Have a Good Weekend.

What are you up to this weekend? Our days are slightly blurring together, to be honest, but we’re going to head to the beach and have a summery picnic. Hope you have a good one, and here are a few fun links from around the web…

Our associate editor Kim Rhodes was on the Today Show! See her clip here. (All the clapping emojis!)

Love these (masked) outfits.

The old-school game we can’t stop playing.

Made me laugh out loud.

The new dating timeline. LOVED this.

Photography team Belathée just launched a print shop.

Butter and jam never looked so good.

Pen15’s second season just dropped its trailer.

What a cool, colorful loft.

Shel Silverstein’s The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries.

Cookiessssssss.

Plus, two reader comments:

Says Kash on secret family recipes: “My Ukrainian grandmother made the BEST cabbage rolls, and before she passed away I got her recipe. The secret is literally just like, a metric ton of butter and lard, poured over everything. Here I thought I was going to get an old family secret and then it was literally just ‘pour lard and butter onto the rice’ and I was like ‘Well, yeah no shit it tasted so good when she made it, it’s just like seven cups of butter poured onto carbs.'”

Says E. on secret family recipes: “I want to write a book on all of the ‘secret family recipes’ that are in fact from a box. It happened in my husband’s family with grandma’s famous chocolate frosting (Hershey’s). The awe to which the entire family had for her frosting warms my heart. You discover it’s more about the person than the actual food!”

(Photo by Hilary Horvath Flowers.)

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Maryann

August 10, 2020 12:47 pm

So grateful to you, Kim, for sharing. And wonderful job doing so. I hope all other schools around the country follow suit and start to teach these incredibly important parts of our nations history. My son learned about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Massacre last year in his eighth grade social studies class, and then came home and taught me. It was devastating to learn about such an event, and made me so sad and furious that I didn’t learn about this in school.

Claire

August 10, 2020 10:30 am

I loved Kim’s interview- what a terrific job- she is so articulate. I am grateful to her for being willing to share the stories of her life so candidly. I was also never taught anything in school about the Tulsa massacre, and it was only after seeing Watchmen on HBO that it came to my attention, prompting me to read more about it.

SGH

Reply to Claire

August 10, 2020 1:11 pm

Hi Claire,

I mean this with all the respect in the world but calling Black women articulate is casual racism. Kim is a gifted writer and brilliant, there’s no need to call her “articulate”. I know you meant that as a compliment, but unfortunately that connects to a larger history of people being surprised that black people can speak so well.

Here are two articles that touch more on it:

“When a white person says it, it usually implies they didn’t expect to hear intelligence from a black person. The black person didn’t fit the white person’s offensive stereotype, so the white person complimented them for surprising them.”

https://www.channel3000.com/dear-anti-racist-allies-heres-how-to-respond-to-microaggressions/

https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-to-call-out-casual-racism/

Thanks for listening!
SGH

SGH

Reply to Claire

August 10, 2020 1:15 pm

Hi Claire and other people on this comment thread,

I mean this with all the respect in the world but calling Black women articulate/eloquent is casual racism. Kim is a gifted writer and brilliant, there’s no need to call her “articulate”. I know you meant that as a compliment, but unfortunately that connects to a larger history of people (mostly white people) being surprised that Black people can speak so well.

Here are two articles that touch more on it:

“When a white person says it, it usually implies they didn’t expect to hear intelligence from a Black person. The Black person didn’t fit the white person’s offensive stereotype, so the white person complimented them for surprising them.”

https://www.channel3000.com/dear-anti-racist-allies-heres-how-to-respond-to-microaggressions/

https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-to-call-out-casual-racism/

Thanks for listening!

Joy

Reply to Claire

August 10, 2020 2:40 pm

SGH —

I don’t know if I’ve ever read such an incoherent comment in all my life — and I’ve been online since 2000!

Praising someone as “articulate” is not a race-specific compliment. Assuming that she used the word “articulate” because of Kim’s ethnicity shows that you possess an unfortunate ability to perform illogical mental gymnastics.

If Claire had been insane enough to type that Kim was articulate “for a black woman” than maybe you’d have a case. Alas, Claire is not insane.

Anon

Reply to Claire

August 10, 2020 5:49 pm

@Joy – I think SGH’s point was very clear, as were the two stories that they linked to, no “illogical mental gymnastics” necessary. Your reply seems to be overly defensive and, whether you see it or not, yet another microagression. There is no need to reply so rudely to someone that is politely trying to call out harmful behavior and offer a different perspective. If their comment makes you uncomfortable or angry, maybe take a moment to ask yourself why instead of lashing out at them. SGH, for what it’s worth, I appreciate for your thoughtful feedback, and I’m sorry it was met with further casual racism.

