Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
DIRECTIONS:
Place a chicken breast on a cutting board. With your hand flat on top of it, carefully slice the chicken in half horizontally. Trim excess fat as needed.
In a large shallow baking dish, combine chicken, pickle juice and ½ cup milk; marinate for at least 30 minutes. Drain well.
Heat peanut oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.
In another large shallow baking dish, whisk together remaining 1 cup milk and egg. Stir in chicken to coat and drain excess milk mixture.
In a gallon size Ziploc bag or large bowl, combine chicken, flour and confectioners’ sugar; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Working in batches, add chicken to the skillet and cook until evenly golden and crispy, about 4-5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.
Serve chicken immediately on burger buns with green leaf lettuce, tomato and pickles.
Also if y’all are interested, I have the copycat recipes for the Frosted Lemonade and the Chicken Nuggets
Remember when Jeff Bezos, who is worth 181 billion USD donated 690k to stopping Australian fires? Yeah, me too.
McKenzie Scott is literally proof that these fuckers can donate HUGE sums of money to EVERYTHING and still live a comfortable life…. But nooO someone HAS to justify the pitifully small donations the richest men on earth make every year for their tax write-off
Some also important context (this is June 2021, after her second round of grants was announced), as well:
[image description: tweet from Dan Price, the Seattle business owner who doesn’t take a massive salary and pays everybody at his company really well: “Two years ago, she had $36 billion. Since then, she has donated $8 billion - more than anyone in the world. She is now worth $60 billion. I think people struggle to understand just how fast wealth accumulates for the super-rich. She literally can’t give it away fast enough.”.]
She’s trying to singlehandedly redistribute the wealth she took back from Jeff Bezos and is failing at it because the economy is built so that wealth travels from the bottom, accumulates at the top, and then stays there. She literally cannot give her money away fast enough.
Think about this. This is our current capitalist economy at work. It is working as intended and designed by those who benefit from it.
Her story is incredibly revealing of how and where the system is failing.
MacKenzie Scott has done something with her life I wish I could do.
I love this, though, because my favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. I love Batman too, but Superman isn’t a dude who decided to live his life in pursuit of a vendetta against society when he was eight and then just did nothing for the next two decades but get super jacked, become the world’s greatest detective, and memorize every strategy used by every winner in every field of competition in history. Superman is a very good-hearted person who knows how to bale hay, use AP Stylebook, and break meteors into manageable bite-sized pieces by hitting them real hard. And I’m not saying Superman isn’t smart. He’s a bright guy, he’s just not like, one of the celebrated geniuses of the DC Universe. The best thing about Superman is he is basically a normal dude who happens to be orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else. Normal dudes have brain farts. Normal dudes are presented with a life-or-death situation they have less than four seconds to resolve and make a decision that is not optimal. Normal dudes aren’t typically asked to rescue a child from a 10,000 ton machine bearing down on him at 85mph, but if they were, they would probably sometimes panic a little and do dumb shit like ruin a train when they could have just whisked the child to safety.
I think sometimes Superman makes the wrong decision, not necessarily to the result of extreme catastrophe, but something like this, where everyone is standing around clapping and cheering and the kid’s parents are weeping in gratitude and they want to pose for a picture for the 6 o’ clock news with Superman and the conductor, and in the crowd someone is like “Why didn’t he fly the kid out of the way?” and rather than rolling with the fact that the emperor is naked his friend just says “Shut up, Drew, it’s Superman.”
And then, because I also love Batman for very different reasons, I imagine that later on the same day Bruce Wayne gets a phone call and Clark Kent is like “Hey, Wayne, I uh, need a favor.”
“Do you now.”
“Yeah, I, uh, kind of owe the Union Pacific Railroad $60,000.”
“Oh, and why’s that?”
“Come on, don’t do this to me. It was all over the news.”
“I’m prepared to write you a no-strings-attached check for the full amount on the condition that you explain your entire thought process from beginning to end.”
Upsizing clothes! There are a million upcycling tutorials for clothes that are too big, but so few on how to make too small clothes you still love bigger!
Thank you for your suggestion! We all go through weight fluctuations in life, so it stands to reason our clothes should be able to fluctuate with us.
Resizing your clothes used to be a very common practice before the advent of fast fashion. Fast fashion sizing is extremely flawed, especially when it comes to plus size fashion, and we’re stuck with a lot of vanity sizing, so it’s a good skill to have regardless of whether you’re looking to mend something old or buy something new.
How to upsize clothes:
Introduction:
There are many different ways to make a garment larger. The following list is not exhaustive, just a few ideas to get you started.
Grading patterns:
If you’re making your own clothes, it’s always useful to know how to modify a sewing pattern. The easiest way to adjust a pre-existing pattern to your size is slash and spread grading. First, you need to define which spots on the pattern need extra space. You then cut your pattern in that spot, and slide the resulting pattern pieces away from each other until you’ve got the size you need. Use paper to fill in the gaps. To ensure the resulting pattern makes for well-fitting clothes, make a mock-up and add, move, or remove darts where necessary to adapt it to your body type.
