These are trying times for everyone. Especially true for… gah, just about everyone who isn’t rich, at this point. The hospitality industry has been flat-out decimated. Try as these businesses might to stay afloat, without the communal aspect intact, things are freaking rough. While many of our favorite independent bars and restaurants remain open for pickup or delivery, they’re struggling to make up the revenue they’d normally get with customers filing in.

Local breweries and taprooms are no exception. According to the Brewer’s Association, breweries are doing so poorly that a recent poll of 455 breweries in 49 states found that 46% of those polled said they’d be forced to close their doors for good within the next three months unless the shutdown ends. This is why it’s extremely important to support your local breweries to whatever degree you can afford. Stop in, grab a six-pack (or three), buy some swag and gift cards for future use. Literally anything helps.

Many of our favorite bartenders are struggling as well, but that hasn’t stopped them from supporting their local breweries. We gave them a chance to shout out their friends, favorite brewers, and neighborhood spots.

Santa Monica Brew Works

Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles

Santa Monica Brew Works is a favorite of mine. I believe you can immediately taste the difference in quality when something is local and crafty, versus a large-scale mass-produced beer claiming they are still craft. Santa Monica Brew Works is popular out here and quickly gaining notoriety but still small enough that they focus on quality of product. All their different beers are amazing. I don’t think there is one I don’t like. I support them because when locals are out here, they want to try something that represents them and where they are from. It’s a pride thing. I think when people taste this beer and discover how easy it is to drink, they truly garner a great appreciation for it. People are overwhelmed with the many types of beers out there now so even though they may not have tasted it, it still draws a certain comfort in knowing the beer is from where they are from.

Grimm Ales

Jordan David Smith, spirits director and head bartender at HALL in New York City

I’ve been a big fan of Grimm (Brooklyn, NY) since I first moved to New York, what feels like a lifetime ago (it’s been eight years – New York will do that to you). It’s a husband and wife team who started as homebrewers, then brewed nomadically, and were able to open a brewery and taproom in the eastern end of Williamsburg, and they’re some of the nicest and most talented yet down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet. They brew everything from adjunct-laden hyper-rich imperial stouts that I drink year-round like the crotchety old man I am to ethereally delicate softly floral sours. They also often host local artists in their taproom and frequently collaborate with other businesses and causes in the greater community.

Nightshift Brewery

James Arensault, director of food & beverage at Harbor View Hotel on Martha’s Vineyard

Nightshift Brewery, known for doing events and promotions for charities and causes (specifically for women). I’m also supporting Trillium brewery, one of the fastest-growing breweries in the New England area. Another pick is Notch Brewery, not a great reason just a fan of the staff and their sessions. Devils Purse, summer selection is awesome (it’s a kolsch). I guess I’m supporting a few during these strange times.

Tola Brewery

Everson Rawlings, mixologist at Scrub Island Resort Spa and Marina in the British Virgin Islands

Our local brewery Tola Brewery has recently opened, and we have not had the opportunity to do a proper sampling. However, this will be one of my first stops after our 24-hour lockdown is lifted. We always try to support local brands as their products are fresh, accessible and we can form face to face relationships with the brand owners/managers.

Legion Brewing

Scott Daniel, bartender at The Ballantyne in Charlotte, North Carolina

We always look to feature local beer on the majority of our taps in our Gallery, Ryal and Outdoor Pool bars, and appreciate the prominence of Charlotte’s brewing culture. Our Gallery Beer Dinner series has been a big hit with our patrons, as our chefs have collaborated with the likes of Legion Brewing, Wicked Weed and Olde Mecklenburg Brewery to produce wonderful pairing experiences.

Remedy Brewing

Zac Johnson, general manager with JJ’s Wine, Spirits, and Cigars in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

I try to support them all because Sioux falls is a tight-knit community and we all know each other. We do have some really good relationships with Remedy and WoodGrain, having done several barrel-aged collaborations with them, but we try to keep at least one beer from everyone in town on tap at all times.