Kim

Reply to Claire

August 12, 2020 12:52 pm

SGH is right here. The dictionary definition of articulate is “capable of speech,” which is something we expect of all human beings. So when someone describes a Black person as “articulate” (why does it happen so often?) what it sounds like to us is, “wow you are able to speak clearly and that surprises me.”

Jill

August 10, 2020 9:58 am

Go Kim! What a great interview – you spoke so eloquently and movingly. Great to see the CoJ team out there in the world!

Agnès

August 9, 2020 5:31 pm

Bravo kim! You spoke very eloquently and passionately and I felt very moved to see and hear you. I also felt proud to be one of your readers. Thanks.

Rosalie

August 9, 2020 5:25 pm

Way to go, Kim! What a thoughtful and dynamite interview.

Robin L

August 9, 2020 2:12 pm

I have never read anything more accurate than that McSweeney’s school reopening survey hahahahahahahaha omg

Erin

August 9, 2020 5:26 am

After my grandmother died one of my cousins made copies of all of her recipe cards from over the years & put them in a book. She had 9 children so she was in the kitchen constantly & we assumed everything was from scratch. Going through her recipes was so interesting because a lot of what she used were short-cut ingredients…Bisquick, margarine, boxed cake… It made me think what a relief it must have been when all of these short-cut options became available.

Leslie

August 8, 2020 2:39 pm

The Giving Tree link made me laugh out loud and reminded me to dig up an email that my mother (now passed) sent me years ago. Her thoughts on the book: I know some people take away the heartwarming message of a parent’s limitless love for a child, but all I see is a story of a mother willing to literally let her child chop her into pieces. He sells her apples when he needs money, takes her branches to built shelter, uses her trunk to built a boat to sail far away (from her.) When that journey doesn’t go so well he comes back and sits on her stump. And not once does he say thank you.

Ari

Reply to Leslie

August 10, 2020 11:42 am

My parents told me The Giving Tree was the first book I was able to “read” as a child. Because of that, I was always fond of it. When I read it to my toddler son a few months ago for the first time in a long time, I literally burst into tears. I was heartbroken. This book and The Missing Piece (another tragic Shel Silverstein book) have rotated off his bookshelf.

August 8, 2020 1:40 pm

Kash’s comment is hilarious!!!! It’s what I’ve been thinking lately too even though it’s such a cliche…what makes savory dishes indescribably irreplicable-y delicious–butter!!!! that’s probably why the famous Marcella Hazan tomato sauce is so good. It’s like, what makes all these fancy restaurant red sauces soooo good? not the delicate balance of herbs, no– it’s butter.

And in other news, bacon fat.

E.’s comment is so heartwarming too, love goes a longgg way on semi-homemade foods!

Carla

Reply to K

August 10, 2020 1:03 pm

More butter more Better!

Eleanor Frances

August 8, 2020 12:52 pm

Kim Rhoades is beautiful inside and out. She was totally awesome on the Today Show. Thank you fo reposting this.

L N

Reply to Eleanor Frances

August 9, 2020 10:42 am

Agreed! Have so enjoyed and learned from Kim since her joining the fabulous Cup of Jo team!

Hannah

August 8, 2020 7:59 am

I’m a teacher, and it made me laugh out loud. I forwarded the link to a bunch of teacher friends–and to my (awesome) principal. Thinking about the fall is incredibly stressful and scary, but sometimes the absurdity of it cannot be denied.

Reply to Hannah

August 8, 2020 1:31 pm

smh…I salute all of you!

Amanda G

Reply to Hannah

August 8, 2020 11:29 pm

I chuckled too. I am an elementary teacher going back to face to face instruction in a few weeks. I also have several underlying conditions.
This is so crazy. Really. And so scary. This week, a teacher from a district a few hours south of us, cried out to our governor during a Covid Press conference. She kept yelling for him to come help her. So in the video you see him leave the podium, jog over to where she is shaking and crying and saying she’s so scared for herself, her family and she doesn’t know what to do. He was kind enough to take a knee and try to calm her down and told her to keep going to her union. This woman is everything I’m holding in right now.

Jane

Reply to Hannah

August 9, 2020 4:19 am

I am a teacher, and I did this too!!

Totally different country, same completely absurd situation…

Preeti

Reply to Hannah

August 10, 2020 2:32 pm

Couldn’t agree more.Kim is simply fabulous.Thank you for this :)

Amber

August 8, 2020 12:57 am

Wow that was interesting to read about the Giving Tree! I didn’t remember much about the story and always thought of it as a classic kids book about sharing! So interesting to read another perspective!

Annie

Reply to Amber

August 8, 2020 12:38 pm

I always assumed it was about parenthood!

