☰ menu   


Cheese for the Culture: On Cooking Through Grief


Cheese educator Agela Abdullah reflects on using gluten to cook through grief.

Reflections on a Year: Celebrating the Joys


I’m sitting in the living room of my new apartment, surrounded by the compartmentalization of my life in box form. My kitties are playing tag and are screaming what I imagine translates to “PARKOUR!” I’m listening to the debut album by the Bird and the Bee, and it is during this scene of joy and […]

Entertaining Hobbit Style


While I currently call Chicago home, I spent formative adult years living in Vermont. I miss it. I miss the greenness. I miss the smell of the woods after the rain. I miss the impossibly fluffy snow on trees. I miss all the bucolic beauty, but most of all, I miss my brother. He’s the […]

The Collective Culture of Grief


I’m struggling to write this column. Just a week ago there was a mass shooting in Buffalo, and ten people were murdered because they dared to shop at a grocery store while Black. By the time this piece hits your mailbox the news cycle will have moved on, and many of you will have as […]

In Queso You Missed It: July 3, 2022


Like many of us, Cheese for the Culture columnist Agela Abdullah will be heading to Portland, Oregon, for the ACS Conference next month. “While I’m excited about the conference I have to admit that I’m nervous about being in Portland. Oregon has a long history of racial prejudices that start with the founding of the state, and continue today […]

Cheese for the Culture: We’re Still Here


For my first draft of this column, I started off writing something that I thought would get approved by the editor. I was assertive but was careful to not fall into the “angry Black woman” trope by being too assertive. I told a charming anecdotal story about an incident that happened when I was five. […]

4