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weirdlandtv · 5 years

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Like the 1960s generation had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, the Big Three of the 1980s were Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Their new albums weren’t just song collections, they were messages uttered by the Oracle up on the mountain, echoing across the valley. They were events, statements, re-incarnations. Each new album presented a new persona for fans to imitate and for critics to evaluate, or, in the case of Prince, decipher. (Artists, back then, had to change with each new release or else be considered irrelevant. David Bowie entered the 1980s a smart yuppie, George Michael in the span of 7 years went from sparkling teen idol to sensitive, searching biker cowboy.)

Michael Jackson and Prince were regarded as rival gods, with the former more commercially successful but the latter preferred by most serious music critics (though in reality, fans, like me, liked both). Michael Jackson played games with tabloid journalists, who in turn responded with growing hostility; Prince played pranks on music critics, who wilfully allowed themselves to be deceived and wowed by this inscrutable prodigy.

Michael Jackson’s Avalon was Neverland, a fantasy dream that always invited ridicule (though not from me); Prince’s Mount Olympus was Paisley Park, a place deemed so mythical that fans constructed their own maps from the few photos and bits of footage that existed of it, and then endlessly speculated on what life was like inside of it: the parties, the concerts, sacred rituals, whisperings, the spontaneous nightly sessions. “Did you know,” they’d say, wide-eyed, “Prince has this huge vault of original masters and unreleased music right under Paisley Park? Only he knows the key code.” Whole albums (all masterpieces of course) had disappeared into that vault, never to be heard by ordinary mortals. And he never slept: nobody had ever caught him sleeping. He just went on and on, creating music. That was Prince, the enigmatic wonder, the living love symbol, and flamboyant question mark.

I still find it strange to realize so many of the artists I just mentioned, who so energetically populated my childhood and early teens, are dead. Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie, and George Michael all died within 7 years of each other; but there’s also Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, and so many more. (Compare 1960s giants Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are still touring and releasing records.)

When Prince died, a little more than three years ago today, I was on Texel, an island to the north of Holland, where I live. I checked my phone, checked the news, like you so stupidly do every now and then, and then saw the incredible headline. A sunny day, clouds seemed to appear that moment. Some people love celebrity deaths and follow juicy rumor sites about who punched who and who stepped out of the limo without their knickers on; me, I get depressed. It’s like having swallowed a stone. The sensationalist cries around every celeb death to me are like a beehive of bad vibes, a pest, and I have to stay away from it as far as possible if I want to protect my mental health, or what’s left of it. Prince’s death made me take things slow for a week or so. I have to mentally chew on such things, change my settings, ease into the new reality, let my heart adjust to its new weight. I’ve often had to deal with death in my life, sometimes it’s as if every high-profile death shocks me back into that familiar feeling of dread and despair.

Though Michael Jackson’s Neverland has turned into a derelict theme park that carries the curse of being unsellable, Prince’s Paisley Park has become a museum. Occasionally, browsing the internet, I see photos of it, and I’m always struck, kind of uneasily, about how soulless it seems. What does the lair of an extravagant hermit look like? What did I expect? Not something that looks like the atrium of a New Age company maybe. Looking at the interior, those sad police photos that were released last year, I can’t help but see the stupendous mundanity of it all. The building itself, somewhere in a suburb outside of Minneapolis, resembles a bunker, and though the pyramid skylights, that vaguely resemble guard towers, provide some natural light, the rest of the building is artificially lit, but dark. The recording studio is just that. Some of the walls have sayings like “Everything You Think Is True”. Stained glass with stars, clouds, and guitars. There’s a potted plant here, and an ugly tangle of phone cords in the corner there. Prince’s bedroom was sparse with empty green walls, and a plastic trash can you can buy at your local Walmart (but he never slept of course). The legendary vault reminds me of the storage room of my dad’s old electronics company, with its disorderly shelves and half-opened cardboard boxes. And everywhere, in every corridor and every space, there’s Prince iconography, but it’s rather bland, like the cover of a cheap unofficial biography.

For Prince, it must have been strange living in your own mausoleum.

The music that came from that place though. I believe PARADE (1986) was the first full album he recorded there, and then everything that came afterwards. My uncle was a real Prince fanatic, taking a slew of albums with him whenever he stayed with us, bootlegs too, so from an early age I became quite well-versed in all things Prince. Bits of his lyrics are as familiar to me as old family sayings. Personal favorites are the albums 1999 (1982), BATMAN (1989), and the LOVE SYMBOL ALBUM (1992). I like the street-smart humor of his early stuff, the raw passion, the in-your-face sex metaphors, with symbols as loud as cymbals, just the wild mercury sound of it; later on, his work became more spiritual, and harder for me to follow. His whole being though was music, every movement was a melody, every step a beat; he created music the way other people breathe. He had more songs in him than a duck has quacks. If you listen to the posthumous release, PIANO AND A MICROPHONE 1983, it’s as if the piano, microphone and artist aren’t three separate things, but one organism, bleeding and generating music; it features some wonderful, loose playing. It seems to me that towards the end of his life, in physical pain and unable to play a piano or guitar unless stuffed with elephant tranquilizers, he started to drift, and drift further, until he fell over the edge.