Roxana

August 8, 2020 12:21 am

Kash’s comment about her grandmother’s recipe. . . LOL! Totally needed a good laugh, too.

Also, the Belathee photographs are gorgeous!

An actual Karen

August 8, 2020 12:20 am

Kim, check you out! Oklahoma is requiring that kids be taught what happened in Tulsa because you spoke up! We’ve never met, but I think a lot of us who visit Cup of Jo regularly feel invested in you and even super proud of you. Here to express some solidarity.

August 8, 2020 12:13 am

It had never occurred to me before, but it actually makes sense that so many of the best “secret”recipes are from boxes… because the company has undoubtedly tried a whole bunch of recipes and chosen the most appealing to represent the product on the box! (A combo of taste and ease, probably). So I am going to start paying attention to the box recipes on the regular! Lol!

janika

Reply to CS

August 8, 2020 1:31 pm

Corporate recipes are generally engineered by specialists to within an inch of their lives, so they are often really reliable, if you are willing to ingest the also highly engineered “food” “product” that comes in the box. I have used a box recipe or two by snapshotting the recipe in the store and using my ingredients. But I am an experienced cook and love to re-engineer healthy versions of otherwise terrible “food”.

Reply to CS

August 8, 2020 1:32 pm

that’s a good point!

GoldenMoon

August 7, 2020 11:58 pm

Kim, thank you for sharing. Your story is deeply moving. Thank you for being you!

Paige

August 7, 2020 11:17 pm

Loooooved the reopening survey parody. Hilarious!

August 7, 2020 10:47 pm

I love E’s comment on secret family recipes that are in fact from a box! It is so true! The other day after visiting my parents, I brought some of my mom’s brownies to my in-laws’. They kept raving about how they were the best brownies they ever had. I didn’t want to ruin the magic, so I didn’t tell them my mom’s brownie recipe is actually just the recipe on the Fry’s cocoa tins. ;)

silly lily

Reply to S

August 9, 2020 12:46 pm

OK but at least your Mom still made them from scratch!

Every Christmas I make my now famous creme de menthe brownies……these are literally so rich and scrumptious that you can only eat one, but that’s okay cause one is completely satisfying. It’s a layer of brownie, topped with a layer of mint buttercream, then a layer of thick chocolate on top. I’m always asked for the recipe, which is simply baking Duncan Hines brownies, then adding super easy toppings.

It always felt like “cheating” until five years ago when I received the gift of a grandson named Duncan. Now everything with that name attached is pure gold to me.

August 7, 2020 8:12 pm

SO excited to see you Kim (and Cup of Jo!!) on the Today Show!!! So many congratulations!!!!!!! SO proud to be part of this community!!!! THANK YOU Kim and Joanna for all you do!!!!

Colleen S

August 7, 2020 6:14 pm

I want peonies. So pretty.

ces

August 7, 2020 5:59 pm

Great job Kim!

Laura Haywood

August 7, 2020 5:51 pm

I don’t find the school district reopening survey funny AT ALL. Just makes school district personnel look like idiots. Why did it make you laugh out loud?

Joanna Goddard

Author

Reply to Laura Haywood

August 7, 2020 10:25 pm

just because it shows what a ridiculous situation this is for all of us — including the (wonderful and heroic) school district personnel. these are crazy times for sure! xoxo

Amy

Reply to Laura Haywood

August 8, 2020 12:59 am

I am a middle school principal, and I thought it hilariously satirized the absurdity of current circumstances. If we don’t laugh, we cry!

Betsy

Reply to Laura Haywood

August 8, 2020 2:13 pm

Also thought the school reopening piece was funny and I appreciate the laugh but would sometime love to have a conversation on COJ about what families are really going to do about school this year.

Meredith

Reply to Laura Haywood

August 8, 2020 5:14 pm

Gosh, I’ve found McSweeeney’s humor and satire to get so many things right recently! We have to have some satire to point out how stressful and difficult this all is, don’t we? I sure do! I work in higher education, and their posts about all of this at the university-level have been spot on.

Marisa

August 7, 2020 5:26 pm

Happy weekend! I am trying to cut plastics, so I took the plunge and ordered some shampoo bars, but I would love to know how readers keep them from getting saturated with water or what type of soap dish holder works best! Could you include this in one of your Fun Things posts or perhaps even a full post? Thanks x million!

Elizabethkatt

Reply to Marisa

August 7, 2020 9:34 pm

Try “soap saver” bags on hooks in the shower. You can crochet them yourself if you know how–there’s a million free patterns if you google it–or get them on etsy.

Reply to Marisa

August 7, 2020 9:45 pm

Us too! I really love Chagrin valley soaps. They use almost all organic ingredients and their shampoo bars work great!