Service Brewing

Brandon Carter, Chef at FARM in Bluffton, South Carolina

What local breweries am I supporting during these strange times? Service and River Dog are our favorites. Great people and great beers. It’s important to support your local breweries. They need it now more than ever.

New Belgium Brewing

Sebastien Derbomez, brand advocacy manager of William Grant & Sons

I moved to Denver more than a year ago and there are so many options out there! Right now, I support New Belgium Brewing, Avery Brewing and Hogshead Brewing purveyor of cask-conditioned ales — mostly because I simply enjoy their beer selection but I’m always up to try something new. And I often add a back of Tullamore D.E.W. to pair with my beer selection to make the perfect boilermaker.

Tank Brewing Company

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in South Beach, Florida

The Tank Brewing Co is on our handle at Bodega and I think they are putting out great stylistic representations across the board. Their La Playita Pils is a refreshing, crisp beer that hits the spot for me no matter what. If you want to pair with a heavier food, Farito IPA has what it takes.

Wynwood Brewing

Nicole Quist, beverage director at Bartaco in Aventura, Florida

Our beer menu is small + we’re proud to say almost entirely local. Love Wynwood Brewing and Veza Sur. It’s really important to us at Bartaco to support our local communities and we are proud to partner with these two at Aventura, with their own strong ties to Miami. I could crush a Wynwood La Rubia Blonde Ale or Veza Sur Spanglish Lager with a baja fish taco right now.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

Middleditch & Schwartz (Netflix series) — The streaming giant’s continuing with this year’s stellar lineup of Tuesday-released comedy specials, and there’s a super-sized batch landing today. Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz’s two-man comedy show will feature in three new completely improvised Netflix comedy specials, including Dream Job, Law School Magic, and Parking Lot Wedding. Get ready for tales of an existential crisis, a robbery-gone-wrong, and a bit of magic.

Cooked with Cannabis (Netflix series) — Technically, this show dropped on 4/20, but considering how this year is going, it’s gotta still be 4/20 somewhere, right? Move your cannabis game past pot brownies and marijuana cookies while watching top chefs compete to get “baked” in more elaborate ways.

Empire (FOX, 9:00 p.m.) — The Bossyfest launch is upon us, with Cookie reflecting upon how far she’s come and Lucious unable to resist his attraction to Cookie.

For Life (ABC, 10:00 p.m.) — Aaron’s doing the social crusade thing while moving towards becoming an attorney and flashing back to his nine-year incarceration.

The Last O.G. (TBS, 10:30 p.m.) — Josh wants to be the cool dad, so he’s naturally jealous of Tray taking Shahzad to his first basketball game with courtside seats.

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Halle Berry, Russell Westbrook, Meghan Trainor

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Ray Romano, Melanie C

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah — Noah’s reporting live from his couch, and naturally, the subject of the night will be the ongoing pandemic and social distancing.

Everyone loves a good love story. And when we witness an example of love that endures through everything—even death—it hits us right in our deepest human feely spots.

Ken is a 94-year-old resident of Thistleton Lodge, a retirement and assisted-living facility in Lancashire, England. When a caregiver noticed that he slept with a photograph of Kia, his late wife of 75 years who had also lived in the facility, she decided to surprise him with a gift—a pillow with Kia’s face on it.

---

Having something soft to embrace with his wife’s image on it brought Ken to tears—along with everyone else.

The video has gone viral, being shared across multiple media outlets. And when you watch, it’s not hard to see why. This is sheer humanity right here. True love that lasts a lifetime is a beautiful thing, and to see it in its purest form is truly a sight to behold. Pass the tissues, please.

---

View Entire Post ›

Rob Gronkowski famously retired from football at the age of 29. It wasn’t a huge surprise in that rumors had existed for years that Gronkowski’s body was struggling due to the beating he took on the football field, but it was still eyebrow-raising that a player as talented as him retired before he hit the age of 30.

