Welcoming the Weekend

*Natural dyes photo by Aya Brackett.

After enjoying the solar eclipse on Monday, I had quite a productive week! Tonight we're hosting new friends for Shabbat dinner at our house. This weekend will be spent hosting Japantown tours, taking an ikebana class (Japanese flower arranging), visiting an urban Jewish farm and enjoying an animal butchering class (a wedding gift from friends who know us well).  Here are a few of my favorite things I've read, watched and listened to this week:

Tim Wise, author of White Like Me, on how the fascinating history of race in the United States.

"You learn from history and those of who went through what we did, we recognize the signs."
-quoted from this Facebook video of three Holocaust survivors, from this week's The Ish.

Last Tuesday's (9/22) episode of The New York Times' The Daily Podcast with Derek Black, a former white nationalist. 

"I spend a lot of my life trying to be more American and then I spend some of my life trying to be more Chinese and then I came to the realization that this is what I'm between really and expressing that in our food here is what we're trying to do."- Brandon Jew, owner and chef behind Mister Jiu's in San Francisco, Bon Appetit's #3 Best New Restaurant in America.

We're getting ready for a big trip to Japan this November and I've been spending the evenings researching and planning. In case you hope to visit Japan soon, here are some of my favorite guides: 101 Cookbooks' Tokyo guide, Bon Appetit's guide to everything you need to eat in Kyoto, A Pair and a Spare's Tokyo and Kyoto guides and Local Milk's Kyoto guide and these enchanting photos of the Kiso Valley in the Japan Alps.

If the Marie Kondo method was too intense for your liking, this guide to the new Japanese minimalism by a regular guy living in Tokyo might be more palatable and doable.

A guide to matcha.

One of my favorite Japanese comfort foods and easy weeknight meals. 

Chai & Home's guide to the 9 things you can do now to get ready for the High Holy Days.

Just bought tickets to see Yottam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh in San Francisco!

Also got tickets to the highly anticipated Museum of Ice Cream, coming soon to San Francisco.