Long live kid’s meals, coyotes, and margaritas
How’s Tuesday? I must tell you right away that I have been watching this show on HBO Max called The Dog House: UK, which is set in an animal shelter more beautiful than any I have seen in the United States in my life. The staff at the shelter matchmake potential adopters with dogs that must be rehomed, and along the way you meet the individuals, of both the person and dog variety, who are looking for love in the exact right place. You will cry a lot, especially because the show also captures rehoming and sheds light on the reality that, despite how it is often portrayed, most surrenders are for financial, health, or family reasons that we should be entirely sympathetic towards. But — most of your tears will be happy tears, I promise. My highest recommendation!
Now about what’s been happening with Tenderly since I last wrote to you on Friday:
Professor Regina A. Bernard wrote about learning outdoors with her Black and brown students, who had not yet necessarily forged a relationship with being in nature. They will not be returning to a windowless classroom anytime soon. “We wanted to reclaim the earth as belonging to us as much as it is claimed by anyone else.”
Tenderly’s expert gardening contributor Claire Splan explains how to make the most of growing in a small space: the secret is movin’ on up!
We must seize this opportunity to dismantle the animal agriculture industry’s stranglehold on both our planet’s resources and our collective health, particularly in our most vulnerable communities. It is impossible to move forward as a society on massive issues like climate change without including everyone in the conversation, and to do so we must drastically reform our food system to be more just and inclusive. This will require massive reprioritizations of wealth and resources to make healthful, environmentally sustainable food dramatically more accessible to low-income communities and communities of color
— Evan Shamoon, We Can’t Address Climate Without Addressing Food Inequity
Arabella interviewed Black and queer couple and co-founders of Vintage Vegan Diner in Las Vegas, Taylor and Autumn Riley-Parhm. They are so charming, their food sounds delicious, and you can really feel the love between them. Plus they make a kids meal in a pink car (picture above), so they have fully won my heart.
Dear Almost Vegan, is a heartfelt letter from a vegan to their own high school vegetarian self on the precipice of making the switch. If you’re a recent vegan convert or considering it, this is the stuff you won’t find in the books.
Pets are not trash to be thrown away when they become inconvenient.
#TBTUESDAY: LONG LIVE COYOTES!
Highlighting one great story from the Tenderly archives
“My favorite thing about studying coyotes is when I, the observer, become the one being observed by coyotes. There is nothing like realizing that the coyote you’ve been trying to find and study has been watching you instead. They are fascinating and intelligent animals and just when you think you have them figured out, they do something completely surprising.”
— Dr. Stewart Breck, quoted in Coyotes Deserve Our Respect, Not Our Fear by Kat Jercich
CURRENTLY PLAYING
Tunes from Tenderly HQ
I’ve dealt with my feelings through making mixes since they were tapes. Lately, there are a lot of feelings. I’ve been daydreaming about the days I’ll have when I can spend 24 hours with my loved ones and the sun, so I made this playlist, the first good sunny day of the aftertimes, to express that dream in music and share it with anyone who also likes to feel better through longing. This playlist is obsessively sequenced — though of course you can shuffle if you want, it starts in the morning with gentle sweetness, spends the afternoon at the pool on 90s nostalgia and chill before segueing to an all night dance party, and then concludes with the kind of cool, sometimes sexy, energy of staying up too late smoking cigarettes on someone’s porch after the bar closes. Normal stuff, everyone thinks about music this way, right?
CHEERS TO GETTING THROUGH ANOTHER WEEK
Drinking together, apart
If you have strawberry jam and tequila (plus citrus and salt) on hand, you have everything you need to make this delicious Strawberry Jam Margarita from Laura’s Bartenderly series.
Strawberry Jam Margarita
- 1.5 ounce tequila
- 1 ounce strawberry jam
- 1 ounce lemon or lime juice
- Salt, for the glass
Wet half the rim of your chosen glass and sprinkle it with a little salt, so it sticks. Whatever salt you have on you is fine.
Place the tequila, jam and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker or clean jar, fill with fresh ice, close, and shake hard for about ten seconds. Dump the whole thing, shaken ice and all, into your prepared glass.