Like Bob Dylan, whose mystique and inaccessibility he shared, Prince had a habit of frustrating his fans, by deliberately excluding a great song from an otherwise so-so album and storing it in his vault, or by making his music hard to buy or even find (online, before he died, there was almost nothing). That’s one reason I kind of stopped following him; the other is the depressing decline of his songwriting since the 1990s. Looking at his later albums, which I first dutifully bought until I didn’t anymore, there’s hardly anything I really like. None of the best-of compilations collect anything from after the 90s. What happened? Age is part of it of course. A decline in quality is inevitable, most musical artists do their best work in their 20s and 30s. It’s also possible Prince’s brand of singing about his women like they are divine vaginas simply went out of style. Once cheeky and outrageous (his work was why Parental Advisory stickers were invented), his songs no longer shock us 21st centurians. We’ve seen so much already. Dirty sex wasn’t the only topic he sang about of course (far from it), but it’s the one he pushed forward the most as part of his image; his “royal badness” was part of his appeal. (The BATMAN soundtrack originally was going to feature Michael Jackson as Batman, the force of good, and Prince as the Joker, representing decadence, sin, evil.)

But his supposed “badness” was an act of course. The cocky poses, flashy gestures and mean diva looks were an obvious shield against the outside world, a theatrical defense mechanism. An attempt to dazzle people before they can get to you. When you’re shy—and he of course was the shyest—you feel like everyone is constantly watching you, and you become overly aware of how you look, how you walk, how you come across; you are constantly aware of your physical being taking up space. So what do you do when you’re an artist? You perform. Everything you do becomes a kind of performance, a conscious act. It gives you a feeling of control: you know why people are watching, because you’re making them watch you. But the essence of it is always shyness and nerves.

There’s something endearing about that 1983 footage of him being invited on stage for an impromptu jam by James Brown, who a few minutes earlier had invited Michael Jackson up. Ready to upstage his rival, who had just performed some killer moves, Prince takes the stage, struts, plays some random riffs, struts some more, suddenly takes off his jacket and does some tricks with the microphone stand, claps to whip up the audience—and then as he wants to make a fast and sudden exit, he clumsily goes down knocking over a prop, stage hands hastily arriving from all sides to help him up.

He died in an elevator near the lobby, but the spot itself has been covered up by a new wall (it’s near the watchful eyes in the third image). I keep wondering what happened. Was he making his way down to the ground floor from his production offices, or was he going up from the recording studio to his bedroom to maybe sleep? One associate, questioned by police, stated that Prince had told her he “was depressed, enjoyed sleeping more than usual and was incredibly bored”, and that at his last concert, he felt like he was going to fall asleep on stage. Those were rare remarks. An intensely private person, he mostly hid his problems, not just from others, but even from himself. The end, then, was inevitable. As with Michael Jackson six years before, the drugs relieved him of his pain, and then of his life.

He never slept, and when he did, it was 4ever.

#prince #paisley park #photos #inside #interior #studio #music #pics #pictures #images #house #home

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blue-honeycomb · 4 years

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Escape Artist: Chapter 1 [Aizawa x Reader]

Decided to play around with this for a bit before going back to my other stuff.

Masterlist

Prologue | Part 1

---

The Escape Artist stared at the television screen with incomprehension, blinking once, twice, until a small hand smacked her dead center in the face. The force was enough to shake her from her thoughts and she cast a sidewards glare at the little brat sitting casually beside her.

Big, off-white eyes stared unflinchingly into her own, equally white, featureless face twisting into some form of expression that was lost on her. Luckily, the little hellion's hair was prone to flashing colors with their emotions, so she at least has some idea as to what they wanted. Even if that idea was vague at best.

"How was I supposed to know there was a whole pack of heros right there?" She huffed, casting her eyes back to the news special broadcasting her latest anti-kidnapping kidnapping with concerningly clear footage. Like, crystal clear HD, not some fuzzy security camera but media quality definition; the kind that got you recognized.

On the screen was a video of her popping into existence in a police station not even 3 yards from where a group of heros and police officers were finishing up an interview, setting the child she'd brought in a chair as he chewed on the mochi she'd thought to bring with her for just such a purpose. As though in slow motion, she could see her screen self whip around and suddenly freeze, staring directly at the heros, and consequencely the cameras, before disappearing once more. Honestly, it was pretty comical, and apparently, a good portion of the in studio reporters seemed to think so too.

"That," She pointed at the screen for emphasis while leveling the yellow flashing, blank-faced little shit a glare. "Was not intentional, no matter what you little misfits seem to think." From the shadow of the color flashing cretin popped another one, this one gray haired and black eyed, grinning widely at her with his wickedly sharp teeth.