Due to his age, rumors have followed Gronkowski for some time about a possible return to football, although he has shot them down throughout his retirement, instead deciding to do things like agreeing to a deal with WWE. But in an interview with Andy Cohen on Monday night, Gronkowski opened the door to a possible return to football, saying “you just never know.”

It turns out that might have been foreshadowing some plans. Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported that Gronkowski indicated to the New England Patriots that he is interested in a return to football. The catch: He wants to do it alongside Tom Brady, who is now a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

As Rapoport mentioned, the Patriots would need to trade Gronkowski to Tampa Bay, but this seems to indicate the wheels are in motion on some sort of a deal. The report was confirmed by Adam Schefter of ESPN, who says that the two sides are in the midst of trade talks.

Perhaps this should not be a huge surprise, as a report from late last week indicated that the Bucs were shopping around current starting tight end O.J. Howard. Brady and Gronkowski won three Super Bowls with one another in New England, while the Buccaneers acquired Brady this offseason via free agency.

Clearly, the favorite food of quarantine 2020 is bread. Sourdough, in specific. Dalgona coffee has had a good run too. But beans are the real food MVP of this pandemic. In a time when people are anxious about their health, worried about money, and have extra hours to spend in the kitchen, the ability of beans to be comforting, bone cheap, and incredibly tasty all at once can’t be denied.

Red, black, kidney, pinto, Roman, soy… Beans — as Peggy Olson once showed us — are form, affordability, and function combined. Everything we need right now. To be fair, they were everything we needed before the quarantine too. Most Indigenous cultures in the Americas treat beans as a staple, and the current maker-movement has been reminding people of their wonders for the past few years with long odes to the legume’s infinite iterations.

With the quarantine dragging on, Zach Johnston and I decided to share whatever bean wisdom we’ve got. Zach came through with a recipe that looks like it will take you until the end of the shutdown to complete (it’s actually pretty quick, I tried!), and I add in a few tips as someone whose overarching bean philosophy is “this needs to be one the table and in my mouth in 25 minutes or so.” Regardless of which approach you take, you probably won’t screw your dinner up. No matter how many times you accidentally let the beans get scalded to the bottom of the pan. And that enormous margin for error, in this time when life feels balanced on a razor’s edge, is yet another testament to the bean itself.

Zach’s Louisiana Style Pork and Beans

I’m using the term “Louisiana” very loosely here. What I am doing is a sort of Cajun-inspired bean dish that has the hallmarks of the Big Easy cooking ways: Bell peppers in the mirepoix, quasi-Cajun spice mix in the base, and fatty, unctuous pork with the beans.

This recipe is not vegan by any stretch. But I have made a vegan version many times. I simply replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock and skip the pork shank. It’s still delicious and versatile. This is also a fairly low-impact recipe. Once you’ve made the base for the beans to cook, it goes into a low temp oven for a slow simmer. That means you’ll need about 20 to 40 minutes (depending on searing off a pork shank) to get this started and the rest of the time is just oven time.

This recipe will also feed you for a week. I ended up having beans and rice in some form for lunch pretty much every day with this recipe. To keep it interesting, I’d change up things slightly each day, but more on that later.

Ingredients:

Here’s your shopping list:

• Two-pound pork shank (unbrined with skin on)
• One-pound dried pinto beans
• One carrot
• One yellow onion
• One stalk of celery
• One bell pepper
• Tube of tomato paste
• Olive oil
• One tsp. cumin
• One tsp. garlic powder
• One tsp. smoked paprika
• One tsp. dried oregano
• One tsp. dried thyme
• Two fresh bay leaves
• Salt and pepper
• 4 cups chicken stock

Prep:

There are only two steps to prep for this meal. The night before you cook, you’re going to want to soak your beans. I place them in a mixing bowl and cover with enough water so that the beans can double in size and still be in the water. I then cover the bowl with a dinner plate. This helps the beans hydrate which lowers the cooking time later but also allows the beans to maintain their structural integrity when you do cook them.

