Happy Thursday! For anyone new here: this is The Skinny, where we serve up curated, need-to-know lifestyle news designed to entertain and save you time, which is everyone’s most valuable resource.

• Digesting the Skinny’s curated news = 5 minutes + more time spent on meaningful activities.

• Mindless social media scrolling = hours you’ll never get back. 

What we’re covering in this week’s snackable news: 

• An earful of corn news, plus what your cob eating technique says about you 

• 5 summer beers to try and how to know your Witbier from your Hefeweizen 

• The health benefits of ‘grounding,’ and how to do it (even for city dwellers) 

• A new ‘twist’ on a fragrance, how to dress stylishly in hot weather, Serena Williams’ new beauty line, & the latest cold plunge tub

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An earful

Why your cob eating technique matters

The Skinny: Yee-haw, it’s corn season! From how to make it, its surprising nutritional benefits, new toppings, and what you need to know about your personal technique, let’s get shucking. 

Everyone has “the best” way to make corn. Boiled in water, steamed, grilled, smoked…but our favorite hacks we’ve seen include just adding milk and grilling it right on your stovetop’s open flame (and topping with Spicewell New Salt & New Pepper). 

We won’t name names, but we know a couple of people whose relationship was strained by personal corn on the cob eating techniques. Maybe you’re wondering if there is a “right way” to eat it, what your technique reveals about your personality, or perhaps what others’ opinion is of you after watching how you handle your cob at the street fair. Either way, these links are all you need to kill time while your corn is boiling or charring up nicely on the grill (where you can use this handy item). 

Lastly, here are six super extra ways to dress up your cob, courtesy of NYT Cooking. Even if you’re a butter/salt & pepper cob snob/purist, you’re still going to want to take a look at these creative corn fixes…from Old Bay and Lemon to Buffalo style (a superb use for your leftover Chick-Fil-A Zesty Buffalo sauce, btw) and Miso and Chives.

Not that you need one, but a final reason to eat corn: it’s high in protein, which was news to us, as well as fiber. 

Add to cart: This multi-tasking and space saving corn stripper, which doubles as a grater. And the next time you’re at Trader Joe’s, if you haven’t had the snacking pleasure of these Elote style chips, you NEED to pick up a bag. 

During our corn brainstorm this week, Jill mentioned an audio book she loved that takes a look at America’s farmlands and the need to “reconnect to the people and places who raise what we eat each day.” With that, here is our first edition of the “Skinny Scholars Book Club,” where  we briefly discuss what we are reading and recommending. This book is called A Bold Return to Giving a Damn and as Jill notes, the audio book is particularly charming with author WIll Harris, a fourth-generation south Georgia farmer, narrating. Thanks to his passion and southern-isms, the book really breezes by.

Crème de la Skinny  

Getting ‘grounded’

The Skinny: Here’s a fact/statistic that we can all strive to change: the average American spends about 90% of their time (life!) indoors. We talk a lot about how simply being outside has a powerful effect on your mood and health. But here’s a way to even further enhance your time in nature: grounding.

This practice is centered around the benefits of physical connection with the earth – such as simply rock climbing, walking on the beach/grass/soil, or swimming in a body of water. The only catch is…doing it barefoot or with your bare hands. VeryWell Health has a great explainer here, but the crib notes are that a transfer of energy from the earth to your body can (some believe) have “physical effects like pain reduction, improved immune response, and lowered inflammation.” 

So while Jill can ground pretty easily in beautiful Telluride, CO, it’s slightly more challenging for Nicole in Brooklyn. However, some ideas for urbanites include gardening, sitting outside on a rock (like these at beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park) and walking barefoot in the park.

5 to try

Plus, know your Witbier from your Hefeweizen

The Skinny: For the dog days of summer, nothing beats drinking a cold one outside with friends. For the latest and greatest summer beers and ales, we checked in with our resident expert – Brad Landman – to get the skinny on summer beer drinking and how to know your Witbeir from your Hefeweizen. Brad Landman is a brewmaster, “Lakeman,” and the winner of several Great American Beer Festival medals. So yeah, he knows a lot more than we do. 

First, his top 5 summer beer picks: 

• Founder's MI Pilsner - Only available in Michigan, this has been my go-to beer this summer. It has a crisp bitterness from the Michigan grown hops. 

• Russian River STS Pils - This unfiltered Pilsner has a bumped up hops flavor from the addition of European dry hops.

• Urban Chestnut Schnickelfritz - Traditional German Weissbier balanced with the clove and banana flavors you are looking for.

• Breakside Brewery Bellwether - Based on an imperial wit beer, this has been kettle soured and then aged in gin barrels and spiced with Thai Lime leaves.

• New Glarus Moon Man - This expertly brewed pale ale might be the perfect blend of hop flavors: not overpowering and bitter, instead the hop flavor shines through, while letting you enjoy the sunshine while having a few beers with your friends. 

Next, when we asked Brad the difference between a Hefeweizen and a Witbier he asked US how nerdy we wanted to get. So, get ready for a quick, and fascinating, lesson in Bavarian beer history. 

As Brad explained, both beers share European roots and both have a cloudy appearance generally from large quantities of wheat used in the brewery. The main differences come from their countries of origin and the yeast strain used. 

The Hefeweizen is from Germany. According to Brad, from the years 1553-1850 brewing any beer other than Hefeweizen in the summer was outlawed, and only the Wittelsbach family was allowed to brew it at all. So for almost 300 years, Germans had one choice of fresh beer during the warm months and it was Hefeweissen.

Flavors: Mostly, a focus on bananas and cloves. A skilled brewery can pull the strings to accentuate one of those over the other, but both flavors should be present. 

Witbier has Belgian origins that likely pre-date the German Hefeweissen by 100 years. Unlike the Germans, Belgians were happy to mix non-traditional brewing ingredients in their beer. 

Flavors: The Witbier has lemony and pepper flavors that come from the yeast, but you also might find coriander, citrus peel, and other ingredients you will never see in a Hefeweizen. Given these differences, you can expect a lot more variety and flavors from a Witbier.

OHM, THERE'S MORE

This week’s newsfeed

• Eau de Pretzel: Just dropped, this is a new twist on fragrance and destined to be THE scent of summer. 

• It’s still hot AF, but we have ideas on how you can still dress stylishly: first, the best skirt and t-shirt combos; and for the guys, Men’s Health makes a bold claim that they spent a year testing shorts, so you can try on their research and findings, here.  

• Cottage cheese chips, made in the air fryer…but also an oven-baked version (at the bottom of this list of cottage cheese TikTok recipes).

• In June we brought you the workingman’s $100 cold plunge tub as a Father’s Day gift idea and it was one of our most popular items that week. As you know we strive to spot what’s new, so today we present the “Ice Barrel” at-home cold plunge. This keeps the water as cold as 37 degrees and lets you schedule your soak with the app.  

• The beauty of tennis: With the launch of Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams, you can stun your opponent into submission with not only a punishing serve, but killer lashes. WWD is calling this category “high performance beauty,” and Wyn is not alone. We’ll be covering this in-depth in an upcoming edition but for now, here’s a review of the 10-product line (all under $30), all of which is sweat- and smudge-resistant. 

• Is it legal to drive in flip-flops? We wondered this just yesterday, as we drove in flip-flops. 

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