"Don't make up shit just cuz you can't understand me. Don't think I'm not on to you, shark boy." Not that any of her brats ever listened to a thing she said anyway. The only one who ever seemed to try was Spitter, but that was because the boy couldn't say no to anyone ever, so it was never satisfying. Hard to feel victorious about getting your way when it took years of abuse to make the person (a little fucking boy) willing to heel on command. Thinking about how'd she'd found the little guy made her stomach turn.

Moving on before she breaks something.

Shark brat said something about hero costumes to Whiteout Brat and a lot of gesturing took place, as well as a good bit of yelling. Thankfully they lived far enough underground to avoid being hear by any passerbys. Escape Artist turned away while they were distracted and let them entertain themselves while she thought about what she'd just seen.

It was the first time the public had seen conclusive evidence of her existence outside of a few shitty grocery store video feeds, and the entirety of Japan seemed to be eating it up. Words like vigilante and uncatchable were being tossed around, as well as theories about teleportation quirks and being a greiving mother seeking vengeance. All these things would have made her snort in amusement had it been even a few months ago. But now? Now she couldn't afford to get caught or have a hoard of glory-hounds on her trail. Too many mouths to feed, for one, and secondly, too many little bodies following her when she wasn't looking. Anything could happen with the added variable of nosy superpower enhanced dogooders.

The problem with working with homeless, traumatized children is that after you've taken care of them for a while they come to expect you to actually take care of them. As in, not just feeding them occasionally and giving them a place to crash, but actually filling that parent shaped whole in their lives and taking over all the responsibilities that comes with it. Like protection, love and trust. And time. Especially time. So much more than she has to spare.

So they've taken to following her when she's not watching closely enough, and that terrifies her because she can give them love and trust in abundance, but protection is something she just can't provide. She simply isn't strong enough to take them with her everywhere she goes, let alone into a situation that may one day be her last.

Speaking of situations.

It was time to go out and get more food. While nothing went bad in her inventory, thank God, it never actually stayed full with how many mouths needed feeding everyday. Shark boy alone could put away half his body weight in a single sitting if given the chance, and even that's got nothing on Bull or Hot Shot. Honestly, and though Escape Artist would never say it aloud, Bull's vigorous appetite may have been the reason she was abandoned in the first place. She just had to eat so much to function that even with the triweekly raids Escape Artist could barely keep up with the ever growing demand.

And then there's Hot Shot. Nicely put, he was a rather enthusiastic young boy in possession of a very destructive, fuel-exhaustive quirk neither she nor he had any idea how to train. It wasn't until he'd joined her merry little band that she'd learned the location of every clothing store in the city. Every single one of them.

Her life sometimes, she swears.

There was a shattering sound in the designated kitchen area, followed by a high pitched screech that fell somewhere between a frog croak and a chirp. Not even a second later the sound of footsteps darting through the tunnels at frankly ridiculous speeds creeked overhead, followed closely by the wall rattling thud of Bull chasing right after.

Escape Artist sighed, running a hand through her hair and pulling slightly. Beside her, Shark boy leapt to his feet in a dead run to go watch the drama unfold with unholy glee, Whiteout following at a slightly more moderate pace. Not even 8 in the morning and already the chaos had begun.

Her head thud quietly against the back of the couch. "I don't get paid enough for this shit."

---

Escape Artist was more than a bit concerned by what had happened on her way back home, but she supposed it could have been worse. For one thing, she wasn't dead, and for another, neither was the man she'd smacked headfirst into (or more accurately, he'd smacked face first into her). Unfortunately for the man though, the impact had left him notably unconscious and maybe a little bruised around the nose and forehead. In short, she done fucked up and this time it didn't involve another mouth to feed… she hoped. She didn't know if she had the patience needed to take care of a full grown man on top of the 8 kids at home and the 2 feral cretins that visited occasionally.

It'd been a simple case of bad luck all around, honestly. She'd just finished robbing the local Walmart (yes, it still exists and she still doesn't know how to feel about that months on) and was coming out of ID when she's suddenly been thrown to the ground by a speeding black mass all but flying through the darkened alley. Her first thought upon getting over her shock was to thank whatever was watching over her that night it wasn't a car. Her second was to fret over whoever she'd just gotten killed.

Luckily, it hadn't been a car and the stranger had survived the encounter. So, all was good in her books, besides the obvious part where the guy was laying unconscious in an alley and sporting an obvious hero getup in the shadier part of this district. If that wasn't asking for a knife in the back than she didn't know what was.

So now here she was, sitting across from the unmoving lump of man, chin in hand and elbows firmly planted on her thighs. She'd covered him up with a blanket from her inventory some time ago to keep him at least somewhat warm as the night gradually grew colder around them. She didn't think she'd manage to get the thing back before the guy was up and trying to kick her ass, but Hot Shot needed to learn to control his flames anyway and maybe going coverless for a while was just the motivation he needed to do so. She pointedly didn't think about the extra comforters she'd grabbed because she knew the first wouldn't last three nights in the little shit's care.

