There are two kinds of recipes in this world: the ones you follow carefully, and the ones you throw together in a panic and hope no one asks questions. This is the second kind. Which is, increasingly, how the Supreme Court seems to operate.

If you’re not familiar, the “shadow docket” is how the Court handles urgent matters. It allows the justices to act quickly, often without full briefing, oral argument, or the kind of public explanation that usually accompanies a major ruling. It’s a bit like dumping a boxed mix into a pan and acting like you milled the flour yourself. Except, you could end up in a torture prison in El Salvador.

To be clear, this procedure isn’t inherently sinister. It’s supposed to be the Court’s emergency brake, used in moments when waiting would cause real harm. It can pause an execution, stabilize an election, or hold things in place while the normal legal process unfolds. It is supposed to be a safety measure, not an excuse to dump President Trump’s favorite culture-war leftovers on a plate with the quiet expectation that we all eat it.

Lately, the shadow docket has been used to let policies take effect before courts decide if they’re legal: immigration crackdowns, mass firings of federal workers, bans on transgender service members. These rulings are technically temporary, in the same way food poisoning is technically temporary. They take effect right away, and by the time the full case is decided, you’re already camped out in the hall bathroom.

So yes, this is a dump cake. Apples on the bottom, boxed cake mix on top, a melted layer of panic holding the whole thing together. What could be more American than a constitutional crisis with a soggy bottom?

Shadow Docket Dump Cake

Serving Size: 330 million people, give or take a few hundred thousand deportations

Prep Time: Several decades of precedent, lightly ignored

Ingredients

• 2 cans apple pie filling (as American as dodging public oversight)

• 1 box yellow cake mix (artificial ingredients, real consequences)

• 1 cup melted butter (to keep things from falling apart)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F, like you’re trying to get away with something.

2. Dump the apple pie filling into a 9x13-inch pan and distribute it unevenly, in the American tradition.

3. Cover with cake mix. Resist the urge to examine it too closely.

4. Drizzle melted butter over the top until the whole thing looks intentional.

5. Bake until the top appears golden and set, regardless of what’s happening underneath, about 50 minutes.

6. Remove from oven and serve without explanation.

7. Serve to the entire country.

Serving Suggestion

Serve immediately. Pairs well with late-night rulings, early-morning headlines, and the slow erosion of institutional integrity. Garnish with a press release and no follow-up questions.

The American way, dragged out of the shadows and into the oven light.

Just can’t get enough of Cheese Toast with White People or its humble, lactose-intolerant author? Delightful. Here are a few ways to hang out with me professionally before the universe collapses or your cheddar burns, whichever comes first.

• April 30: I’m hosting How to Become a Trusted Voice in Food Writing with and , a candid Write Up conversation about what makes readers trust a food writer in a crowded media landscape.

• May 1: I have two spots open for book proposal consultations next month, in case your nonfiction book a needs a little structure, strategy, or loving-but-firm editorial attention.

• May 21: I’m co-hosting a free Write Up class on Creative Recipe Writing with and . Come learn how to make your recipes more alive on the page. Free and open to the public!

• June 5: I’m interviewing Kristin Donnelly and from for Write Up’s How to Become a Cookbook Collaborator conversation about what cookbook collaborators actually do, how to break into the work, and how collaborative cookbooks come together.

• June 26–27: I’m presenting at EFACON26, the Editorial Freelancers Association’s virtual conference, where I’ll be teaching workshop on Ghostwriting as a Freelance Business: Finding Your Lane, Your Clients, and Your Boundaries.

• September 9: Write Up’s Book Proposal Intensive begins again. Join our 12-week workshop for turning your book into a polished, submission-ready proposal with community support and personalized feedback.

• Anytime: Join our Write Up circle community: a cozy, chaos-free corner of the internet for anyone working on their first book! Always free to join.

