Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Chicken so good I texted my dad

A nostalgic weeknight chicken, reengineered — creamy beans, winter greens and crumbs toasted just shy of too dark

Published February 24, 2026 10:30AM (EST)

A version of this essay first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why

Perhaps I’m revealing my millennial tendencies here, but one of my preferred weekend formats — and I have several — goes like this: iced coffee in hand (the ice miraculously slow to melt, the straw sturdy enough to survive the afternoon), weather warm enough to ditch the bulky coat but cool enough that neither I nor my to-go cup are sweating, and a slow, looping pilgrimage from thrift store to bookstore to stationery shop and back to thrift store again.

Several weeks ago, on an unseasonably warm winter afternoon in Chicago, I found myself in the second — or possibly third — thrift shop of the day. As a self-appointed field scout of secondhand retail, I’ve come to recognize its taxonomies: the former boutiques that quietly became “vintage” by simply retagging unsold merchandise; the curated ones with respectable hat racks and a suspicious abundance of beaded evening bags from a time when evening bags felt mandatory; the Gen Z–run operations where slightly battered designer handbags are displayed behind thick plastic cases with the reverence of relics; and then there’s the final category — fluorescent-lit, faintly chaotic, clothing organized by color rather than size, one mannequin dressed for the beach and another for church in 1987, a plastic limb possibly missing.

This was that last kind.

Which is often where the good stuff lives.

I was thumbing through an overstuffed bookshelf when I saw it — wedged between “The Internet for........

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