She blinked slowly, eyes roaming over what little bit of the man she could make out from under the blanket. Long, dark hair curling over the blanket and his heavily stubbled face (she'd picked the wild mass up off the filthy ground because ew), long lashes and a narrow, masculine face. He was attractive for sure, though the dark lines around his eyes, nose and forehead made him seem almost sickly pale in the unflattering street light. What she noticed most though was the peeks of sleek, firm muscle that the fluffy covers, ridiculously huge scarf and baggy clothing couldn't hide.

She was a woman with damn human needs. It'd been at least 3 years since she's gotten any and she was long overdue. She felt strongly that she should be able to appreciate this man's undeniable beauty so long as she kept her hands to herself and didn't do anything creepy like take pictures or some shit. She blatantly ignored the little voice whispering about how equally creepy it was to watch someone sleep without their consent.

It was also creepy how the observe function of her quirk let her learn a few tidbits about the man without any conscious effort, but for the most part she ignored the notifications hovering around the man all together. It wasn't like she'd ever meet the guy again after this, unless he was trying to arrest her of course. Either way, she doubted learning this guy's name or whatever was really worth invading his privacy anymore than her mere existence did. She'd like to think she has some standards.

In her uncharacteristic moment of distraction she failed to notice the subtle shift of the man's head before he went eeriely still. It wasn't until she was shifting to get more comfortable and noticed that a section of his hair was misplaced that she realized her mistake.

It happened too fast for her to properly react. With a quiet that belied the strength behind the attack, the man launched himself into her personal space and had her wrapped head to toe in the weird scarf he had with him. On instinct she tried to open her ID, but with a cold chill of realization discovered she couldn't get it to activate. In fact, her whole world seemed to suddenly swirl on its axis and for the first time since she'd come to this place her mind blanked with true, mortal terror.

His eyes glowed deep, sinister red against the shadows spread over his handsome face, dark hair whipping above his head like a dark, inhuman halo. Those muscles she'd been admiring just moments ago were suddenly the weapons of intimidation they were meant to be, something that made her heart race and quake with fear.

And her body. Maybe even worse than the sudden influx of terror was the sudden aknowledgement of her body's long forgotten functions. Where once she was satisfied she was now hollow, the movement of long unused organs felt like insects crawling though her body, scratching and nipping as they went.

Suddenly, the world was not just a thing that could be walked away from with a single though and a armful of goods. For the first time since she'd opened her eyes in that alleyway nearly a year ago, it was just her, the world and all the dangers that came with it staring her down with burning red eyes.

For the first time since she received her quirk she was well and truly alive.

"Escape Artist, was it."

#BNHA #Escape Artist AU #Gamer AU #Aizawa Shouta #Aizawa x Reader

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wayward-studies-blog · 6 years

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Study Space Tips

@wayward-sister-studies asked me for help on making her study space, well, not suck. So here’s my brain vomit on the topic!

1. Find your space

sometimes we don’t exactly have much choice, so work with what you have. Sometimes we're lucky and get our own desk or office even, but others are not lucky and just have a favorite spot in the library or local Starbucks. It doesn’t matter- you can always make your space yours with a little work.

2. Clean it up

if you have a desk, the first step is to CLEAN IT. Now don’t freak out- it doesn't have to be perfect or pretty. Try to not think long term, that will just stress you out and put a stop to your motivation. Just start at point A and work till the end.

a- organize the clutter by putting all your papers in a pile, moving office supplies to the same corner of the desk or container. Stack any books you have together, and removed any dishes or trash there. If you have items that don’t belong there, put them where they go. I always end up with makeup supplies that need to make a trip back to my bathroom, but they always seem to make it back and that's fine.

b- once its semi-organized, start going through it all. Go through the papers, throwing away what you don’t need and organizing whats left in the pile. If you have a place to put the papers, move them there. If not, set them to the side. Go through your supplies and throw out anything that doesn't work or is useless. Yes, I know this physically hurts sometimes, but believe me- you don’t need it. just let it go.

c- there- it's clean! Let’s move on.

3. Recognize What You Need

Is it too dark? Not getting a good vibe from it? Do you have too much stuff or too little space? Try and figure out just what isn’t settling right with you about your space, and you can work from there.

This is my study space.

So to get to here- I had to Identify my problems. My room wasn’t large enough to comfortably put a desk and chair. I have an anxiety and depression disorder, and I can lose interest and motivation super fast if I feel stressed or down. I am an office supply slut (not even ashamed) and have pens and post-its galore, and they are either everywhere when I don’t need them, or its a freaking game of cat and mouse when I need them and have to track them down in endless piles of crap. I really hate fake lighting, so I shy away from using my main lamps as light sources in my room. Also, I study a lot at night but want to keep a steady sleep schedule- meaning I can’t have bright ass lights at all hours of the day at my desk.

