In April,
Outside editors caught up on Oscar-nominated documentaries, found comfort in the soothing voice of an NPR host, and prepped for our summer getaways by reading about sunnier places and watching surprisingly heartwarming Vrbo ads. Here’s everything we loved this month.
What We Read
This month, I read
Madness, Rack, and Honey, a collection of lectures by poet Mary Ruefle, which I bought after reading her incredible essay “Dear Friends” in the
Sewanee Review. For 15 years, starting in 1994, Ruefle gave intermittent lectures, loosely about poetry, to groups of graduate students, which were later collected here. Each has its own subject secrets, for instance, or fear but they’re all really about how to
February always feels like a long month, pandemic or not. Many of us experienced severe winter weather, only for it to disappear as fast as it came.
Outside editors huddled around fires, went on hikes, and made better coffee to get through it all. This is the gear we used to do it.
Burch Barrel Fire Pit ($895)
(
Photo: Courtesy Burch Barrel)
I replaced our backyard grass with Astroturf a couple of years ago. That’s been an amazing upgrade for this owner of three large, extremely active dogs. While the synthetic fibers are impervious to weather, claws, and even copious quantities of poop, the material does have one major Achilles’ heel: heat. That’s what originally attracted me to this hanging fire pit. The secure tripod suspends the burn barrel two feet off the ground, protecting any surface below from both sparks and radiated heat. But it wasn’t until I tried one in person that I realized it was also a really neat grill. This thing has quickly become a centerpiece fo
To the relief of cooped-up powder hounds everywhere, skiing has proved to be relatively safe during the pandemic, thanks to the abundance of fresh air and natural social distancing on the hill. But one aspect of a day at the resort still poses significant COVID risk: the ski lodge. To avoid crowded indoor spaces, many
Outside editors have been
chicken fingers for meals prepared at home.
But which brown-bag lunches are best for getting you through a day at the resort? We rounded up the
Outside staff’s favorite to-go meals, below, then asked Kristen Gravani, the director of sports nutrition for Stanford University athletes, to weigh in on our choices. Gravani, a former college ski racer, says there are three components of a good to-go meal: