Everyday I ... Back to School!

September means a lot of things - Virgos, Labor Day, an end to the dreary oppression of summer. But the biggest to-do of all is Back To School. It's a time for new everything, and nothing and no-one is immune. There are back to school sales on everything from candy bars to cars. Moreso even than new years, it's a time of new beginning. Wherever one is in life, September can find you sporting shiny new plimsolls, making new friends, learning new things, and generally feeling renewed.

With that fistful of optimism, I open up the September issue of Everyday. I'm fresh-faced, caffeinated, and rarin' to go.  Rarin' to flip through pages and pages and pages of ads. And oh look! A photo spread of all 45 30-minute meals. There is a lot of green - zucchini soup, green gazpacho, cheesy zucchini, grilled zucchini... and words of advice, "even when you cook fast, try to eat slow." Ly. Eat slowly. Grr. Oh, and also check out the new line of kids' bedroom furniture, we now have daybeds.

As a Hot Trend, dyed agate is about 40 years off the mark. I remember having agate coasters when I was growing up. Those, along with the giant abalone shell used as an ashtray, gave our kitchen table a decided nature-hippie vibe. More recently, a girlfriend once gifted me a magenta-toned slice of agate that she found in a gift shop in Forks, WA. That, and a black Bic Twi-lighter. I treasure them both. But wait! These aren't actually dyed agate coasters, the photo is a close-up -- they are actually bougie candy, hand-made and rimmed with edible gold. I should have read the fine print. Mea culpa. Next page - fanny packs are back! And furniture the color of egg yolks! Bright yellow egg yolks from commercially farmed chickens, tho. Not the rich orangey yellow an egg yolk should be.

On to the recipes! First up is 16 Fast and Fresh Ideas. Pork chops, granola, stirring things into yogurt (just like all those ice cream recipes from last month). Gosh! Did you know that you can make your own croutons from simple ingredients that you have at home like bread and butter?! The blueberry and green tea punch looks good, but the zucchini soup is the color of glowsticks and, just, no.

Snacks For Dinner! Another way of saying quick meals! But seriously, there is always a time and place for snacks, dinner time and dinner table included. The basic lesson here is 1. Raid a grocery store salad bar 2. Pile it all on a fancy plate.

6-Ingredient Suppers! Without even looking, I know this is going to call for a lot of prefab store-bought stuff. And I'm right. It's not too bad tho - sesame dressing, puff pastry,  cheesecake - these are things that are honestly often better bought than made. Puff pastry especially, have you ever tried to make that stuff? However, top a storebought cheesecake with storebought lemon curd is not a recipe that one needs to be told. Is it? No, it isn't.

Back to eggs - a handy primer on decoding all the stuff on egg cartons, with a note that basically says, "if you are not buying free-range, cruelty-free, organic, vegetarian-fed eggs, you are a jerk." And I agree wholeheartedly.

Here we go - 30-Minute Meals starts off with the proclamation that if you love shrimp and grits, you will also love this melange of shrimp and creamed corn. I wonder what the over/under is on that.
Stray observations:

• Tip - make extra salad dressing and use it as a veggie dip. Duh
• The gazpacho is basically a tomatillo and cilantro sno-cone
• Fried fish tacos (again!) look like they would be better made with fish sticks
• Nachos with the chips on the side are not nachos. They are chips and dip

I was just starting to worry about where all the backing to schooling stuff was, and now I know. Tucked in the back is a veritable A-Z on how to eat the All-Day Way. Again with the snacks. And a needless reminder that breakfast st 4 pm is a thing we should have. We know this. We have always known this. We have always lived in this house. Also a reminder that food tastes best if it is also instagramable. So many non-food letters here - Millennial pink plates for everybody, Neon (pithy saying signage in cafes makes them trendier),  Presentation (remember to instagram those neon signs and millennial pink plates), Succulents because cactus, and Xoxo, again because instagram.

And now an ad for bleach.

Even further back is a page on all the newfangled gadgets that go into packing the perfect school lunch. $168 later, you will be dining in style. And no, I can't unsee the phrase "dining al desk-o." God damn it.

The back pages are filled with a mishmash of things - turmeric, hot dog spirals, how best to curl your carrots. That Rachael, always burying the lede.