You can skip this step but it’ll just take way longer to cook your beans and they’ll likely start to fall apart by the time they are cooked. I sometimes use a sped-up version of soaking beans. I’ll boil a kettle of water and then pour that over the beans and let them soak two to four hours, covered with a dinner plate. I’ve experienced the same results as soaking overnight with this method.

Next, get your mirepoix ready by dicing the celery, onion, bell pepper, and carrot. You don’t need to be exact here but it should be a fairly small dice. That’s literally it on the prep.

Cook:

The first thing you want to do is get a nice sear on the pork shank. I heat up a few glugs of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed stockpot on high heat. I’m using a 5l (1.3 gallons) pot that’s both stovetop and oven safe. Once the oil is shimmering, I place the pork shank in, flesh side down. I then sear off all sides. This takes a bit of time, maybe three to four minutes per side. But what you’re doing is creating a lovely fond on the bottom of the pot that’ll layer in flavor to the overall dish.

Next, I lower the heat to medium and I get my mirepoix into the pot. I salt and move around the mirepoix with a wooden spoon, bringing up all that fond into the veg.

Once the mirepoix is translucent and softened (about five to seven minutes), I add in the spices and about half a tube of tomato paste. I move that around on the bottom of the pot to release the aromatics and then mix into the mirepoix.

I then drain the beans and add them to the pot with the chicken stock. I mix everything well with the wooden spoon, add the bay leaves, and taste the soup for seasoning. I add a few cranks from a pepper mill and a pinch of salt. I then bring the pork shank back to the pot.

I cover the pot and place it in a pre-heated oven on around 275f-300f. I leave it alone for two hours until it looks like this…

I fish the pork shank out, skim the access fat, and give the beans a good stir. They should be fork-tender, still have their skins, and ready to eat. But first, we need to de-bone, skin, and chop our pork.

The meat should fall off the bone and out of the skin with little effort. I cut one-inch cubes, remove any sinew or gristle, and slice up a few cubes of the fatty skin to add back into the beans.

I cover that and let it rest for a solid 15 minutes.

While that’s resting, I make some rice. I used some Jasmine rice I had on hand. Nothing fancy — just white rice. Put about two cups of rinsed rice in a pot, add enough chicken stock to cover an inch above the rice, put a lid on, bring to a simmer, lower heat to the lowest setting, wait. Ten or so minutes later the liquid should be gone. Turn heat off, fluff rice with a fork, let rest another ten minutes with the lid on. Fluff again with a fork, serve.

Serve:

The beans have a great depth of flavor with a fresh edge thanks to the mirepoix. They’re tender with an umami-bomb base. The pork shank is a nice additional layer of protein and fat but, again, you can go vegan with this and it’ll still be great. Initially, I served this with a few Cajun-fried shrimp (I used this recipe). I’ve also served it as a simple bowl of rice and beans with a little hit of hot sauce. But I’d have to say my favorite presentation of this dish was as a burrito. I simply warmed up a flour tortilla, whipped up some guacamole, and added some shredded cheddar and jack. I made sure to get a couple of nice morsels of pork meat and fat in there and voila, a great pork and bean burrito for lunch!

Steve’s Beans

To be clear, this isn’t a UPROXX-sanctioned cooking battle. Mostly because I don’t really have a recipe for you. I just have a story. About beans.

Down in Costa Rica there is this product. Lizano beans, sold by the packet. They come in little ziplock pouches and sell for a few bucks at literally every market you’ll ever visit.

They are amazing. Famous for sustaining the local population and every single surfer who enters the country. Go on a surf trip in Costa Rica and you’ll probably eat these, wrapped in a tortilla with some avo and hot sauce, twice daily. Hell, three times.