In February, President Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State, Jeremy Carl (author of The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, which is what you write when the worst thing that has ever happened to your people is this book) sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was asked to define white culture. He could have said: we are a people who crossed an ocean and forgot what we left behind, then called the forgetting freedom. Instead he said: have you seen what they’re doing with the halftime show?!

White chocolate contains no cocoa solids. It, like whiteness itself, is defined entirely by what has been removed. In Europe, people are Italian or Croatian or Irish. In America, they became white. Or more specifically, not them. Not Black. Not brown. Not Indigenous. Not the people whose land you are standing on, whose music you are about to appropriate, or whose recipes you put in a mason jar and sell at a farmer’s market for eleven dollars.

This would be merely embarrassing if it weren’t also policy. But Jeremy Carl was not just a guy with bad tweets and a book deal. He was the preferred nominee of an administration currently deporting people at record speed, rolling back voting rights protections, and bullying universities out of diversity initiatives with the enthusiasm of a man who has never once been pulled over for driving through the wrong neighborhood. Carl withdrew his nomination in March. The administration expressed disappointment. So, let’s make cookies.

The macadamia nut is native to Australia and arrived in your cookie via colonial land clearing and Hawaiian plantation agriculture. Like white Americans, it was uprooted from its origin, settled somewhere else, and is now completely unbothered by its own history. Make America White Again Cookies are sufficiently colonial, defined by absence, and aggressively confident in their flavor profile. And, they are delicious. Of course they are. Nobody builds an empire on something that doesn’t taste good.

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Serves: Americans who describe their cultural identity as “normal,” their neighborhood as “up and coming,” and their politics as “common sense.”

Yield: One batch of cookies and enough generational indifference to never once wonder why the cookies came out this way.

Ingredients

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour (unbleached, which means it whitened on its own, slowly, over time, which is also the story of the Irish)

• 1 tsp cornstarch (keeps things from falling apart, like institutional racism)

• 1 tsp baking soda (for lift; the ingredient equivalent of inherited wealth)

• ½ tsp salt (for balance, which the Department of Justice is currently redefining)

• 1 cup butter, softened (European-style, as God intended)

• ¾ cup packed brown sugar (technically protected since 1965)

• ½ cup granulated white sugar (would like to speak to the manager about the protected part)

• 2 large eggs (free-range, which is what you call it when the range was acquired in 1848 from Mexico at gunpoint)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract (native to Mexico, hand-pollinated in Madagascar by workers earning poverty wages, available at Costco in a two-pack)

• 1 cup white chocolate chips (contains no cocoa solids; has written a book about this being chocolate’s fault)

• 1 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped (named after a Scottish man who didn’t discover them; add more if you feel this is relevant to your identity)

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Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Things will get hot. Not hot enough to change anything structural, but hot enough to make one man briefly uncomfortable.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. You can always find it again. Ask jeremycarl4.

3. In a large bowl, combine butter and both sugars until light and creamy. Add vanilla extract. The mixture will smell faintly of something you can’t name but feel you’re entitled to.

4. Gradually blend in the flour mixture until combined. Fold in the white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. Take a moment to appreciate that you will not get whiter than this without a Senate confirmation hearing.

5. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour; just enough time for the dough to firm up and one Republican from Utah to read the footnotes.

6. Roll dough into heaping tablespoon-sized balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet, two inches apart. Under sufficient heat, they will spread. Leave room for the walk-back.

7. Bake 10–12 minutes, until the edges are golden and the centers look almost underdone. They will firm up, white supremacy was baked in from the beginning.

8. Cool on the pan for ten minutes. Transfer to a wire rack. Let them cool completely before serving, which is more time than most people spend thinking about any of this.

Serving Suggestion:

Serve warm. Pairs well with the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, the dismantling of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the restoration of Confederate monuments on federal land. Make America Great Again. You know what we mean.

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Whiteness was always a group project.

