Hi!

Chef Lizzie — Downtime’s senior pastry chef — reporting for newsletter duty this week, and it is an honor and a privilege to welcome our Downtime community to June, and to Pride month! 🌈 Happy pride to each of my queer and trans baddies out there, I love you.

Our Thursday loaf this week is so spectacular: kimchi, toasted sesame, and cheddar. Our country loaves get folded with vegan kimchi that Sam makes in-house, cheddar, and toasted sesame seeds: savory, fermented, and delicious. It’s gonna be a good one.

Next, I’d like to introduce you to our June pastry special: a hazelnut chocolate tart. The base is a toasted whole rye shortcrust, filled with a hazelnut praline, and a baked chocolate custard. It gets topped with creme fraiche whipped cream and candied hazlenuts. It is rich, decadent, out-of-this-world good, and I can’t wait to share it with you. It’ll be out at 10am, all month long.

The best part: One dollar of every sale from the chocolate hazelnut tart will go to the Trans Youth Resilience Fund, a financial assistance program in Philly that puts money directly into the hands of trans and nonbinary youth who need it the most.

Like many queer people, I go into this pride with a heavy heart. It feels hard to celebrate and create joy when our trans brothers and sisters are being targeted for simply existing in the face of deep-rooted gender binaries and transphobia. It’s easy to feel powerless and overwhelmed. I know I do, and often. But to me, that’s why it’s even more important to show up, to be loud, and, most importantly, stay visible. Pride, at its heart, is a protest. They want to erase queer and trans people. What is more powerful in the face of that erasure than to say, “I’m here. I exist”? You cannot legislate someone out of existence.

If you have queer and trans people in your lives this month: love on them extra hard. Celebrate the fact that they’re here. We are not going anywhere, no matter how hard they try. 🏳️‍⚧️

That’s all for now!

Xo,

Chef Lizzie

Lizzie’s What’s Up Corner

I am talking incessantly to anyone who will listen about the new MUNA album, Dancing on the Wall. I’m obsessively watching Hacks — Jean Smart is a gift to us all and we should be grateful to share the same planet as her. And I’ve been reading and rereading Leslie Jamison’s essay collection The Empathy Exams. What’s up with you?