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 …
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.
For almost as long as America has existed, cookbook authors have been using food to capture its identity.
Few people get to meet their heroes, but I was lucky enough to know mine.
A visit with Judith Jones, the culinary and publishing icon.
I have standards—high ones—for the men, friends, and the authors whom I invite into my kitchen.
I love the cold months, love how slowly the days unfold, snow delays and all.
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 …