Popcorn is for watching. Which is unfortunate, because this week the programming includes a girls’ school in Iran being hit in a U.S.-Israel strike, with reports of more than 100 children killed. The U.S. does have a long, proud tradition of acting shocked about dead kids, right up until it’s time to change literally anything. Pattern recognition is exhausting.

This week, the spectacle arrives at a particularly convenient moment. Just as certain files with a very famous last name were inching back into headlines. Make this recipe while swallowing your disgust and watching foreign bombs double as domestic distraction. You can hear the oil warming in real time: kernels popping, crude surging, gas prices ticking upward like a soundtrack to empire.

And then the president, in a burst of TED Talk–meets–drone strike energy, tells Iranian civilians to rise up and take over their government now that their leader is dead. Like your aunt at dinner who says, “I’m not saying you have to fix it, I’m just saying it would be nice,” and then stares directly at you. (Just me? Cool cool.)

There is something uniquely American about consuming catastrophe as content. We move from missile footage to meal planning without leaving the couch, flipping between footage of burning buildings and a recipe video for sheet-pan salmon (which, honestly, does pair well). Somewhere in that toggle, war starts to feel less like policy and more like programming.

So you make popcorn. Because what else are you supposed to do with your hands while parents in Iran are pulling backpacks out of rubble?

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Serves: American citizens beginning to suspect that “overseas operations” and armored vehicles in their own zip codes might share a budget line.

Prep Time: About as long as the president paused to weigh the civilian fallout.

Ingredients

• ½ cup popcorn kernels (densely packed, like students before class)

• 2–3 tablespoons oil (vegetable, canola, or whatever’s spiking on the global market)

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted (for people who prefer their crises lubricated)

• Salt, to taste (and to mirror international commentary)

• A large bowl sturdy enough to hold both popcorn and existential dread

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Instructions

1. Pour the oil into a large, heavy-bottomed pot and place over medium heat. Add three “precision target” kernels and wait for them to explode (a necessary show of strength, according to people nowhere near the stove).

2. Once the test kernels pop, add the remaining popcorn and cover with a lid. Shake the pot—not to stop the explosions, just to give the appearance that someone is managing it.

3. When the popping slows, take the pot off the burner. Lift the lid carefully and let the steam escape; history suggests there’s more heat to come.

4. Pour into your bowl. Drizzle with melted butter and salt generously. Adjust as needed (unlike failed foreign policy).

5. Sit down. Hold the bowl with both hands. Scroll. Chew. Swallow. Repeat.

Serving Suggestion

In America, we season our conflicts to taste. Add melted butter for comfort, nutritional yeast for moral superiority, or a shake of cayenne for righteous outrage. These kinds of wars, like these kinds of snacks, can be tailored to your palate—so long as you’re the one holding the bowl and not the one under the smoke.

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War, now streaming.

Coffee is for mornings when the news feels like it’s testing your reading comprehension. Like discovering that ICE used a five-year-old boy as bait, shot a VA nurse in the street, and killed a mother of three in her car — all before breakfast. At this point, coffee isn’t just a beverage. It’s protective equipment.

This cold brew has no ice because mornings like these call for a beverage strong enough to make even Joe Rogan briefly reconsider his presidential endorsement. The truth is that this can be a hard drink to swallow. Side effects may include: sudden clarity, inappropriate laughter at press conferences and the urge to Google “how democracies collapse.”

Drink up while you can. The president has learned a new word — de-escalation — and will soon decide it doesn’t apply to him.

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Serving Size: 50,000 Minneapolitans who recently woke up
Brew Time: Overnight, or several administrations

Ingredients

• ½ cup coarsely ground coffee (dark, bitter, and impossible to spin)

• 4 cups cold water (plus a little extra for splashing yourself awake from the authoritarian nightmare)

• 1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup (for people still clinging to hope)

• A pinch of salt (to balance the bitterness of living through history)

• Oat milk, cream, or the cold comfort of realism

• No ICE (because this is coffee, not crowd control)

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Instructions

1. Combine ground coffee and water in a large container. Stir gently, like a White House spokesperson walking back a statement.

