eat with your ears newsletter is a table of strangers and strange ideas linked together through quality food and music. thank’s for joining me at dinner.
amuse buche
“to live is the rarest thing in the world, most people just exist”
— oscar wilde
this is just to say - william carlos williams
i have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
what’s cooking?
devoted to foods i ate this month that i wish i shared with all of you. the what’s cooking column simulates a meal across space and time. the future is now, i’m emailing you flavor [some assembly required]
sesame seeds straddle the thick line separating savory and sweet. sesame seeds shape shift from the sexual aroma of sesame oil on scalding wok, to the sweet chalky halvah of underrated desserts, to the deep yet minimal crunch of toasted sesame seeds garnishing a dome of rice. i want it all.
these cookies ~feel~ healthier than your average choco-chip, but do not be fooled— it’s still a bad idea to eat the whole batch… alone.
winter calls for roast beast to myself, but two pounds of pig meat must be a sin to eat unadorned—even if i’m far from kosher, god will judge me. to avoid “goyim guilt” i hide my leftover pork roasts inside a sandwich with wintery fennel slaw. the creamy, crunchy slaw brightens my roast-for-one’s glutinous oversight. go ahead, slide that midweek roast into the oven— jesus is the bread of life so this sandwich can forgive our internal sins.
share a photo if you make these recipes at home! i’d love to eat with you.
the morning stew
[ jazz / post-punk / christmas playlist]
99.9% of christmas music is frozen garbage, but every year diamonds can be found among the melting holiday slush. january’s morning stew is a collection of only the special snowflakes that fell this past year— the big gobby one’s you chase to catch on your tongue. don’t worry, no christmas playlist is complete without it’s fair share of cheesiness, charlie brown piano ballads, and mariah-fucking-carey. merry christmas ya filthy animals, see you next year.
potluck radio
a community playlist from all the eat with your ears readers. add a few songs and check back in to discover what other readers are listening to.
no one’s judging what you bring to the potluck, but we’ll all know who brought the best dish by the time dinner is over. drop the best songs you’ve eaten this month.
tastiest tracks from potluck radio #1:
i want more - CAN (selected by jeanette thorson aka my mom)
地球大追蹤 - priscilla chan (selected by tara prakash)
change of guard - steely dan (selected by spencer smith)
for january, share as many of your absolute favorite tracks from 2021— it’s a buffet and all your friends are here.
leftovers
[you don’t need this - 15 minute read]
the leftovers section is designed to fill up whatever room you have left in your brain after a multi-course email e-meal. honestly, it probably won’t be the substance you need—or even want..?
there are some crazy fucking fashion styles in pop culture right now. a y2k revival of the early 2000’s clothing to a militia-esque tech-wear that will never see combat in or—my personal favorite—gorp core which repurposes functional outdoors gear like north face puffy jackets and arcteryx climbing gear into functionless urban fashion statements (s/o all the city kids who’ve never started an actual fire)
it’s a bonkers time to wear clothing… is kanye west wearing a coat modeled after medieval torture device? how on god’s good earth did american culture transition from ankle-hiding puritanism to this zoo of radical self-expression?
the clothes we wear are an expression of our identity—as an individual and a culture—and the clothes we observe influence our identity through the clothes we buy. inside out, a daily decision to wear clothes of those we admire—not clothes of the person we are—catalyzes radical change to our psychological self-image and even our physiological make up. stick with me, because while fashion is an expression of our inner nature it’s also an external influence that alters our very dna.
yeah-yeah, the nature vs. nurture debate was beaten to death the day mary shelley’s frankenstein became high school required reading but let’s give it one more honest blow. are our lives pre-determined at birth or created through our lives’ circumstances? are our physical features, personality ticks, and career paths known at birth or shaped through parents, schooling, and perseverance (s/o to hot jude law in gattaca). from a nature vs. nurture lens: the clothing we adorn our bodies with expresses of our self: our nature. the clothing we observe however is an influence of our identity: our nurture. so, is our aesthetic dna a product of some fixed self, bubbling up to the surface, or is our identity unpinned, our dna morphing to our surroundings and self-image in a mirror like a chameleon.
let’s ask ~science~
epigenetics studies how environment and experiences can physically and permanently alter genetic code. in the familiar darwinian model, a person can only inherit dna and genetic material from mom and dad who inherited it from their parents and so on. darwin would argue that inheritance is a solid and unchangeable thing. epigenetic inheritance functions differently suggesting that a person’s experience affects the expression of their inherited genes, their children’s genetic expression, and even their grandchildren’s. epigenetic changes are physiological changes that happen when an external event triggers the methylation process inside cell nuclei.
in review: every cell in the body (skin cell, brain cell, whatever) contains the same exact set of dna proteins stored the nucleus region. each nucleus also contains ~21,000 smaller protein strands called genes. the methylation process turns genes on/off and the pattern of on/off genes determine what the cell is supposed to do (skin cells grow more skin cells, brain cell connect to other braincells). since billions of cells make up the body and methylation drives cell growth, methylation is also a core driver of our physiology and even psychological identity.
we’ll get back to fashion in a second, hang in there!
