Hi Reader, In my family, turkey wasn't a thing for Thanksgiving. My dad, for whatever reason, didn't like it. Instead, we had capons, which I happily ate until he told me they were "emasculated chickens." After that, I was Team Side Dishes. My grandmother’s dressing, my mother’s mashed potatoes, my godmother's French stuffing, the obligatory green beans that no one touched but everyone felt guilty omitting. You wanna do WHAT to me? Of course, back then, it was chaos. My mother swore she had...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, I’ll admit it: For years, I thought pumpkin’s sole purpose was pie. And not even a pie I liked all that much. (Yes, I said it. Send unto me thy angry and indignant electronic correspondence.) Then I met You Know Who. The man is mad about pumpkin. I mean totally loony (which I can say, given my numerous and varied mental health diagnoses over the decades). It started innocently enough. He wanted a pumpkin pie. Sure, I said. Back then, I was still cooking from the back of boxes and...
10 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Some people spend Sundays reading stories. I spend them weaving one—with onions, garlic, and a pot that’s been on the stove so long it deserves royalties. Growing up, Sunday Supper was less meal, more epic saga. Think Tolstoy's "War and Peace." By the time I woke, the kitchen was already buzzing: Mama Leite browning meat with the ferocity of a Russian peasant, my grandmother muttering prayers over the stockpot, not unlike one of Macbeth's witches. By noon, the whole house smelled...
12 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Growing up, Halloween was less about costumes and more about strategy. Sure, I dressed up—usually some cheap polyester costume from Bradlees—but the real mission was chocolate. I’d map out routes through the neighborhood like Eisenhower planning D-Day, making sure we hit the houses that gave out full-size bars before my cousin Barry could clean them out. Found this on the internet, but I SWEAR I this is from my childhood. I recognize that room and that sofa! The costumes were...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, In our house, butter is both sacrament and argument fodder. The moment I drop a few knobs in a skillet, The One deftly fishes them out when I turn my back. Whenever he tries to be virtuous and make mashed potatoes with (blech) CHICKEN STOCK AND HERBS, I drop a whole stick into the pot while he's setting the table. He even proclaimed one night that his potato travesty was every bit as good as my beurre-soaked taters. I just politely nodded as I sniggered to myself.But the chill of...
17 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I love Rome as much as the next pasta pilgrim. I’ve 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 here’s the thing: Rome doesn’t have our worn leather couch, our cats, Georgie and Graycie, or The One yelling from the other room, “Did you salt the pasta water enough?” Georgie Graycie The truth? You don’t need a boarding pass to experience la dolce vita. In...
19 days ago • 3 min read
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...
22 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...
24 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...
26 days ago • 3 min read