2. Cover and refrigerate for 12–24 hours. Just enough time for the narrative to be “clarified.”

3. Strain carefully through fine mesh or a coffee filter. Remove the grounds, but notice how the bitterness remains much like federal agents after being told they do not have a judicial warrant.

4. Taste. Add honey or maple syrup for a bit of false hope. Add oat milk or cream to make it easier to swallow. But for God’s sake, don’t add ICE or you will likely never see your coffee mug again.

5. Drink slowly, preferably while gathering your passport and gas mask for a quick trip to the grocery store.

Serving Suggestion

Pairs well with neighborhood group chats, mutual aid spreadsheets, and simmering rage. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, or until you’re reading about another “isolated incident.”

Some mornings require caffeine. Others require equipment.

For over a century, the East Wing gave women room to run the country: Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for anti-lynching laws and integrated housing, Lady Bird Johnson led campaigns for environmental conservation, Michelle Obama championed children’s health and nutrition, and Jill Biden brought a cat to work because sometimes the nation needs a purr. Betty Ford literally worked out of her bedroom until Rosalynn Carter helped establish a real East Wing office in 1977. It was, as Ford said, “the heart of the house.”

In October, the man who’s never been accused of having a heart decided the White House didn’t need one. President Trump bulldozed the First Lady’s wing to build a $300 million, gold-plated ballroom the size of a Bond villain’s secret lair (funded by a long list of corporate supervillains) while hundreds of thousands of federal workers go unpaid. To be fair, Melania Trump kept such a low profile in the East Wing during the first term that her office was literally converted into a gift-wrapping room, because she was too busy, well, not caring.

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The East Wing wasn’t just where women fought racism and protected children. It was literally built on top of a secret bunker expanded under Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the presidency from Nazi attacks in World War II. It was designed to keep democracy safe from fascists. Now, it protects fascists from democracy.

Which brings us to banana bread: the official dessert of making the best out of what powerful men let rot. Women have always turned bruised fruit into something worth sharing, the same way Americans keep trying to turn a decaying democracy into something we can still swallow. Bulldozer Banana Bread is fortified for the patriarchy above and served warm in the crater where the First Lady’s power used to stand.

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Ingredients

• 1½ cups mashed overripe bananas (about three medium bananas, one for each branch of government slowly rotting from the inside)

• ⅓ cup butter, melted like the blueprints Trump promised didn’t exist

• ¾ cup sugar, just enough to coat the corruption

• 1 egg, if there’s anything left on your EBT card

• 1 tsp vanilla extract, the official flavor of American exceptionalism

• 1 tsp baking soda to keep things rising, unlike minimum wage

• Pinch of salt, rubbed in every historical preservationist’s wound

• 1½ cups all-purpose flour, just enough to dust over the rubble

Optional: ½ cup chopped walnuts, add if you feel a little nuts watching the White House crumble

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (like any good project, start before anyone can stop you).

2. Mash the bananas in a bowl (just pretend they are democratic norms).

3. Stir in melted butter, sugar, and egg and whisk vigorously like a White House aide shredding documents.

4. Add vanilla, baking soda, and salt for full spectrum whiteness.

5. Fold in the flour until the batter holds together better than Congress.

6. Pour into a loaf pan generously greased like a billionaire donor’s palm.

7. Bake for 50–60 minutes or until the loaf resists collapse, unlike the East Wing.

8. Cool completely because rushing things is how infrastructure ends up as rubble.

Storage Suggestion

Store leftovers in a bunker. You know, just in case history repeats itself.

The official White House demolition plan: tear down women’s work, one gold-plated ballroom at a time.

