Hi Reader, I’ve always thought chicken gets a bad rap. People talk about it the way they talk about wallpaper—necessary, but boring. Ever since The One came on the scene, though, chicken has never been bland. There's his quick weekday roast he makes when he has three minutes and an attitude, the jug-cooked chicken from my cookbook that he swears could cure heartbreak, and a simple and simply superb Sunday supper: his brined roasted chicken that sits on a raft of carrots, onions, and potatoes...
5 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, When I was a kid, beans were not optional. Ho-no! They appeared with the regularity of my godfather's Saturday-night stock car race. White beans with pork, black-eyed peas with tuna, lentils simmered until they slumped into submission. My mother insisted they were “good for you,” which, in childhood, was code for “culinary punishment.” This is what AI thinks I looked like as a child, sifting through a pan of chickpeas. But somewhere along the way, I stopped sulking and started...
7 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Every year when the first chill sneaks into the air, I’m hit with the same scent—apples and cinnamon—and suddenly I’m thirty-something again, standing in my postage-stamp-size kitchen trying to impress a man I’d met only weeks before. (Spoiler: I succeeded. He’s still here, three decades later, eating the evidence.) The One in my impossibly small kitchen in Brooklyn, tucked under a staircase. That first autumn, way back in 1993, was our season of Love Food. We knew nothing about...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Open my refrigerator on any given day and you’ll find two things: (1) far too many jars, and (2) Alan sighing dramatically every time he can’t find the milk behind them. But here’s the thing—those jars are my secret weapons.There's tomato jam. Spooned into squat little jars, it looks innocent enough, but one taste and suddenly grilled cheese became a culinary event. And red pepper paste and garlic confit. And let's not forget milk mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise made with milk—don’t...
12 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, When I was a kid, tradition came ladled into my bowl whether I wanted it or not. Take my grandmother's, mother's, and aunts' countless soups. Did I, at seven years old, appreciate their rustic charms, their centuries of peasant history, their soulful connection to Portugal? Come on! I wanted Campbell’s chicken noodle like the kids on TV, with its suspiciously lurid yellow broth and noodles that looked like they’d been cut by a drunk barber.But the Sisters of The Spatula (SOS), as I...
13 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Every October, I perform a little ritual that The One insists is more dramatic than the final scene of a telenovela. I stand in front of my Bradley smoker, cover in hand, and put Brad to sleep for the winter. This summer, Brad and I didn't hang out. At all. First, I had a relapse of Lyme disease symptoms (yay, me), which laid me low for a while. Then there was our trip to Chaumont, NY, to visit our dear friends Keith and Roberta. THEN there was the wedding of my college...
14 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I have a theory: autumn isn’t really a season—it’s a mood swing in a cable-knit sweater. One day you’re smugly sipping your pumpkin spice latte, the next you’re staring down the barrel of daylight savings with the kind of dread usually reserved for dental work. When I was a kid, my mother believed the cure for any malaise—be it heartbreak, the flu, or my theatrics over multiplication tables—was a pot of something simmering on the stove.Her chicken soup was Prozac before Prozac, her...
19 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, When I was a kid, soup was food, medicine, therapy, and occasionally an apology. My grandmother swore her pink chicken soup could cure anything from a head cold to heartbreak. My mother ladled out kale soup so garlicky it could clear the sinuses of everyone on Brownell Street. Then there was the time I sat for hours in front of a bowl of her soup, refusing to eat. She grew so frustrated, she dumped the bowl over my head. Not to be outdone, I kept talking, slimy green leaves...
23 days ago • 3 min read
One-Pan Macedonian-Spiced Chicken I call them zombies. Recipes I remove from the site because they haven't gotten the amount of love as other recipes. But I save them just in case I need to bring them back from the dead.Well, this week I was reviewing some site stats in Google. Over the past three months, I found that there were almost 10,000 clicks for Macedonian chicken. The only problem is...that it was removed last year. Somehow, somewhere out in the interwebs are links to the recipe that...
24 days ago • 1 min read