But they don’t export them to the US or have them made at their factories here. And shipping rates from Amazon or sites like TicoShopping are guaranteed to double the cost. If they ever did release them for the American market, the demand would certainly be there. I’ve heard plenty of stories of surfers filling board bags with them before returning to their home countries. At my wedding, a friend who flew up from Costa Rica revealed that his entire gift was in the form of these beans — 50 packets — but they were taken at customs. Had it not been such a special day, I would have been devastated.

As far as I can tell, there are two secret ingredients that make Lizano beans — both the black and red varieties — so delightful. Those ingredients are:

Lard. And the easy-to-get-in-the-states:

Lizano salsa.

So that’s secret #1. Use those two things. Trust me, imitating Lizano beans is the lane you want to be in. With those ingredients in place, here’s my down and dirty/ “I’m not going to the store today” recipe:

Ingredients:

• Some beans. White, pinto, red, cassoulet, black, etc. I usually use pinto or black.
• Some onions. Purple or white.
• Some garlic. Fresh, pre-roasted, or powder — depending on the strength you want.
• Some meat. I used bacon and chorizo above. Deli turkey and ham also work. Polish sausage. Any meat, really, though I rarely use beef.
• Some bone-based stock. I use chicken or turkey. Beef would be great and pork would be wonderfully gluttonous.
• Some herbs. I use oregano and cilantro from my garden. This takes things pretty Tex-Mex, which I like. Chives or shallots would work for more southern-style beans.
• Some seasoning. A little taco seasoning perhaps. Or just cumin, salt, pepper, and paprika. I sometimes use seasoning salt or celery salt. You’re building the flavor profile, so pay attention to this part. You don’t need much of anything. And remember: In reduction-based recipes, the seasoning is going to be amped up as the dish reduces. Don’t “season to taste” until the very end. Besides, you’ve already layered a lot of flavor in and the Lizano pretty much does the trick on its own.
• Some alcohol — usually two glugs of hard liquor and four glugs of beer. Bourbon and rum are sweeter. Tequila and beer are more in the “borracho beans” lane. All very good options. Don’t use vodka.
• Some tomato element. Paste works and adds some tartness. Taco sauce works for more Mexican-style beans. Ketchup combines vinegar, tomato, and sweetness for more southern-style beans.
• Some sugar element (optional). Honey or maple syrup in the southern US. Or try agave nectar if you already used tequila. Go easy here.

Here’s another riff:

I guess I put the onions in last here. It’s nice to brown them beforehand, but clearly not essential. Nothing is really essential except for the beans, the lard, the onions, and the broth.

Prep:

• Sometimes I used canned beans. Sometimes I soak my own. It’s hard to tell which is better when they’re in a burrito, though I do like soaked better over rice because they’re less likely to break apart.
• Put the stuff in the pot.

Cook:

• Until they’re done. To your liking. If you cook until the broth is reduced away and they’re not soft enough, add more broth.

This is terrible of me but I don’t think I have a picture of my completed beans. I usually snip some cilantro over them and roll them into a burrito. They’re perfect. And though my recipe has never been recreated the same way twice, I’d be happy to challenge the beans of any other aficionado. I might not win, but I’d probably be close. Not because I’m some miracle chef, but because beans are easy to do passably well.

So make some. God knows, nothing is easy right now, let these be the thing.

Comedy Bang Bang fans know Lauren Lapkus as Traci Reardon, and Scott’s nephew Todd, and the Sunny to Paul F. Tompkins’ Chazmin, and Ho Ho the naughty elf, and about 50 other characters. She’s also the host of podcasts With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus and Newcomers with Nicole Byer, and has appeared in Jurassic World, Orange Is the New Black, and Adventure Time. Soon, she’ll make her first foray into the Happy Madison-verse, and considering how popular those movies are on Netflix, she’s also about to become a lot more famous. You can say you knew Lauren Lapkus back when (“when” equals “singing the America’s Funniest Home Videos theme as Regina Crimp”).