Last weekend, federal agents descended on Chicago by helicopter, zip-tying children and storming apartment buildings in the name of “security.” This week, the National Guard arrived in the city with three hundred troops federalized against the governor’s will, masked and patrolling a place the president keeps calling a “war zone” (though most people just call it Friday). Meanwhile, in Portland, protesters in inflatable frog suits are learning that pepper spray pairs surprisingly well with polyester.

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We used to send troops overseas to “build democracy.” Now we deploy them to districts with Democratic mayors and $10 lattes. It’s cheaper on jet fuel, and you still get that satisfying war-zone aesthetic. At least this occupation comes with latte art.

Think of this recipe as comfort food for the curfewed. Serve it warm, eat it fast, and keep your windows closed.

Ingredients

• 1 family-sized bag of tortilla chips, broken (like your front door)

• 1 can black beans, drained and fully documented

• 1 cup shredded cheddar, packed loosely (like constitutional interpretation)

• 1 jalapeño, diced (for the flash)

• ½ red onion, diced (for the burn)

• 2 roma tomatoes, diced (for the aftermath)

• 1 avocado, smashed under pressure

• ¼ cup sour cream (for when things get too spicy for suburban sensibilities)

• 1 lime, juiced until transparent (unlike the federal review of “appropriate force”)

• Handful of fresh cilantro leaves, optional if the National Guard has confiscated your compost

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Directions

1. Wake at 3 a.m. to the whir of taxpayer money hard at work above your roof. Preheat your oven to 375°F; things are going to get hot.

2. In a fireproof dish, layer chips, beans, cheese, jalapeño, onion, and tomatoes in order while federal agents patrol your street in camouflage.

3. Bake 5–10 minutes, until the edges crisp, or enough time to reclassify a neighborhood as a “training ground.”

4. Drizzle on sour cream, because nothing stops state violence like something white and mild.

5. Add sliced avocado to complement the chemical notes outside your window.

6. Squeeze lime over the top and serve warm while there’s still someone left to share it.

7. Finish with cilantro leaves, but remove stems because nothing with roots survives in xenophobic police states.

Serving Suggestion
Gather on the floor and light candles with your neighbors. Eat with your hands, if they’re not zip-tied.

Another day, another constitutional crisis.

Once upon a time, America had a War Department. Then we renamed it the Department of Defense, because nothing says “we come in peace” like 800 military bases and a global budget that could fund universal healthcare until the next ice age. This drink salutes the proud tradition of men who “kill people and break things”—mostly for oil, sometimes for sport, always for freedom.

Recently, the Secretary of Defense gathered the nation’s top commanders to announce a new era for the military, one that looks suspiciously like the old one. No more “diversity,” no more “dudes in dresses,” no more “beardos.” Just the firm belief that America’s biggest threat is carbs. The Secretary of Defense warned the generals they’d gone soft. Though, frankly, you don’t need a six-pack to order a drone strike. And if dresses truly weaken the ranks, someone forgot to tell the women flying F-15s. But then again, some people can’t tell the difference between a dress code and a defense strategy.

Like the men it honors, this drink is simple, strong, and just a little bit bitter.

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Ingredients:

• 2 oz bourbon (preferably one marketed to “real men”)

• 1 sugar cube (or 1 tsp simple syrup, for a simple man who likes his morals watered down)

• 3 dashes Angostura bitters (for the bitterness of every general who clapped like their clearance depended on it, aged in oak)

• Splash of water (preferably drawn from the tears of subordinates)

• Orange peel (zest of toxic nostalgia)

• 1 Luxardo cherry (the only fruit allowed in the barracks)

Directions:

1. In an old fashioned glass, drop the sugar cube and drown it with bitters and water—just enough to make it uncomfortable in a Senate hearing.

2. Muddle until the sugar disappears, like accountability in the chain of command.

3. Add bourbon and stir clockwise, preferably, just to keep things moving backward.

4. Drop in ice and watch it chill faster than a room of generals told they could “laugh if they want to.”

5. Garnish with orange peel and a cherry because appearances still count for more than character.

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Serving Suggestion:

Serve in a heavy glass and clink it against another man’s, but don’t make eye contact. Wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about brotherhood. Pairs well with hypocrisy, nostalgia, and whatever’s on Fox at happy hour.

