruit salad could be. Alton Brown’s recipe for the dish calls for heavy cream and sour cream. My grandmother — who I loved dearly but made most of her food from a can — would bring one every Thanksgiving. But by the 1960s and ’70s, consumers “began to reject the manufacturer,” adds Johnson. “The ethos shifts from less fussy, whipped-cream laden fruit salads to something that’s cut up and fresh.” Wise notes that ditching the gelatin allowed people to consider the fruit salad as a “low-calorie option, with less types of fruit in it.” My Mom’s 1975 edition of The Doubleday Cookbook instructed housewives to choose fruits based on contrasting size and texture, and to add a little crystalized ginger, mint, or liqueur for flavor. Growing up in the ’90s, most fruit salads I encountered strictly followed The Wiggles’ 1994 instructions: peel the bananas, toss in the grapes, chop up some apples and melon. (Do you have “Fruit salad, yummy yummy,” stuck in your head yet?) If we were lucky, a few mini-marshmallows got thrown in. It would sit, unloved and untouched, at every summer picnic, an unappetizing side dish stewing in its own juices, with little regard to the quality or seasonality of the fruit. McDonald’s, under pressure to offer low-calorie and low-fat choices to consumers, added a fruit and walnut salad in 2005 that might as well have been a yogurt parfait. (They’ve since replaced it with plain apple slices.) That’s not my fruit salad. Fruit salad, in today’s Instagrammable-everything world, is just as much about presentation as it is about taste. Contemporary fruit salad means leaning in to the joy of summer, even if that joy is contained in a few juicy bites of blueberries, tomatoes, and watermelon tossed in a lime vinaigrette. It’s experimenting with ways to mix fruit with herbs, spices, cheeses, or grains that my parents or grandparents never would have — like mixing watermelon, cucumber, and feta or wrapping melon with sage and prosciutto. I add fruit for a surprise sweetness and lightness, like pasta with smashed peaches and smoked mozzarella, or use fruit as a counterpoint to heat in a papaya and peanut fruit salad with mint like Boston favorite Myers + Chang does. “It’s a really popular salad in Vietnamese cuisine. We’ve had it on the menu since we opened,” says Joanne Chang, the owner and head chef. “It’s so refreshing, and it’s a great salad to eat between bites of anything.” Fruit salad shouldn’t be stuck as an unappetizing side dish or dessert. “I think fruit salads nowadays run the gamut between offering lots of different fruits,” says Chang. “It’s not just melon and grapes, but mango, papaya, dragonfruit, pomegranate seeds… it can be savory, salty, or sweet. You can really create a dish that goes way above and beyond [the ’90s fruit salads] I grew up with.” The fruit salad of today is the meal. I’ll try nectarines and corn tossed with pesto and wild rice, or arugula and watermelon with figs and goat cheese. I’ll mash avocados with bits of grapefruit, balsamic, and flaky salt. Or I’ll grab a handful of radishes with cultured butter and a slice of plum. But it doesn’t need to be fancy. And sometimes, when it’s been a very long day after a very long week after a very long month still stuck at home, it’s just three peaches, juice dripping into the sink. Kayla Voigt hails from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the start of the Boston Marathon. You can usually find her at the summit of a mountain or digging into a big bowl of pasta. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3iOYPkd

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/fruit-salad-is-low-energy-meal-of-2020.html

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