Katie

Reply to Marisa

August 7, 2020 9:50 pm

Soap dishes that drain and keep the soap elevated are the best. There are even some that will suction cup to the wall, but I just set one of these on the edge and it’s been great! The whole family uses solid shampoo and conditioner. I use a separate soap dish for the shampoo and for the conditioner until they are small enough to share.
https://theyamazakihome.com/products/float-self-draining-soap-tray

Alex

Reply to Marisa

August 8, 2020 9:01 am

I use a flat stone (like, literal stone) and it works great for me :)

Mercy

Reply to Marisa

August 8, 2020 9:43 pm

I bought a shampoo bar tin from Lush and it works well when I actually use it properly (which is like 10% of the time, ha). Otherwise I keep it on my shower organizer, which while sure, it still works and lathers and cleans, it no longer smells like anything, so I wish I’d stored it in the tin case more often! (ideally I put it in there once the bar is dry)

Reply to Marisa

August 9, 2020 12:16 am

I use a dish outside the shower on the washbasin, and only bring it in on the days I was my hair

August 7, 2020 4:05 pm

My husband makes the best cookies. The big secret(s)? Extra salt, extra vanilla, and watch them like a hawk in the oven so they don’t over bake. We swear by 8 minutes in our oven. Perfection!

Joanna Goddard

Author

Reply to AG

August 7, 2020 4:11 pm

oooh good tips!! thank you!

Rachel

Reply to AG

August 7, 2020 9:13 pm

If you aren’t familiar, Toby (and you) would LOVE the game Otrio. It’s like a cooler/wayyy more fun version of tic tac toe! My 9 year old is obsessed. It really makes your brain work hard haha!

Joanna Goddard

Author

Reply to Rachel

August 7, 2020 10:23 pm

ooh fun, thank you!

Reply to AG

August 8, 2020 1:34 pm

love this, I agree! that’s what i’ve found too hilariously, our tastebuds’ perception of “harmony” is usually a little more of everything! except baking time, a little under on the baking time! and maybeeee a quick broil depending on the thing

Maija

August 7, 2020 3:40 pm

Hm. “Mask-friendly outfits”? Aren’t all outfits mask-friendly?

I’m loving LaTonya’s heat-wave friendly outfits, as she describes them. And big thanks to her brilliance in reminding us that even in a heat wave we should all be wearing masks. Bravo.

Joaquina

Reply to Maija

August 7, 2020 9:24 pm

They are being fun and clever. Yes of course all outfits go with masks.

Anna

August 7, 2020 3:35 pm

The dating timeline made me think of Love in Lockdown, a sweet Aussie series on YouTube with Eddie Perfect and Lucy Durack ( I think…). Anybody else seen this?

Amy

Reply to Anna

August 7, 2020 8:44 pm

Literally crying laughing at the school re-entry plan. Nothing has been more hilariously true!!

Stef

August 7, 2020 3:15 pm

Thank you Kim for sharing your personal story both here on CoJ and on television. I appreciate your emotional labor and your bravery.

Jess.

August 7, 2020 2:58 pm

So grateful to Kim for sharing her story on the Today Show. And for sharing her voice here. Daring to hope that we might see some real change in this country. superXOX

Samantha

August 7, 2020 2:37 pm

KIM!!!!!!!! SO INCREDIBLE!!!! and so exciting to hear that Oklahoma is changing their curriculum. You contributed to that change!

Maggie

August 7, 2020 2:28 pm

The comment about secret family recipes coming from a box remind me of the Friends episode where Phoebe was talking about her grandmother’s secret chocolate chip cookie recipe. After a lot of questions, they figured out it was just the recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse’s chocolate chip bag.

Lizzie

Reply to Maggie

August 7, 2020 3:28 pm

Yes! I came here to comment that too! Ah, Nestlé Toulouse…

Joanna Goddard

Author

Reply to Maggie

August 7, 2020 3:38 pm

hahaha yes!

Reply to Maggie

August 8, 2020 1:30 pm

haha me too!

Amanda

August 7, 2020 1:59 pm

Ah, yes I can relate to the secret family recipe comment! My mom’s chocolate chip cookies are legendary, everyone who knows her knows she makes the BEST. Her recipe—is from the back of the Tollhouse chocolate chip bag, use butter flavored Crisco instead of real butter. I know this, yet I’ve tried and tried to make them and they never taste as good as hers!

Joanna Goddard

Author

Reply to Amanda

August 7, 2020 3:38 pm

oooh this sounds so good.

Michaela

Reply to Amanda

August 9, 2020 11:54 am

This is our “family recipe” too! The Crisco makes all the difference.

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