Essays, food, and personal style for a life of intention.
Search This Blog
Summer Capsule: Linen
Linen began not as luxury, but survival. Long before it softened into breezy trousers and coastal summer dresses, it was woven from the fibers inside the flax plant, one of the oldest cultivated textiles in human history. Archaeological discoveries of dyed flax fibers in Georgia’s Dzudzuana Cave suggest humans were manipulating wild flax as far back as 30,000 BCE. By ancient Egypt, linen had transformed from practical material into a cultural symbol. Its whiteness and breathability made it ideal for desert climates, but it also became associated with purity, ritual, and status. Priests wore linen for religious ceremonies, the dead were wrapped in fine linen for mummification, and the “Fine Linen of Egypt” circulated as both a luxury and a diplomatic offering among monarchs.
Its path from field to fabric partly explains why linen carried prestige for centuries. Unlike cotton, flax demanded an intensely laborious process: pulling the plant from the ground to preserve the fibers, retting the stalks to loosen their woody exterior, scutching to separate premium fibers from rougher tow, and carefully spinning the threads in humid conditions to prevent breakage. Linen production spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, becoming essential for undergarments, bedding, and household textiles because it tolerated frequent washing and heat well. Yet the Industrial Revolution shifted the balance. Cotton, accelerated by mechanized production and the cotton gin, became cheaper and easier to scale. Linen slowly retreated from a mass-market staple into something more selective—valued less for convenience than for craftsmanship, texture, and refinement.
And still, linen endured. Part of its lasting hold comes from physics as much as aesthetics. Linen absorbs moisture without immediately feeling damp, conducts heat away from the body efficiently, and remains remarkably durable despite its softness. Its wrinkles, once treated as an imperfection, eventually became part of its appeal: visible evidence of movement, wear, and ease rather than rigid polish. Linen became synonymous with summer because it breathes when heat settles against the skin. It softens with time rather than resisting it while carrying an effortless looseness that synthetic fabrics continue trying to imitate. In fashion, summer dressing has long been tied to the illusion of ease, and few fabrics embody that illusion more convincingly than linen.
There are days when I feel utterly disconnected from the world. It took an IG feed from Diet Prada for me to learn that Gwyneth Paltrow had starred in an ad for 51 Park, a luxury residential development in Herzliya, Israel. Herzliya is an affluent coastal city north of Tel Aviv, and the project is being marketed as a luxury residential development there. To be clear, 51 Park is not in Gaza. It is in Israel. But precision does not make the geography innocent: parts of present-day Herzliya overlap with or sit near the land of al-Haram, also known as Sidna Ali, a Palestinian Arab village depopulated in 1948. Lisbon, Portugal There is misinformation about where the 51 Park residential development is located, and the distinction matters. If our beating of Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be effective, it should at least be accurate. I have never liked her. I have never hated her. Even before the 51 Park ad controversy broke, I felt she was irrelevant. Her acting skills are not impressive. Would ...
Although this delicious soy sauce-based brine can certainly be used to make the once-viral Mayak Eggs, I prefer the eggs for this particular banchan fully cooked rather than jammy. Partly out of familiarity from childhood and partly for food safety, fully cooked eggs keep longer in the refrigerator. Typically, jammy-yolk eggs are good for two to three days, while fully cooked eggs are safe for four to five days. INGREDIENTS six eggs three celery sticks, cut in thirds [for the soy sauce-based brine] five Thai chilies, sliced four garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped two green onions, finely chopped a half cup of soy sauce one and a half tablespoons of sugar a tablespoon of sesame oil three-quarters of a teaspoon of honey For perfectly boiled eggs, place the eggs in a pot with plenty of room at the bottom. Do not stack the eggs. Add enough room-temperature water to submerge the eggs and a handful of salt to clog leakage in case shells crack. All ceramic bowls were wheel-thrown and g...
I believe the cruelest thing a human can experience is burying their child. While the only thing guaranteed in life, from the moment we take our first breath to our last, is death, for a parent to bury a child is not the natural progression of life. For more than six years, I have watched my Dad go through rounds of chemotherapy, years of dialysis, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations where doctors advised against further medical treatment—until my brother vehemently fought for it. If you ever need a medical advocate, you should hire him. Perhaps it is the lawyer in him that convinces doctors to shift their medical opinions. My Dad asked, and my brother passionately advocated for him for days so he could receive his first round of chemotherapy more than six years ago, which the doctor at first refused to administer since it was an unusual treatment for his autoimmune disease. He would have passed away within a matter of months without it. He did squats after his first chemothera...
I get that a lot... “Aren’t you lonely?” Should I be lonely? I live alone. I travel alone. I eat alone, even at the finest restaurants. I go to bars alone, although it's rare. I go to the opera alone. I see plays alone. I go to concerts alone. Not always alone, but I am comfortable being alone... Go, seek, and do it alone. When something I want to do pops up, my instinct is to do it. I rarely have that moment when I am like... “I need to find someone to do it with.” When I invite others to join me, their presence isn't often required unless you know... it requires a minimum of two people. Rare, but it happens. Lunch for one at KinKan That word, alone, is misleading. Isn't it? Perhaps, it is how we've been taught to understand that “alone” means lonely and thus unhappy. Is it unhealthy that I prefer the company of none, often a book at a restaurant, rather than a human? It is healthier than being in a relationship because of the fear of being alone, often clawing to just...
