Hi Reader, I love Rome as much as the next pasta pilgrim. Iāve stood and wept at the beauty of the Pantheon, tossed coins in the Trevi Fountain, and eaten enough carbonara to make my poor cardiologist, Dr. Levine, visibly blanch. But hereās the thing: Rome doesnāt have our worn leather couch, our cats, Georgie and Graycie, or The One yelling from the other room, āDid you salt the pasta water enough?ā Georgie Graycie The truth? You donāt need a boarding pass to experience la dolce vita. In...
5 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Hi Reader, Iāve always thought chicken gets a bad rap. People talk about it the way they talk about wallpaperānecessary, 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...
8 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 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 āgood for you,ā which, in childhood, was code for āculinary punishment.ā 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...
10 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Hi Reader, Every year when the first chill sneaks into the air, Iām hit with the same scentāapples and cinnamonāand suddenly Iām thirty-something again, standing in my postage-stamp-size kitchen trying to impress a man Iād met only weeks before. (Spoiler: I succeeded. Heās 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...
12 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Hi Reader, Open my refrigerator on any given day and youāll find two things: (1) far too many jars, and (2) Alan sighing dramatically every time he canāt find the milk behind them. But hereās the thingāthose 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 milkādonāt...
15 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 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 Campbellās chicken noodle like the kids on TV, with its suspiciously lurid yellow broth and noodles that looked like theyād been cut by a drunk barber.But the Sisters of The Spatula (SOS), as I...
16 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 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...
17 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Hi Reader, I have a theory: autumn isnāt really a seasonāitās a mood swing in a cable-knit sweater. One day youāre smugly sipping your pumpkin spice latte, the next youāre 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 malaiseābe it heartbreak, the flu, or my theatrics over multiplication tablesāwas a pot of something simmering on the stove.Her chicken soup was Prozac before Prozac, her...
22 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 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...
26 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
