Friendship ended with protein shaker, friendship begun with milk foamer

I have a tip: All the time I’ve been lifting, I’ve used a protein shaker (like so) to mix my protein powder. These honestly don’t do a perfect job and require a lot of shaking. But without going to the level of a whole motor-powered blender, they get the job done well and easily enough. When I didn’t have a shaker, I’ve just used a spoon. This barely works at all, but we have to get through the day somehow.

But recently I realized: We also have this cheapy handheld battery-powered milk foamer taking up space in the kitchen drawers that Seamus got for free as a holiday gift from some company he worked for. This thing cannot have a monetary value of more than $5. On a whim, I used it to try mixing my protein, and it WORKS. It works VERY WELL. I get a nice, perfectly smooth protein shake. And I don’t have to handwash a cup, or make sure a spout is closed before I shake it at the risk of milk and protein powder going all over the place (has happened to me way more than once, I regret to admit)!!

If you try this, make sure you have some room in the cup, because the vortex it creates can get up there. But these milk foamers (the one I have, at least) does not actually froth the milk if you keep the mixing end below the surface. You do kind of want to hold the mixing end alllmost until it contacts the air to get all those little chunks that want to sit stubbornly on the top. This would probably work even better for mixing non-milk-based shakes (e.g. orange juice and vanilla protein, an all-time combo).

The foamer/mixer I have doesn’t even have a brand name on it, but it’s basically this. If you try this, please contact me and tell me how it goes.[^1]

Which protein do I like?? I'm glad you asked:

The Last Article on Protein Powder You Will Hopefully Ever Have to Read, Amen

Which protein powders and why, plus how, when, how much, and as always, what not to worry about. Plus a few recipes.

She's A BeastCasey Johnston

New swag alert: there’s a new shirt in the She’s A Beast store, and she’s not only Rosie the Riveter-coded, but she’s a collab between myself, @onlineceramics, and Sami Reiss of the Snake newsletter. It’s a limited edition for now, so get one while you can. Paid subscribers, don’t forget your discount code!

Tools and practices for writing a book these days

A bunch of stuff that helped me do a big project with no natural ability to focus or achieve on a consistent basis, while beset on all side by attention thieves.

She's A BeastCasey Johnston

Eat

~Liftcord Pick of the Week:

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I like this framing: thinking of exercise as “movements you’d like to be able to keep doing forever”, like “putting items on a high shelf” = put shoulder presses in your workout. But wait a minute… I’m looking at this list… Deadlift?… Squat?… Shoulder press?… Push up?… Rows???… By god, that’s LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell’s music!

I’m gonna note that, while lots of people like to start working out January 1, or right before summer, right now is the best time to start going to the gym. It’ll be virtually empty between now and New Year’s Day. If you find it intimidating, go!

Obsessed with this woman methodically leaving everyone else in the dust in this push-up contest with her perfect pushups.

“So many indignities are involved in aging, and yet so many graces, too. The perfectionism that had run me ragged and has kept me scared and wired my whole life has abated. The idea of perfectionism at 60 is comical when, like me, you’ve worn non-matching black flats out on stage.” Bird By Bird GOAT Anne Lamott on aging.

It takes only a slight misreading of this headline to get to “people who are strong are smarter than everyone else”? I judge this a fair misreading, though, since such people were alleged to be dumb for so long.

Simple protein recipes from friend of the blog Julia Turshen.

Drink

I hate the at-home lab testing genre of wellness companies. This is not real! They are all scams of the highest order. I hate that real healthcare is so expensive and no one on either side can affording an actual caring relationship with their doctors. As bad as that is, it’s worse to exploit that and waste people’s money with bullshit.

Why antidepressants take so long to work.

Rest

Everything wrong with Elon Musk saying the Cybertruck is “what Bladerunner [sic] would have driven.” There’s truly nothing more dystopian than a billionaire pitching a product he made as fitting for a dystopian science fiction story (in this case, Blade Runner), and all his little fans going “hell yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Learning to love the creepy crawly things. No really, please do it; apparently spiders are in decline? A long time ago, I wrote for The Hairpin about learning to love the house centipedes in my apartment.

I used to put spiders I found in the house outside, and then I learned that apparently this condemns them to death? So I’m proud to say that now, if I see a spider in the house, no I didn’t, and I just keep going about my business. I have no more right to this place than the little guy.

Nature continues to reclaim the earth: First the orcas, now the javelinas.

Social media should be a publicly managed resource. When it comes down to it, the fundamental usefulness of any social media is basically just “trumped up phonebook.”

A cultural history of nofap. (If you don’t know what that means: Don’t click on it.)

Can you see the avocado?

If you’ve been told to “read a book” often the last few weeks—listen, I get it. I too have occasionally suffered for not having read a book. Fortunately, Verso Books has made six of its books on Palestine completely free to download.

True to this past weekend’s blog, I watched so much electronic restoration YouTube this week. I got a lot of work done.

That’s all for this week! I love you for reading, thank you, let’s go—

[F1] Just because someone already asked: This isn't a referral link, I don't get any money for this. Even if I were set up for that, I'm just not that hard up to collect money on a $5 item. Enjoy the un-gatekeep, no strings!