[Illustration: Biodiversity Heritage Library]

You did it! Another week down!

We're putting up a post very much like this one every Friday, to celebrate the fact that the week is done. Down with labor-for-money! Up with leisure-for-free!

We think of this series as something of a send-off for the week, giving you the option of a brief interlude for your Friday. Of course, if your work week is just starting, or if you're still in the thick of it, think of this as a pick-me-up for your personal hump day, or as a nice way to kick off your weekend shifts.

We hope to provide a short mix of mostly silly, mostly food-related, mostly entertaining things to look at, listen to, and read, and we hope you'll find it amusing, and maybe, sometimes, edifying and enlightening. We also see it as an opportunity to go over some of what's new on the site, which you, dear readers, may have missed.

If you have feedback, or if you run across any interesting/oddball/totally crazy stories/podcasts/images/videos during the week that you think may be appropriate for this little collection of miscellany, email us! We can't guarantee that we'll use it, but we will 100% appreciate the effort.

What's New on Serious Eats

You can, of course, browse all our content in reverse-chronological order. But for you, on this day, some highlights:

Our Favorite Comments of the Week

From "Why You Shouldn't Use Nonstick Cookware (Most of the Time)":

Daniel, spot on.I didn’t Realize you know my mother-in-law.Here is the topper, not only does she persist in using the completely wrecked nonstick frying pan;The cast iron skillet she bought in 1957 has never been seasoned because she steel wools it every time she uses it! I have tried to explain seasoning it, but she looks at me like a cow looks at a fence post.Not sure what’s going on with her, she’s quite intelligent, but her mother instilled a cleaning fetish. Aarrgh.

From "Hack Your Way to a Bigger Stovetop, No Renovation Required":

WTH. Didn’t see it coming.

From a commenter (who we are frankly quite worried about) on Facebook, in response to a reposting of our recipe for charred broccoli with Manchego, hazelnuts, and honey:

Less cheese. It's a vegetable, not pizza.

A Brief Book Break

Everyone dreamt of a new life...Dreams...People dreamt that tons of salami would appear at the grocery stores at Soviet prices and members of the Politburo would stand in line for it along with the rest of us. Salami is a benchmark of our existence. Our love for salami is existential...When they started selling salami at the privately owned grocery stores, and all of us ran over to ogle it. And that was when we saw the prices! This was how capitalism came into our lives.

I feel like a forgotten artefact in a museum vault. Some dusty pottery shard. We had a great empire - stretching from sea to sea, from beyond the Arctic to the subtropics. Where is it now? It was defeated without a bomb. Without Hiroshima. It's been conquered by Her Majesty Salami! The good chow won!

From Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich.

Food Numbers, News, and Hijinks

• 42: number of New York City Council members who need to take stock of their lives voted for the foie gras ban that will take effect in 2022.
• 132: pounds of live elvers, or juvenile eels, seized by French authorities from two Chinese nationals who were attempting to smuggle the eels to China, where they are considered a delicacy.
• In light of this, a sample of amazing Deadspin sports articles about food: "Let’s Do It. Let’s All Eat Salad With A Fuckin’ Spoon"; "What’s The Worst Cooking Mistake You’ve Ever Eaten Anyway?"; "Onions, Ranked"; "Pancakes Are Bullshit"; "Dang, I Guess They Have 'Oat Milk' Now?".
• Why do people hate vegans?
• NYT restaurant critic Pete Wells, giant slayer.
• Tiki bars are back, if you hadn't heard.
• Guy Fieri seems like a nice guy with a healthy sense of humor, in addition to being a great Halloween costume idea.
• Sound on.
• As Neo said, "Whoa."

Have a wonderful weekend, everybody!

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