Whenever I think of the word mundane, I think of Burning, the film starring Yoo Ah In. It was described once as being like watching paint dry. That comparison lingered. In many ways, the pandemic years felt the same—new coats layered endlessly over the wall, each variant stripping away the hope that the surface might finally harden. It feels almost obtuse to call the pandemic mundane. More than five million lives lost. Hundreds of millions infected. At moments, it threatened not just our survival, but our humanity—our ability to remain human, with hearts and intelligence intact. The first months were brutal. Our lives collapsed inward, reduced to rooms, screens, and routines that repeated without distinction. Before all of this, I had built a life around the belief that life itself is art, paired with a devotion to minimalism. I found serenity in ordinary things: cooking, reading, knitting, tending to plants, coloring, crafting. Even cleaning brought a quiet satisfaction, punctuated by...
Small pleasures are often overlooked. They are the quiet details that make daily life feel opulent. Not the breathless moments, but the ones that bring a soft smile and the comfort of familiarity. In food, those pleasures often come from the simplest recipes. One of my simple pleasures is this tomato sauce, which I learned about nearly two decades ago in Veneto, Italy. Although slightly modified from the original, this sauce marked the beginning of my love for Italian food and remains the foundation of the Spicy Italian Sausage Orecchiette I shared in 2022. While the Spicy Italian Sausage Orecchiette has layers of flavor from various ingredients and is more involved on the stove, this tomato sauce relies on one flavor, tomato, supported by garlic, basil, and salt. The salt? It brings out the acidity of the tomato. Shown above with French Miso Lamb , this tomato sauce with spaghetti is a versatile companion to meat dishes, from lamb to chicken. Delicious on its own, you can also add...
When Dr. Moon, a pain management specialist, told me about Dad’s wish, it was not the first time I had heard it. A few days earlier, Mom had told me that Dad wanted to be transferred from the hospital to hospice. I did not quite understand what hospice meant at the time. Between that conversation with Mom and the one with Dr. Moon, I had watched Dad take about twenty steps with the support of a walker and the assistance of a physical therapist. After seeing him come out of critical condition, I took those steps as a sign of recovery. So I was surprised when Dr. Moon told me that Dad had expressed his wish to end all medical treatments and go peacefully. I had been struggling with the continuation of his medical treatment. Three days after I wrote Will Love Give Us the Courage to Let Our Dad Go? , Dad passed away peacefully, as though he had simply fallen asleep, with a morphine drip erasing the pain that had once dominated him. He was eighty years old and had spent the last six years o...
Growing up, fried rice was a staple in our home. My mother served it with yellow radish pickles and kimchi, sometimes crowned with a fried egg. On certain days it appeared a little fancier—tucked neatly inside an omelet, or my personal favorite, stuffed into inari age, those seasoned fried tofu pouches that soak up every grain. Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me Fried rice exists in many forms across Asia—China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, to name only a few—each with its own techniques, flavors, and traditions. I cannot say that my version belongs squarely to any one of them. It began with the flavors and instincts of Korean-style fried rice, but over time it evolved, influenced by my Chinese-Hungarian-American ex-husband and the ingredients commonly found in American kitchens: leftover ham, jalapeño, and calabacita. This version leans into a playful idea of surf and turf—shrimp representing the sea and ham representing the land—folded together into a wok of rice ...
You’ve seen it on my Instagram —bibim-soba served with steaks, from filet mignon to NY strips. Instead of scalloped potatoes or green bean casserole, I usually pair steaks with bibim-soba, especially when cooking is rushed. It is particularly good with a perfectly cooked medium-rare steak, seared in butter and finished in a preheated oven, served alongside bibim-soba. Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me. This pairing of steak and bibim-soba was inspired by my love for galbi (beef ribs) and naengmyeon (cold buckwheat with sweet potato starch noodles). While the two are traditionally served separately—galbi first, then naengmyeon—I prefer them together, savoring both in the same bite. Soba, a Japanese buckwheat noodle, works seamlessly here as bibim-guksu, a Korean mixed noodle dish. Bibim means to mix, and guksu means noodles. Instead of using various seasoning ingredients as other bibim-guksu recipes do, I wanted to keep the seasoning minimal and focus on a spicy-and-tangy f...
I have lived in Los Angeles for more than four decades. I slept in a van the night following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which killed 57, injured more than 9,000, and caused over $13 billion in property damage. Some have published economic losses as high as $50 billion. View of Los Angeles from Runyon Canyon I was no different from many Angelenos. Wildfires and mudslides in our coastal and hillside neighborhoods were an inconvenience met with indifference. We saw them as a consequence of living with gorgeous views. Wildfires and mudslides could not have been much of a concern for those who bought and lived in high-risk communities. To claim otherwise would be obtuse, especially for those who owned properties without homeowner's insurance. That is like driving a car without insurance, even if the state lawfully allows it. I live among Progressives—people who claim to care about the environment, inclusiveness, and equality. I voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the last pre...
Comments
Post a Comment