“No homo.” — The Pentagon, 2025.

Across America, librarians are catching hell for stocking books that say gay kids exist, that slavery was bad, or that women sometimes think. This drink honors them: spicy, subversive, and strong enough to get you through a PTA meeting where someone’s waving a highlighted printout of a book passage they’ve never actually read.

In Texas, To Kill a Mockingbird has even been “paused” for review — perhaps the most comfortable book for white people to read while reconsidering the humanity of their Black neighbors. Also in Texas, Lamar CISD recently yanked more than 700 titles over ‘gender fluidity,’ which basically makes librarians there frontline warriors armed with bleach-blonde highlights and personalized wine tumblers. And it’s not just Texas: Pentagon schools around the world pulled over 500 books too, because what really keeps generals up at night is a teenager discovering James Baldwin.

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Ingredients:

• 2 oz vodka (clear, like your conscience)

• 4 oz tomato juice (because censorship always leaves stains)

• 1 dash Tabasco sauce (for every book banned in your district this week; double it if you’re in Texas)

• Pinch of salt and black pepper (the most controversial mix since Loving v. Virginia)

• 1/4 tsp. horseradish (burns like a school board mom who just discovered Maus)

• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce (to add secret umami, like the underground book club in the teacher’s lounge)

• A squeeze of lemon (for the sting of defiance, freshly squeezed)

• Celery stalk garnish (double as a baton for fending off irate parents)

Optional: rim glass with crushed Doritos (because librarians know how to work with what’s in the vending machine)

Directions:

1. Pour vodka and tomato juice into a tall glass. Stir with a pencil swiped from the circulation desk.

2. Add Tabasco sauce until your eyes water. If you’re in Texas, go ahead and pour in the whole bottle.

3. Mix in the salt, pepper, horseradish, and Worcestershire; the kind of mixing certain school boards would ban if they could.

4. Add lemon and re-shelve Beloved under ‘American History, Required.’

5. Garnish with celery and toast the librarians cataloguing the bonfire before it begins.

Serving Suggestion:
Best served just before a school board meeting (though, ahem, technically you can’t drink on school property, so maybe in the Sonic parking lot across the street). Cat-eye glasses and a cardigan with hidden pockets optional, but strongly encouraged.

Nothing says ‘professional development’ like a Bloody Mary and a banned book list at the staff Halloween party.

The Supreme Court just released its summer cookbook collection and no surprise: it’s anti-immigrant, 18th-century chic, and made with 100% white flour.

In this fresh-baked ruling, birthright citizenship is off the table unless you meet the new (or old?) criteria: a trust fund, an American flag bikini, and preferably some colonial ancestors who came over before the ink dried on the Constitution.

It’s the latest release from the Federalist Society’s test kitchen, and it doesn’t disappoint—especially if your ancestors owned land and people. Its recipes pair best with inherited wealth, historical amnesia, and KFC eaten with a knife and fork on a private jet. They’ve even included a less-than-original recipe for citizenship with fewer ingredients, more exclusions, and zero flavor.

Of course, for those of us born in hospitals without valet service or plantation architecture, their signature dish might feel a bit inaccessible.

But I’ve got a remix for the rest of us.

Here’s my take, reimagined for the home cook who doesn’t own property, didn’t get into Yale, and still believes everyone deserves a seat at the damn table.

Below, you’ll find the essential ingredients for American citizenship in 2025. Just be sure to preheat your oven to the temperature of white panic. (Hint: Check the heat index in Oklahoma.)

Bon appétit. I mean, happy Freedom Fries!

