Friday favorites 7/29

Recommended reading for when you can’t eat anything with color

Homemade magdalenas (traditional Spanish muffins), which could mayyybe be compliant with a “white diet”

Happy end of the work week (and almost end of July)!

A couple of quick comments before we get started with this week’s favorites:

• Thank you to everyone who voted in the polls! It looks like about half of you read on a phone, so I’ll make an extra effort to check that formatting is good to go for mobile. Since a little over 40% of you are reading via web browser, I’m going to be experimenting with moving to a different layout for the landing page starting next week. Any feedback is appreciated!

• Another reminder that Come como Kiki will be on break for a bit in August. Next Friday, August 5th, is the last edition before the break and you can expect the following issue to land in your inbox on Friday, August 19th.

I have to confess that this week’s meals went a bit haywire due to a lack of proper research. I got my teeth whitened for the first time in my life, and while I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat curry after (I made sure to polish off the frozen leftovers of my cauliflower curry last week to avoid temptation), I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t be able to eat any of my favorite foods for a whole week. No cherries, no tomatoes, no iced coffee (insert Home Alone aftershave gif here). It feels like my stomach virus all over again!

Así que nada.¹ This week we’ll focus on things that have been distracting me from the fact that I literally have to stick to a dieta blanca.² Check ’em out below.

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• Natalie over at On the Verge has a nifty Recipe Reel issue this week sharing some quick summer favorites to whip up in the heatwave. The Chili Lime and Mango Sorbet is going on my to-try list, and I especially love that you don’t need an ice cream maker. You can find the recipe at the link below, but you should also check out her other newsletters because she’s hilarious.

  EP2: Sorbets and Sweet Peppers

• While eating interesting food has taken a back burner, I’ve retomado³ something that’s been missing in my life recently: reading an actual book. I was a voracious reader as a child, but as an adult my recreational reading waxes and wanes depending on how busy I am at my job and my stress level. This week I started The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky.

  

  Screenshot of the Kindle cover of Language of Food

  I actually found out about this book through the most recent As We Eat podcast, where it was listed as a source for the episode. I’m a huge linguistics nerd, and you guys already know I love food, so this book was basically written for me. I’ll share any interesting tidbits I stumble across!

• On a non-food-related note (sometimes I do stuff other than cook or eat!), I loved Drew Austin’s think piece on the death of the music snob over at his newsletter Kneeling Bus. If you’ve ever found yourself embarrassed that you don’t know the names and artists of the songs that keep popping on your Indie Folk playlist, this is the article for you.

  #187: A Rainbow in Curved Air

I hope everyone has a great weekend and finds a way to stay cool in the heat! August is supposed to bring at least slightly lower temperatures here in Madrid, so let’s hope the weatherman has gotten it right.

See you Wednesday for part two of my series on tortilla de patata! And please leave suggestions for tasty yet colorless meals!

Ki

1. Así que nada: Literally “so nothing,” here kind of meaning “so that’s it” implying that there’s nothing I can do.

2. Dieta blanca: White diet

3. Retomado: Taken up again