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Hello there Reader, Thanksgiving doesn't have to leave you cursing like a sailor. (Although, if you ever heard Mama Leite muttering in Portuguese while wrestling a 22-pound turkey into submission, you might think otherwise.) As someone who's hosted more holiday dinners than my youthful countenance would suggest―some of which ended with me hiding in the basement, clutching a bottle of wine, and questioning my life choices―I've learned a thing or two about keeping my sanity intact. The One will back me up on this, especially after That One Year We Shall Never Speak Of Again when I nearly burned down the house. But I digress. What I've learned is mastering Thanksgiving is all about strategy. And, unlike how I usually cook―which The One likens to a tornado in an apron―this requires that dreaded word: planning. Allow me to share with you my hard-won five-day plan that'll keep you from ending up in the fetal position behind the washing machine. (Not that I know anything about that.) My Free Foolproof Five-Day Countdown
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Hi Reader, By mid-December, my social feeds are full of Portuguese people recreating their grandmother’s exact Christmas Eve menu from the Old Country—same codfish, same sweets, same everything, down to the brand of paper napkins. That… was definitely not my childhood. I grew up as first-and-a-half-generation Portuguese: my father right off the boat from São Miguel, my mother American, and me planted somewhere between the Azores and the mall. There wasn’t a laminated list of What We Eat on...
Hello Reader, Now that the Thanksgiving dust has settled, the leftovers are gone (read: eaten), and the Black Friday frenzy has faded, the real question we're facing is: What the heck do I give the people I love? We've all been there. We buy those butt-ugly, inappropriate, or downright offensive sweaters that get returned, gadgets that end up in a drawer or garage, or knick-knacks that somehow find their way to Goodwill in springtime. (I'm looking at you, my sixth cutting board in the shape...
Hi Reader, The first truly cold day always catches me off guard. I’ll be typing away, pretending productivity, when I realize my shoulders have crept up around my ears like I’m auditioning for “The Hunchback of Roxbury.” That’s my cue - it’s soup o’clock.The One rolls his eyes when I declare it, but he knows the ritual: stock pot, wooden spoon, something starchy, something soulful. Within minutes, the kitchen fogs up like a Portuguese sauna, and the windows sweat in solidarity.I used to think...