Family-Style Citizenship (Serves: 1 Percent)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whiteness (unbleached, but definitely refined)

• 2 tablespoons ancestral land theft

• 1 folded American flag, used primarily for vibes

• A pinch of Protestant work ethic (optional, substitute bootstraps if unavailable)

• A dash of Ivy League legacy

Optional: A last name that sounds like it belongs to a founding father—skin tone permitting.

Instructions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine whiteness and land theft until fully absorbed. If mixture separates, add fear-based legislation.

2. Fold in Ivy League legacy and stir gently until all merit is fully obscured. Overmixing may cause visible privilege.

3. Sprinkle in Protestant work ethic, and bootstrap your way into a house you inherited.

4. Let rise for 250 years while excluding most people from due process.

5. Skim off empathy with a silver spoon. Save for holiday photo ops and nonprofit galas.

6. Cool in a gated community. Leave door open for Amazon, but not for asylum seekers.

7. Serve with a folded American flag and a firm handshake for the cameras.

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This would be hilarious if it weren’t real. But it is.

The Supreme Court gave the lower courts thirty days to respond like it’s a return policy, not the rollback of a constitutional right. Birthright citizenship has been a bedrock of the 14th Amendment for over 150 years. Undoing it isn’t just a paperwork change. It’s an open door to state-sanctioned exclusion, generational erasure, and full-on white nationalist policy.

If you're not terrified and furious, you're not paying attention.

And if you are—good. Stay hot, stay loud, and don’t let them bake this bullshit into law.

This dog has more rights than your neighbor even though he was born behind the shed while you were on vacation. Yes, he’s brown. But, the kind of brown that looks great in a campaign ad.

It starts simple. A text message from your sorority sister. A group chat with colleagues at work. A printed invitation from a mom in your parent group. (These are the places white people make friends.) 

“What can I bring?” you may respond. A bottle of wine? Dessert from a posh bakery? A scented candle? “Oh nothing, your gift is your presence,” your white friend replies. You pack a bottle of white wine because you know this is bullshit. 

You arrive on time, a little early even, and awkwardly place the bottle of wine on the granite countertop. Most of the other guests are also on time with bottles of wine and bougie desserts in reusable grocery bags.

It’s a bit awkward at first. You start with the normal boring white people conversation — work, kids, HBO’s Girls. Then, someone mentions the new coffee/craft beer bar that just opened down the street. “It’s really cool,” someone says. “But, like, impossible to get a table.”

Now’s your chance. Make everyone uncomfortable by stating the obvious. “Oh, I went there last weekend. Of course, the IPAs on tap were bomb. But, there was a shit ton of white people.”

Leave it there. Let those two words hang in the air. White people. Don’t worry, most of them will ignore what you said. But, you’ll have another chance. 

The conversation moves on. The host puts out a charcuterie board and refills glasses of wine. People start to migrate around the dining room table picking at the olives and soft cheese.

A white guy in a tucked in plaid shirt and cuffed khakis says, “Oh my god — is this Brie from Antonelli’s? I love that place.” 

“Me too!” says a white woman in a vintage A-line dress and dark-rimmed cat-eye glasses. “I always go after acupuncture to get my qi back in balance.”

Go ahead. Now’s your chance. “Yeah, I like that place,” you say. “But, I literally only ever see white people there.”

Awkward silence. Good job.

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The guests finally sit down around the table. The host brings out large takeout containers of summer rolls, pad thai, and miso soup. 

“Is this from Noodle House Inc.?” Asks another white man in a faded t-shirt with a Death Cab for Cutie logo. “I love Korean food! And it’s so cheap.”

The host passes out tiny porcelain plates from Anthropology and handmade coffee mugs for the soup. The guests abandon the charcuterie board and dig into the styrofoam containers. 

Give it a minute. Let them enjoy themselves. 

 “I always bring my own reusable glass containers to Noodle House Inc. Styrofoam is literally violence — violence against sea anemones.”