So- now that I identified my problems, I worked them out:

Basically, I took the doors off my closet and shoved my desk in there. It worked out really well.

I have a candle warmer for making it cozy and enjoyable, and a bit of extra light. The scents are calming or enjoyable, and it adds nicely to the atmosphere.

The Christmas lights are just an aesthetic touch that double to create just enough light for me to work at night without having to drown in bright, fake light. I also added a bit of knick Knacks I’ve gathered over the years that kind of bring my spirits up. I have a lot of things my best friend and I have collected or been gifted to me from her. They just make my soul happy- and I like to see them when I work.

The shelves of the old closet work great for stacking books, notebooks, journals, folders, papers- anything really. I have a basket with pens/pencils/highlighters, and I can just pull it out to grab things or throw them back in with ease. I have a box of post-it notes and note cards that works just as easy. And I also have my junk and clutter box to the left- because it's nice to have an easy place to just throw your crap in.

I also have a bookshelf to the side that helps! The space below the main shelves is just big enough to add in baskets or boxes to hold my supplies, too. it makes me happy and reaching things a lot easier.

4. Find What You Need

So all of this didn’t happen overnight. it took a while to get to where It is now, but it doesn’t have to necessarily. Browse Pinterest, stalk some studyblrs, ask friends or other blogs for advice on how to spif your space up.

Once you get a vague idea of what you need: light sources and what you like in them, containers to organize supplies, an organizing system for papers and folders- that kind of stuff- take a gander at the options on sites like Amazon or even Walmart, or just go to a store and pick the stuff you need out that way.

Just remember to go with a plan- or else the bill can get pretty heavy. On a budget, the dollar store is always your friend. Thrift shops too. So don’t panic, just think smart about your budget and you can work it out.

5. Don��t Stress

Like I said above, the whole ‘pinterest version of a study space’ doesn't happen in an hour. it takes time, and work. Also- it’s not going to look like those pretty pictures 24/7. It’s going to get cluttered, you’re going to leave empty dishes and trash on it. That’s ok! It’s your desk and you should use it as suck. A pretty study space doesn't really matter if you never study or get work done at it!!

So get over the fact that yes, you will most likely make a mess of it. Just know that you can always clean it back up when you have time and that the base organization systems will work for you no matter what.

Alright I’ll stop with the brain vomit! I hope this helps, @wayward-sister-studies !

Send me questions or requests!

#studyblr #study tips #study help #study motivation #study inspiration #study notes #note taking #uni #uni life #college life #studyspo #studygram

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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White Lily Flour Has Long Held a Near-Mythological Status in the South. Now It’s Everywhere.

Dannie Sue Balakas/Instagram

While other flour companies have faced pandemic-related shortages, the Southern staple has been quietly filling the void at grocery stores around the country

As many home-bound Americans began baking to feed and distract themselves from the coronavirus pandemic, Schanon Odell of Crown Pacific Fine Foods was making frantic phone calls to every flour mill in the country. Odell’s job at the Seattle-area specialty food distributor includes helping her grocery store clients keep flour in stock, and so she resolved to find anyone that might have it. One day in late March, she spent 10 straight hours calling and calling, only to get the same answer from everyone who picked up: all sold out.

But there was one exception: As she searched the internet for flour mills, “White Lily kept coming up,” Odell says. She was only vaguely aware of the special place that the flour occupies in the canon of Southern baking, but as she worked her way through the company’s phone tree, she focused less on what White Lily was and more on securing 4,000 cases of flour — about 160,000 pounds — to distribute to stores around the Pacific Northwest, like Zupan’s in Portland, Oregon, Kroger’s QFC stores, and independent shops like Red Apple Market on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

The shipment of White Lily arrived at Red Apple Market just in time for Jill Lightner’s husband to replenish the flour stash that Lightner, a food writer, was quickly stress-baking her way through. “I had just been putting ‘buy more flour’ on the shopping list every time he went,” she says. When her husband returned with a bag of White Lily, announcing, “This is all they had,” Lightner, who had gone to high school in rural Virginia, knew what she had lucked into. “Why didn’t you buy 50 bags?” she asked.

The same scene played out from Iowa to San Jose, as White Lily flour appeared mysteriously on shelves far from its usual Southern distribution area. Bakers familiar with the product went to stores braced to find bottom-of-the-barrel flour, only to come upon the brand they had often wished they could get locally. From outposts in the North, Midwest, and West, they posted gleefully on social media. “When you find the flour, you make the biscuits,” said a baker in Wisconsin. In Brooklyn, a shopper wondered, “What is this magic happening with the flour supply chain?”

White Lily declined to comment on the expanded distribution to Eater, but David Ortega, an associate professor in the department of agriculture, food and resource economics at Michigan State University, points out that some of the recent flour distribution quirks can be tied to the significant loss of major wholesale customers like food service and bakeries, combined with high demand at the retail level. “One of the major obstacles to this switch was packaging,” he says over email — which means that any flour company that had recently stocked up on retail-size bags found itself best prepared to meet demand.