The Wrong Missy stars David Spade as a guy who meets the girl of his dreams, Missy (in classic Happy Madison style, she’s a former-Miss Maryland winner), who he invites on a corporate retreat to Hawaii. But it turns out he accidentally texts the wrong Missy, played by Lapkus, who joins him instead. Does a shark get punched in a face? Does David Spade dress up as a mermaid? Does he also have a threesome with Lapkus and Sarah Chalke from Scrubs? The answer to all three is… wait, is that Rob Schneider?

Here’s the official plot description.

When Tim Morris meets his dream girl and their relationship quickly escalates through texts, he throws caution to the wind and invites her to his company’s corporate retreat on an island resort… However, when a past blind date from hell shows up at the airport for the weekend getaway instead, he learns too late that he’s been texting “The Wrong Missy.”

The Wrong Missy premieres on Netflix on May 13.

---

View Entire Post ›

Since announcing her pivot to a solo career, Paramore’s Hayley Williams has been highly prolific. Williams has been releasing a new song on a near-weekly basis. The singer compiled five of her singles into the EP Petals For Armor I then shortly thereafter began promoting part two of the project. Williams’ latest track “Why We Ever” arrived last week and now her newly-released single “Dead Horse” arrives as the last track off Petals For Armor II.

Announcing the song’s release on Twitter, Williams wrote: “this one is a little different for me. im nervous. but im ready.” Still true to her sound, Williams tries her hand at a different hook. Rather than opening with instrumentals, Williams uses a sample of her voice saying: “It took me three days to send you this, but, uh, sorry. I was in a depression but I’m trying to come out of it now.” As her voice fades, a cheery beat arrives alongside honest lyricism about remaining in an unhealthy relationship for too long.

She said of the song in a statement:

“PFA II is the perfect interlude between where Petals began and where it’s going… Part III isn’t far behind. I needed these songs to help me get to a place where I could name my shame, take inventory of emotional scars, true friends, awful coping mechanisms, and discover what I desire for my life.

The latest single, ‘Dead Horse’, offers strength back to a younger, weaker version of myself. I feel like all of this needed to be said in order to embody the kind of woman I hope to be”

Just ahead of the song’s release, Williams addressed some of the criticism she’s been facing about the rapid release of singles. In a tongue-in-cheek video, Williams asked for men on the internet to give her “productive advice” on releasing a record to help her “after 15 or 16 years in the industry and five other albums.”

Listen to “Dead Horse” above.

Petals For Armor is out 5/8 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.

Hayley Williams is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s odd, but even with The Fall Off on the horizon, one of the most anticipated J. Cole projects in recent months wasn’t the North Carolina rapper’s official album, but instead it was a mixtape created by DJ Critical Hype that promised to mash up some of Cole’s most beloved vocals with production from Virginia Beach hitmakers The Neptunes. Now, after months of teasing the mash-up project, Critical Hype’s In Search Of… Cole has arrived.

Clocking in at 30 tracks, In Search Of… Cole draws from all over both acts’ respective catalogs, from J. Cole’s first mixtape, The Come Up, all the way up to his most recent solo release, KOD, and incorporates fan-favorite freestyles, singles, and deep cuts, with songs like “Forbidden Fruit,” “Lights Please,” and “Love Yourz” set to classic Neptunes beats like “Let’s Get Blown,” “Come Close,” and “Hot Damn.”

The reason behind the crispiness of the blends is simple; Critical Hype was given unprecedented access to Cole’s original vocals after reaching out to Dreamville president Ibrahim Hamad. Critical Hype told Genius, “I thought it would be nice to give a different perspective of Cole’s style and flows over different production. Cole was pictured in the studio with Pharrell at the beginning of his career. They were supposed to work on something. I don’t know why it never came to fruition, but I thought it would be dope to hear Cole over some classic Neptunes beats.”

Now, if only we could get J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar in the studio…

Check out the full project above.