The host squirms a bit. Her eyes dart back and forth between the rice noodles and slippery white hands fumbling with chopsticks. 

“Oh my god, I totally agree,” she says, turning towards the kitchen to find the silver dining trays she brought back from her grandmother’s house.

You agree, too, actually. Styrofoam is being banned all over the US because it doesn’t degrade and ends up in the bellies of whales. And you fucking love whales. 

“I’d talk to the owners,” cat-eyes says as she slurps the miso soup. “I mean, plastic is bad for everyone. Even Koreans.”

“I don’t know if it’s really the restaurant's fault,” you say. “I think there are still supply chain issues after the pandemic. And the compostable stuff is really expensive for small businesses.”

“Then they should ban it!” The Death Cab for Cutie guy says. “Seriously, we should protest city council.”

This is the moment. The summer rolls are almost gone. 

“White people always want to ban shit,” you say. A few eyes roll. 

“So? What’s wrong with that?” pipes up the hippie-goddess-vegan-queen in the back. “Don’t you think we should ban racism?”

You gulp down the rest of your miso soup and take a long swig of your Trader Joe’s Pinot Grigio.

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“Definitely,” you say. “I just don’t think it will work. Like banning styrofoam — that puts the onus on small business owners, not the companies who have been manufacturing and marketing it for decades.”

You take another drink, swishing the pale liquid around the inside of the glass. “Banning racism won’t work either. White people barely know what racism is . . .”

More silence. Cat-eyes picks up her phone and scrolls. Death Cab for Cutie guy shoves forkfuls of pad thai into his mouth and stares hard out the window. The host picks up the bottle of wine you didn’t need to bring and chugs it at full speed. She shifts her weight back and forth between her pearl flats.

“Well, they’re banning critical race theory in schools,” hippie chick says, taking a few steps backwards.

“Exactly,” you say. “White people . . .”

Alright, it’s time to give your fragile white friends a break. It’s been a tough evening of acknowledging the existence of race and misidentifying Asian cultures. There’s not enough craft beer or bargain white wine in the house for this.

You excuse yourself and head for the bathroom. The entire dining room exhales. 

The bathroom smells like artificial gingerbread from the scented candle burning on the counter. The Live, Love, Laugh sign is hanging at a slight angle, so you push the corner until it’s perpendicular with the crown molding.

The party is almost over and the white guests are about to leave with a lingering uneasiness. They haven’t learned anything. They’ve barely had any fun. They are stuffed full of fermented soy beans, fish sauce, and rice paper.

“Let’s do Mexican at my place next week!” cries a white woman in jeggings and an infinity scarf. 

“What can I bring?” you ask. “A dip?”

White Dip & Fragile Chips

I first ate this inoffensive appetizer as a young white person at a very subdued party in the suburbs. For someone with virtually no taste or tolerance for flavor, it was delicious. Creamy, chunky, and highly addictive — bad luck for a lactose intolerant teenager. No matter the gathering, this salsa (made more palatable for sensitive gringos) is sure to please a crowd of your culturally-unaware relatives.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salsa

*You can make this yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You have no idea how to deseed a jalapeño. 

• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened

*Use Philadelphia cream cheese to be sure you are authentic to your white roots. Try vegan cream cheese for a more evolved whiteness.

Instructions:

1. Mix ingredients by hand. It’s the least you can do after your ancestors colonized most of the known world. 

2. Chill mixture in refrigerator to thicken. Keep covered to prevent any leakage of white privilege. 

3. Garnish with green onions or cilantro — only if fresh from your garden, farmer’s market, or local food co-op. And tell your guests about it. Repeatedly. 

4. Serve with tortilla chips or sliced vegetables. 

*Be sure to find the most authentic brand of tortilla chips possible. Look for an old Mexican lady on the bag with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. They should still, of course, be made with organic, ancestral, Non-GMO corn, but also be available at any tiendita south of the border. Stay the fuck away from Tostitos — your party will never recover.

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