“Flour processing is much more mechanized (relative to say meat processing plants), so it hasn’t been affected by processing disruption to the extent that other sectors have,” Ortega adds. “My guess is that While Lily and other companies expanded their markets out of necessity (loss in food industry customers) and, to an extent, opportunity (surge in demand in supermarkets).”

Whatever the reason, it made many home bakers happy. Known for its soft, light texture, White Lily flour has long held a near-mythological status in the South as the secret to the perfect biscuit, much in the same way that New Yorkers believe that the city’s water is the secret to the perfect bagel. In The Gift of Southern Cooking, the renowned champion of the region’s foodways, Edna Lewis, named it as an essential ingredient to great biscuits. On her blog, Southern Souffle, the recipe developer, food writer, and biscuit-pop-up chef Erika Council echoed Lewis’s sentiment, writing that White Lily killed the “hard as a rock” and “difficult to make” biscuit myths.

And yet, despite the ostensible transportability of a bag of flour, finding White Lily outside of the Southeastern United States is normally only nominally easier than getting New York City tap water in Arizona. The only other time Lightner remembers seeing it for sale in Seattle was years ago, when she found a “daintily sized” bag at a Williams-Sonoma holiday pop-up for a premium price. She bought it anyway. When Atlantic writer Amanda Mull, who was born in Georgia, wrote about the brand in 2018, she reported that she couldn’t find any retailers who carried it north of Richmond, Virginia, or west of Oklahoma (though Surfas in Los Angeles does occasionally). You can find it on Amazon, though it’s sold there at about 500 percent of grocery store cost.

The legend of White Lily began in 1883, when it was founded in Knoxville, Tennessee. Its flour’s ethereal nature is partially attributable to the fact that it is milled from soft red winter wheat, which results in a flour with only 9 percent protein — significantly lower than King Arthur’s 11.7 percent or Gold Medal’s 10.5 percent. A flour’s protein content is important because it corresponds directly with how much gluten forms when the flour comes into contact with a liquid. For a strong loaf with structure and chewiness, bakers look for a high-protein flour, like bread flour, which has up to 13 percent protein. But for biscuits, lower protein content, and thus lower gluten, keeps them from becoming too dense.

But plenty of flours have lower protein levels: Pastry flour contains around 9 percent, and cake flour between 7 and 9 percent. White Lily’s true secret, according to a 2008 New York Times story, lies in its milling and bleaching processes. Its all-purpose flour is milled only from the heart of the wheat’s endosperm, the purest part, and is more finely milled and sifted than other flours — its packaging even boasts that it’s “Pre-Sifted.” Unlike many all-purpose flours, it is also bleached with chlorine, which weakens the flour’s proteins. The result is so light that the White Lily website warns that when measuring by volume, rather than weight, two extra tablespoons per cup of flour are required in standard recipes.

“I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits.”

When the J.M. Smucker Co. bought White Lily in 2007, it closed the company’s Knoxville mill and moved production to the Midwest, much to the dismay of many of the flour’s fans. White Lily had previously gone through more than a half-dozen corporate owners, including national names like Tyson Foods and Archer Daniels Midland. In 2018, Smucker sold it yet again, this time to Hometown Food Company, the parent company of Pillsbury. But despite how often it has changed hands, White Lily has managed to remain quintessentially Southern enough that Lightner compares it to a souvenir: “If I am near a Winn-Dixie or a Piggly Wiggly, I’m going to buy it and bring it back,” she says, “along with a suitcase full of grits.”

For her part, Odell, the specialty food distributor, is surprised to see how well the flour has resonated with retailers outside of the South. “Every day, people are ordering,” she says. “I think people are recognizing it and want to purchase it.”

Dannie Sue Balakas is one them. Born in Tennessee and currently living in West Michigan, she was thrilled when White Lily showed up at her local Meijer, and started buying a bag every time she shopped there. Because shoppers are still limited to one bag per person, she rations it accordingly. “I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits,” she says, describing those biscuits as “super fluffy and the best I’ve ever had.”

Fear of running out is a legitimate concern: Shelves in the South were also emptied of flour, and while Odell says her supply has been mostly consistent, it hasn’t been seamless. For Dean Hasegawa, the general manager of the Red Apple where Lightner bought her White Lily, the store’s White Lily purchase was a one-time deal so that Hasegawa could cover the flour shortage — and even with it, he still had to re-bag and price out 50-pound food-service bags of other flours into retail sizes. “It’s not something I will normally stock,” he says, and while he heard some excitement over it, he believes that most of his customers were simply happy to see flour.

Still, the customer enthusiasm inspires Odell. Her local QFC stores talked about wanting to keep White Lily on their shelves even as flour stocks normalize, but the Cincinnati-based buyer from Kroger, which owns QFC, insisted that people in the Northwest wouldn’t buy Southern flour. “I’d like to keep it if I can,” says Odell, but first she needs to prove that people care about White Lily and not just flour in general. “Maybe when the dust settles, I’ll be able to tell if it’s a viable product,” she says.

