So, what's good?
Wide shoes are good. I have never worn wide shoes before, but with all the running I've been doing (and I guess, all the aging), I've found that my pinky toe is getting sore. So I ordered some wide shoes, and yeah. Wow. OK. Time to give up lifting in my Converse All Stars too, as they are way too narrow now. What's not good about wide shoes? They don't seem to be offered in all the cool colors that regular width shoes are. What's with that, shoe makers?
Toad in the Hole is so good. My mom sent Kin a couple of packages of chipolata sausages for his birthday from a British food store. And every time I make this meal — arguably one of my Top 10 favorite foods — I ask myself, why are British sausages so much better than American ones? After I made toad in the hole this past week, I googled "chipolata" and discovered they are, in fact, French. (And the last time I made this meal, I looked at the Wikipedia entry for toad in the hole, which assures the reader that the dish has never contained toad. Yay. British food.)
I'm a big fan of Virginia Sole-Smith's newsletter/podcast, Burnt Toast, and her recent one on school lunches is on point. There's so much to unpack in all her work about parenting and food, but this really struck me: "Diet culture has taught us that school lunches aren’t good enough for our kids." (Also, white supremacy.) And this: "Your fear of snack crackers is a big reason why your kid seems so obsessed with them. Letting kids eat these foods at school, alongside the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that school districts are also required to serve, could be a great way to lessen a child’s scarcity mindset around them."
As a former flutist, I sure loved watching Lizzo play James Madison's crystal flute. (I didn't even know about the existence of the flute, nor did I know that the Library of Congress has the world's largest collection of flutes.) A good week for flutes all 'round.
I went for my first trail run on Saturday. It was the first trail run of the reason for Running for a Better Oakland, the youth organization I'm volunteering with. We ran at Sibley; it was incredibly foggy, and the up and downhill kicked my ass, even though I ran less than 3 miles. I'm a little nervous about the 8K trail race I've signed up to run next month, but hopefully I'll have some of the RBO kids to help keep me going.