Be the Stupid Starbucks Drink You Want to See in the World

Last year, I started obsessively watching TikToks about latte art in an attempt to improve my at-home cortados. While I did get pretty good at this, a side effect of this media diet was a trip into the world of DIY ripoffs of Starbucks drinks. For every sugar-loaded, souped-up Starbucks drink with a dumb name, there’s someone out there hacking the process at home.

This is what got me into the warm-weather habit of DIY shaken espressos. At Starbucks, the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso is a frothy cup full of coffee, sweetened with brown sugar–flavored syrup and a hint of cinnamon. If you have a cocktail shaker and an espresso machine at home (or even just some Cometeer capsules, which are pretty good-quality frozen espresso shots), you too can do this.

Just add an espresso shot, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a spoonful of brown sugar (I sometimes use coconut sugar) to the cocktail shaker with some ice. Shake vigorously for about 30 seconds, pour over more ice, and top with oat milk. —Anna

Mango for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert

Though Jackfruit is the official national fruit of Bangladesh, mango is the uncontested ne plus ultra of summer produce in just about every household. Mangoes are so beloved by Bengalis that Rabindranath Tagore and Sukumar Roy lionized the fleshy drupes in their poems. As for me, 24 hours spent flying across three continents in two planes was grueling, yes, but being home during peak mango season made the journey well worth the jetlag. 

I spent the first four days in Chittagong eating mangoes in all sorts of ways. Sweet overripe hunks mushed into rice with some condensed milk; unripe mangoes smashed into bhorta with mustard oil and cooked into a brothy white fish dish; and of course, mango peeled by my very own teeth, uncut, sent straight to the face.

But it’s aam shotto, or mango fruit leather, that occupies the majority share of my mango consumption. I have involuntarily, and perhaps injudiciously, downed an alarming amount —  some sweet, some spicy, and all patiently sun dried, made and delivered to me by many aunties as a token of homecoming. It’s unlikely I’m stopping anytime soon. —Anikah 

Buy All the Tofu You Need, Sweeties

After dropping my parents at the airport to fly back home to Australia a few weeks ago, my husband and I channeled our depression into a spontaneous trip to our local Chinatown. Salt Lake City’s showing is proportionally mighty; aisles of fresh produce, Japanese chocolate bars, and giant canisters of Sichuan peppercorns fill a space the size of a football field.

My personal kryptonite is the tofu aisle; it’s no secret we’re all bean curd fanatics here at Best Food Blog. That’s because tofu isn’t just one thing — it’s a whole universe of textures, shapes, and surprising forms that’s been evolving for thousands of years. Tofu was supposedly discovered accidentally during China’s Han Dynasty, when a cook added nigari (a natural coagulant from seawater) to soy milk, creating the first batch of bean curd. Tofu’s been on the come-up ever since.

Still a little teary-eyed from my family bye-bye, I went hard, filling my basket with yuba sheets sliced into long, noodle-like strands, chewy soy “chicken” slices for stir fries, and smoked tofu for marinating in a sesame-soy-sugar dressing. The best part? My husband, who was carrying our hefty haul, didn’t have the heart to tell me to put any of it back — because I was just so sad. Welp. —Ali

What We’re Consuming Right Now

• On L.A. Taco, Kemal Cilengir has a photo essay about last week’s protests in Los Angeles. (Subscribe to L.A. Taco to support their ongoing coverage of the ICE raids). 
• These street vendors used their aguas frescas to fight tear gas at anti-ICE protests, reports Stephanie Breijo for The Los Angeles Times.   
• Why are news outlets so obsessed with asking New York mayoral candidates about their bagel orders?
• Can we take a quick poll? Is this an actual thing?