But for true biscuit fanatics, White Lily’s all-purpose flour isn’t even the true prize: In West Michigan, Balakas has “been praying” that stores will start stocking its coveted self-rising flour. But even if they don’t, you can mail order it from Walmart (with free shipping, if you order enough else) or, per White Lily’s website, simply add 1½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt to each cup of the all-purpose flour. While they may be effective, though, neither of those methods have the same magic as wandering the baking aisle expecting nothing and coming upon a treasure — and, in, the process recapturing a tiny fragment of the joy that grocery shopping once held.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Cg2NBT https://ift.tt/2YPfpI0

Dannie Sue Balakas/Instagram

While other flour companies have faced pandemic-related shortages, the Southern staple has been quietly filling the void at grocery stores around the country

“I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Cg2NBT via Blogger https://ift.tt/2N7e2ii

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

Text

White Lily Flour Has Long Held a Near-Mythological Status in the South. Now It’s Everywhere. added to Google Docs

White Lily Flour Has Long Held a Near-Mythological Status in the South. Now It’s Everywhere.

Dannie Sue Balakas/Instagram

While other flour companies have faced pandemic-related shortages, the Southern staple has been quietly filling the void at grocery stores around the country

“I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits.”

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/6/18/21293396/white-lily-flour-history-baking-during-covid-19-pandemic

