Portside

If you're looking for something special for the holiday table, Meg Favreau has some suggestions from her collection of 1970s and 1980s locally printed cookbooks. These books, she says, are "a window into what communities actually eat – not the idealized version of the area’s cuisine you see in a “real” regional cookbook." Recipes for eggless applesauce squares, the "ribsticker," and gumdrop bread can be found on the article's original website.

'So I’m not going to write a review about 'Suffragette', because I’m no longer going to legitimize films that refuse to acknowledge the existence of people of color. And neither should you'.

In the 1980s and 90s, science rediscovered the existence of umami and in 2002 identified its taste receptor. And, as they say, the rest was history. Not only has umami been universally recognized in sensory science, it’s become the darling of professionals looking to enhance the taste of savory foods. Umami can be leveraged, not just for tastier foods, but for healthier ones.

The series is a nice reminder that although comic books are derided as a kids’ medium, their supernatural setups can provide us with clarifying thought experiments that allow us to approach our present dilemmas with fresh perspectives.

At the turn of the 20th Century Czech immigrants flocked to the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen on the city's near west side attracted there by the offer of jobs. Mississippi-based poet Philip C. Kolin depicts their hopes and realities in a newly-published chapbook.

The security services set out to ensnare Lessing. But they weren't sure where she lived, why she went to Communist party meetings or even whether her nickname was Tigger or Trigger. M15 spied on Doris Lessing for 20 years, declassified documents reveal. Lara Feigel interrogates the secret archives.

Is contemporary altruism the new activism? Or is it what writer Teju Cole once called an iteration of a "White Savior Industrial Complex"? Ashley Karlin takes up these complicated questions in this review of Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, by scientist-turned-Buddhist philosopher Matthieu Ricard. The answers, she suggests, may have as much to do with questions of power as with the desire to do good.

Prior to the Boston Globe’s investigation, the sexual abuse of minors by priests was one of the Catholic Church’s worst-kept secrets. Spotlight's telling of the Church’s sex abuses reminds viewers how good, honest journalism has the power to transform a community.

Food scientists are trying to figure out if very faint scents can trick your brain into tasting something that isn’t there.

Plenty of shows can self-reflexively comment on Hollywood’s systemic diversity and race problems, but Master Of None does so within an episode that simultaneously practices exactly what it’s preaching, which gives the show legitimacy.