The image below shows potential slashing lines on pattern blocks for an AFAB body. Unfortunately this was the only diagram I could find, but know that other types of patterns use similar line placements. Each line is a spot that allows you to add extra space. To read more about this process, check out the corresponding article by Threads Magazine.
To make your clothes easier to let out in the future, make sure to provide ampleseam allowancewhen cutting out your pattern pieces. This surplus fabric has several different uses, including giving you some wiggle room for when you need to size up your garment.
Now, let’s take a look at pre-made garments.
Lengthening clothes:
A garment that’s too short on you is easy to modify. Just add more material!
If it’s a skirt or a dress, add ruffles to the bottom. Ruffles are easy to make by hand or with a sewing machine. You could also add lace, or wear the item with an underskirt.
As for shirts, sewing an extra layer to the bottom edge is the easiest way to go, too. You could even combine two shirts into one to get an extra long shirt.
Another option is to cut your item in two and insert extra fabric between your separated garment parts.
Remember how we made sure to have ample seam allowance earlier? When a garment has surplus fabric in the seams and you only need a little extra space, you can undo the seams of your garment and sew them back togetheragain, this time with asmaller seam allowance than before. The Spruce Crafts has a pretty good tutorial on how to let out seams. You won’t be able to make major size changes using this technique, but if you only need a few centimetres, this is a good way to go.
A lot of garments also have darts. Darts are fabric folds that are sewn down in strategic places to help the fabric follow the body’s curves. If a dart doesn’t fit you the way you want it to, then unpick the dart and try on the garment. Either leave the dart open, or pin the dart in place however you want it, then take off the garment again and sew the dart back together.
Be careful not to rip the fabric when using a seam ripper. Also note that removing entire darts may change the garment’s fit.
You can also add custom darts to achieve a better fit, but that’s a topic for another time.
If we need to add more room than seam allowance or darts can provide us with, we need to add extra material. Remember those slashing lines we looked at earlier? If you’re working with a pre-existing garment rather than a pattern, those are the perfect places to chop up your clothes and add in extra fabric.
Check your sewing stash for fabric that’s similar in weight and material to your original garment, or go thrift shopping for an item you could use to upsize your garment. Long skirts and maxi dresses are a great source of fabric for alterations like these!
Lace inserts are also a fun choice to add some room, and if you’re working with a knit item, you could even knit or crochet your own custom insert.
Define the area where you want to add extra fabric on your item, and measure how much you need. Draw a straight line on your garment with chalk/soap. Make sure the line doesn’t cross any important structural or functional parts of your garment like darts or button holes: refer to the slashing diagram we saw earlier if you’re not sure what spot to pick. Cut the line open (or unpick the seam if it’s situated on a seam), and add in your extra fabric. Finish off your new seams so they don’t unravel later on, and you’re done!
You can add straight strips of fabric for extra width or length, or you could use flared panels or even godetsto make your item flair out.
Want to see this technique in action? Check out this video by Break n Remake:
Some ideas:
This Pinterest user cut a straight line down the front of a t-shirt and inserted a lace panel to add extra width in the front of the garment.
This person added a panel to the sides of a pair of jeans to give them more space in the hip area. You could easily use a long straight panel or a panel that flares at the bottom to resize the entire garment instead of just the hips, or use a wide piece of elastic for extra stretch.
You don’t need to resize the entire garment if you don’t want to. For example, One Brown Mom turned this ankle-length skirt with a too small waistband into a well-fitting knee-length skirt by taking advantage of the skirt’s flared shape.
Throughout our lives, our weight will fluctuate and our bodies will change. There’s no shame in this: it’s just a fact of life. Therefore, knowing how to upsize an item that is too small for you is a useful skill to learn.
this is super useful! I’ve got a couple of examples to add, too:
This (thrifted) skirt was about eight inches longer, too small, and had the pleats tacked down flat over the hips, but I loved the fabric. So I picked out the pleats, shortened it (from the top end so I wouldn’t have to re-hem!) re-pleated it to fit my waist, and made a new waistband from the extra fabric. Instead of putting a zipper back in, I deliberately made it bigger in the waist than I needed and put in two sets of hooks and eyes, which I can easily move if I need to make it bigger or smaller.
Both of these fit well in the bodice, but I’m 5’8” and they were just too short for comfort. The first dress had a faced hem, so I picked out the facing and used that piece between the gray and purple strips I added, then cut a 3” strip from the hem and inserted my new section above it. The green dress just had a narrow rolled hem, so I left it alone and made my new insert out of other fabrics. Now they’re both comfortably below the knee!
Also, I took apart a worn-to-death favorite dress, traced the pieces, and have now made myself a dozen or so copies in different fabrics — some thrifted curtains and bedsheets, some actual yardage, but under $6/yd for almost all of it. I only need 3 yards to make one, and I can get away with 2.5 if I don’t make the skirt quite as full.
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