It was the weekend before Christmas, 2010. I was sitting on the 4 or 5 train, one of those on the green line, making the trip from Cornell Weill Hospital on the Upper East Side back to my Crown Heights apartment. I’d spent the previous two nights sleeping at my dad and stepmom’s apartment on …
Articles
Portugal Is Booming — but in This Tiny Seaside Town, Life Moves as Slowly as Ever
The Alentejo region is Portugal‘s largest, covering much of the southern third of the country, and its least densely populated. The terrain varies wildly — from vineyards and rolling farmland dotted with cattle to sprawling, shadowy groves of cork trees — and the culture is rooted deeply in land and sea. Nearly everyone in Portugal …
Vieques, the Rugged Island Off Puerto Rico, Is Making a Comeback After Hurricane Maria — And Now Is the Time to Visit
I sat in the passenger seat of Sylvia De Marco’s jeep as we wound uphill on a road flanked by untamed foliage. It was November of 2019, and I had just arrived on Vieques after a short but breathtaking flight from San Juan. De Marco, a designer and the proprietor of the Dreamcatcher, a hotel on …
How Daughtering Prepared me for Mothering: I spent my early 20s nursing my parents through their final days. It prepared me to parent newborn twins in ways I never could have anticipated.
I hadn’t bathed in days. I’d finally managed to squeeze in a little exercise — between trips to the grocery store and the pharmacy and to buy dog food, and a return to the pharmacy for the prescription I had to call the doctor to remind him to refill — but not a shower. My …
She brought us France with Julia Child, but Judith Jones’s culinary legacy also tells an American story
Judith Jones, the legendary Knopf editor who died in 2017, is considered by many to be one of the forebears of modern American food culture. After publishing Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 1961, she spent the next 50-plus years nurturing the likes of Marcella Hazan, Irene Kuo, James Beard, Claudia Roden, …
A 164-year-old Market Is the Epicenter of Cincinnati’s Culinary Revival
Findlay Market, in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, is the longest-operating public market in the state of Ohio, and one of the oldest in the nation. The market has gone through moments of both prominence and near-demise since it began operation in 1855, but today, its main market hall — as well as the storefronts immediately bordering it, …
Overnight Chicken in a Pot Has Become the Savior of our Weeknight Cooking
It’s been a couple years now since at-home sous-vide has come into vogue. And for good reason: Who doesn’t want perfectly cooked food that you needn’t watch over every moment? You too can now emulate your favorite restaurant chef! But as soon as the news of those “affordable” circulators and, more recently, sous-vide sticks hit …
Top 10 Kid-Friendly Restaurants in NYC
Eating out with young kids anywhere is no cakewalk, but in New York City, the challenges are all their own. Sure, as a grown-up who likes to eat, New York City may be your oyster, but as a parent, it can seem like one big booby trap: cramped spaces, restaurants that don’t take reservations (leaving …
On the Menu at the Edna Lewis family reunion: Deviled Eggs, Peach Cobbler and Pride
GALESBURG, Ill. — It was a mild July afternoon, and Ruth Lewis Smith was stuffing deviled eggs at the kitchen counter. She wore a red and white polka-dot apron, and her hair set in curlers under a scarf fashioned from pantyhose. A trio of women stood around her, assisting. “Tomorrow we’ll be dressed!” she remarked …
No courses, no assigned seats, no hassles: How I throw a dinner party
Capital D-Dinner Parties, the sort where a group of the host’s friends or colleagues sit around a prettily laid table and are expected to sustain interesting conversation across the span of several courses, always feel to me like an awkward first date that just won’t end. It took upheaval for me to reconsider my approach.