Created June 19, 2020 at 04:26AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Dannie Sue Balakas/Instagram While other flour companies have faced pandemic-related shortages, the Southern staple has been quietly filling the void at grocery stores around the country As many home-bound Americans began baking to feed and distract themselves from the coronavirus pandemic, Schanon Odell of Crown Pacific Fine Foods was making frantic phone calls to every flour mill in the country. Odell’s job at the Seattle-area specialty food distributor includes helping her grocery store clients keep flour in stock, and so she resolved to find anyone that might have it. One day in late March, she spent 10 straight hours calling and calling, only to get the same answer from everyone who picked up: all sold out. But there was one exception: As she searched the internet for flour mills, “White Lily kept coming up,” Odell says. She was only vaguely aware of the special place that the flour occupies in the canon of Southern baking, but as she worked her way through the company’s phone tree, she focused less on what White Lily was and more on securing 4,000 cases of flour — about 160,000 pounds — to distribute to stores around the Pacific Northwest, like Zupan’s in Portland, Oregon, Kroger’s QFC stores, and independent shops like Red Apple Market on Seattle’s Beacon Hill. The shipment of White Lily arrived at Red Apple Market just in time for Jill Lightner’s husband to replenish the flour stash that Lightner, a food writer, was quickly stress-baking her way through. “I had just been putting ‘buy more flour’ on the shopping list every time he went,” she says. When her husband returned with a bag of White Lily, announcing, “This is all they had,” Lightner, who had gone to high school in rural Virginia, knew what she had lucked into. “Why didn’t you buy 50 bags?” she asked. The same scene played out from Iowa to San Jose, as White Lily flour appeared mysteriously on shelves far from its usual Southern distribution area. Bakers familiar with the product went to stores braced to find bottom-of-the-barrel flour, only to come upon the brand they had often wished they could get locally. From outposts in the North, Midwest, and West, they posted gleefully on social media. “When you find the flour, you make the biscuits,” said a baker in Wisconsin. In Brooklyn, a shopper wondered, “What is this magic happening with the flour supply chain?” White Lily declined to comment on the expanded distribution to Eater, but David Ortega, an associate professor in the department of agriculture, food and resource economics at Michigan State University, points out that some of the recent flour distribution quirks can be tied to the significant loss of major wholesale customers like food service and bakeries, combined with high demand at the retail level. “One of the major obstacles to this switch was packaging,” he says over email — which means that any flour company that had recently stocked up on retail-size bags found itself best prepared to meet demand. “Flour processing is much more mechanized (relative to say meat processing plants), so it hasn’t been affected by processing disruption to the extent that other sectors have,” Ortega adds. “My guess is that While Lily and other companies expanded their markets out of necessity (loss in food industry customers) and, to an extent, opportunity (surge in demand in supermarkets).” Whatever the reason, it made many home bakers happy. Known for its soft, light texture, White Lily flour has long held a near-mythological status in the South as the secret to the perfect biscuit, much in the same way that New Yorkers believe that the city’s water is the secret to the perfect bagel. In The Gift of Southern Cooking, the renowned champion of the region’s foodways, Edna Lewis, named it as an essential ingredient to great biscuits. On her blog, Southern Souffle, the recipe developer, food writer, and biscuit-pop-up chef Erika Council echoed Lewis’s sentiment, writing that White Lily killed the “hard as a rock” and “difficult to make” biscuit myths. And yet, despite the ostensible transportability of a bag of flour, finding White Lily outside of the Southeastern United States is normally only nominally easier than getting New York City tap water in Arizona. The only other time Lightner remembers seeing it for sale in Seattle was years ago, when she found a “daintily sized” bag at a Williams-Sonoma holiday pop-up for a premium price. She bought it anyway. When Atlantic writer Amanda Mull, who was born in Georgia, wrote about the brand in 2018, she reported that she couldn’t find any retailers who carried it north of Richmond, Virginia, or west of Oklahoma (though Surfas in Los Angeles does occasionally). You can find it on Amazon, though it’s sold there at about 500 percent of grocery store cost. The legend of White Lily began in 1883, when it was founded in Knoxville, Tennessee. Its flour’s ethereal nature is partially attributable to the fact that it is milled from soft red winter wheat, which results in a flour with only 9 percent protein — significantly lower than King Arthur’s 11.7 percent or Gold Medal’s 10.5 percent. A flour’s protein content is important because it corresponds directly with how much gluten forms when the flour comes into contact with a liquid. For a strong loaf with structure and chewiness, bakers look for a high-protein flour, like bread flour, which has up to 13 percent protein. But for biscuits, lower protein content, and thus lower gluten, keeps them from becoming too dense. But plenty of flours have lower protein levels: Pastry flour contains around 9 percent, and cake flour between 7 and 9 percent. White Lily’s true secret, according to a 2008 New York Times story, lies in its milling and bleaching processes. Its all-purpose flour is milled only from the heart of the wheat’s endosperm, the purest part, and is more finely milled and sifted than other flours — its packaging even boasts that it’s “Pre-Sifted.” Unlike many all-purpose flours, it is also bleached with chlorine, which weakens the flour’s proteins. The result is so light that the White Lily website warns that when measuring by volume, rather than weight, two extra tablespoons per cup of flour are required in standard recipes. “I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits.” When the J.M. Smucker Co. bought White Lily in 2007, it closed the company’s Knoxville mill and moved production to the Midwest, much to the dismay of many of the flour’s fans. White Lily had previously gone through more than a half-dozen corporate owners, including national names like Tyson Foods and Archer Daniels Midland. In 2018, Smucker sold it yet again, this time to Hometown Food Company, the parent company of Pillsbury. But despite how often it has changed hands, White Lily has managed to remain quintessentially Southern enough that Lightner compares it to a souvenir: “If I am near a Winn-Dixie or a Piggly Wiggly, I’m going to buy it and bring it back,” she says, “along with a suitcase full of grits.” For her part, Odell, the specialty food distributor, is surprised to see how well the flour has resonated with retailers outside of the South. “Every day, people are ordering,” she says. “I think people are recognizing it and want to purchase it.” Dannie Sue Balakas is one them. Born in Tennessee and currently living in West Michigan, she was thrilled when White Lily showed up at her local Meijer, and started buying a bag every time she shopped there. Because shoppers are still limited to one bag per person, she rations it accordingly. “I’ve been so worried I’m going to run out, I haven’t used it for anything but biscuits,” she says, describing those biscuits as “super fluffy and the best I’ve ever had.” Fear of running out is a legitimate concern: Shelves in the South were also emptied of flour, and while Odell says her supply has been mostly consistent, it hasn’t been seamless. For Dean Hasegawa, the general manager of the Red Apple where Lightner bought her White Lily, the store’s White Lily purchase was a one-time deal so that Hasegawa could cover the flour shortage — and even with it, he still had to re-bag and price out 50-pound food-service bags of other flours into retail sizes. “It’s not something I will normally stock,” he says, and while he heard some excitement over it, he believes that most of his customers were simply happy to see flour. Still, the customer enthusiasm inspires Odell. Her local QFC stores talked about wanting to keep White Lily on their shelves even as flour stocks normalize, but the Cincinnati-based buyer from Kroger, which owns QFC, insisted that people in the Northwest wouldn’t buy Southern flour. “I’d like to keep it if I can,” says Odell, but first she needs to prove that people care about White Lily and not just flour in general. “Maybe when the dust settles, I’ll be able to tell if it’s a viable product,” she says. But for true biscuit fanatics, White Lily’s all-purpose flour isn’t even the true prize: In West Michigan, Balakas has “been praying” that stores will start stocking its coveted self-rising flour. But even if they don’t, you can mail order it from Walmart (with free shipping, if you order enough else) or, per White Lily’s website, simply add 1½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt to each cup of the all-purpose flour. While they may be effective, though, neither of those methods have the same magic as wandering the baking aisle expecting nothing and coming upon a treasure — and, in, the process recapturing a tiny fragment of the joy that grocery shopping once held. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Cg2NBT

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/06/white-lily-flour-has-long-held-near.html

#EasyFoodNetwork #ComfortFoodRecipes #EasyRecipes #GoodFood #BestComfortFoodRecipes #TastyFoodv

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