darwin was right that our dna is inherited— it’s our nature— but epigenetics reveals that how dna is expressed can change with external events— identity is nurtured on a cellular level. for example, the dutch hunger of 1944 forced famished netherland inhabitants—including pregnant mothers—to live on 400 - 800 calories a day. the babies conceived, carried, or delivered during this period, had elevated rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease in adulthood even though parental lineage had no predisposition to it. the impermanent event (a decline in mother’s calorie intake) trigged permanent genetic changes in their offspring. ok, that’s kinda an anti-climactic example, but it gets crazier in bees!
queen bees are not born to royal parents. their only difference from normal worker bees is their diet of “royal jelly” instead of honey. thought to regulate certain genes through methylation, royal jelly triggers growth in a larvae’s ovaries and transforms it into a fat, fertile queeeeeen… fuckin’ bees, man.
epigenetics explains that the nature of dna is static—a bee cannot transform into a human—but dna’s expression is dynamic and nurtured by environment—royal jelly determines the type of bee a larvae becomes. similar to diet triggering genetic changes, studies have revealed even external influences like a traumatic car crash can trigger internal changes to our cellular makeup. ok enough science: people are a product of their nature and their nurture... science agrees… duh. back to fashion.
there’s a piece of outdated corporate advice to “dress for the job you want, not the job you can get.” if a diet or a car crash can trigger epigenetic changes, could more subtle influences like the clothes we wear permanently alter our genetic fabric too?
in 2012, psychologists at northwestern university defined “enclothed cognition” describing how clothes change the wearer’s performance. participants were asked to complete a task in three outfits: street clothes, a white “lab coat,” and the same coat labeled as a “painter’s coat.” people in lab coats were twice as accurate when completing puzzles than the other groups. they described feeling “organized” and “intelligent” in the lab coat but “creative” and “crazy” in the painters coat. enclothed cognition weaves clothes on the outside—and what they symbolically represents—to the psychology within us.
one step further, epigenetics hypothesizes that wearing a lab coat could catalyze changes to our physiology as well. a lab coat could trigger epigenetic changes (methylation) in brain cells instructing them towards greater neural growth. wearing bright colors could reorganize genes associated with serotonin and help alleviate depression. wearing women’s clothes could alter hormone regulation systems and help smoothen a trans woman’s gender affirmation treatment. something as superficial and frivolous as fashion has the power to reach deep beneath the skin it covers: down to our very nucleus. the colors and uniforms and brands we put on every morning are more than an expression of our present identity, they—and their symbolic meanings— influence our very evolution. ok—maybe this argument is a little strung out, but let’s keep unravelling it.
fashion is language without a defined alphabet: styles constantly shift and their meanings are claimed, discarded, and reclaimed to create visual identities expressing gender, social status, hobbies, and values. stock traders wear tailored suits, punks wear leather, and an alarming amount of young people wear “athleisure.” brands like lululemon sell clothes built for the yoga studio, spun with neutral tones and comfortable fabrics that have replaced the suit-and-tie as workplace dress codes fade. athleisure makes desk work gentler and perhaps even pleasurable. could athleisure clothes trigger methylation and mold employees into a more neutral, homogenous group that enjoys spending time at the cushy office.
apologies to pro-athleisure readers: i’m hypocrite writing this in lululemon abc chinos. hella comfy.
i am outspoken against athleisure, but within it, i can see a future where other fashion trends could catapult us into an optimistic future. bright bubbly revivals of 70s ephemera and dystopian tech-wear alike could move the culture towards some collective euphoria with militaristic resilience in the face of a doomed future. fashion is a cultural practice that expresses our sense of self while reflecting and evolving the groups we belong to: our age group, our country, our religion. after all this, i’m not convinced fashion can change individual’s genetic makeup, but i believe clothing can change a society’s genetic make-up.
perhaps the greatest specimen for research of the american genome was this year’s met gala in new york. within the theme “in america: a lexicon of fashion,” designers transposed patriotic traditions and philosophies into wearable mosaics expressing america’s dna and triggering an epigenetic shift in its aesthetic identity.
designers like bode drew from the frontier era with western wear that inspired feelings of a self-made america. lil nas x wore a king’s gown veiling a velvet skin suit that which nodded to men—notably queer ones—blurring gender and getting in on all that girl fun. a notable politician dressed in a lavish gown reading “tax the rich” to make a loud statement orrrr reveal the unraveling threads of america’s government. to be honest, i am more confused about america’s identity and trajectory after the met gala—maybe clothes are just clothes: beautiful yet superficial, frivolous and unnecessarily serious.
it’s a bit far-fetched that clothes adorned on a person’s body can alter their genetic identity through epigenetic methylation—like… even that sentence sounds fake. cut from the same cloth however: if individuals makeup the genes of a culture, the way individuals express themselves and change their expression, can alter a culture’s genetic identity. i put my pants on just like everyone else, one leg at a time but the pants i choose have power to tailor tomorrow’s culture towards a better fit.
Thanks for sharing your wit, wisdom, unique insight… but mostly the pork with fennel slaw recipe. I’m on that TODAY!