• Two Summery Meals

    Two Summery Meals

    Here are two meals you can make this weekend: one, a meal of farmer’s market goodies that are seasonal and good for you and good for the planet and the farmers, and the second a crowd-pleaser from your local grocery store that isn’t good for you or the planet but boy is it good and…

  • From The Desk of The A.G. (A Day of Letters)

    From The Desk of The A.G. (A Day of Letters)

    Dear Craig Claiborne, I am greatly enjoying your somewhat notorious autobiography, “A Feast Made For Laughter.” Sure, it’s a little creepy when you talk about touching your dad’s erect penis while sharing a bed, but I appreciate your zeal for people and food. Case in point: early in the book, you tell a story involving…

  • Braised Pork Chops and Cabbage (A Poem)

    Braised Pork Chops and Cabbage (A Poem)

    An easy dinner, one two three Try it out: listen to me; Buy some pork chops, one for each Dry them off like your kid at the beach; Heat some oil and some butter Season the pork chops til you hear a sputter….

  • Lunch with Regina Schrambling at The New French

    Lunch with Regina Schrambling at The New French

    “I think people are afraid of me,” said Regina Schrambling, creator of the web site Gastropoda, a site where she skewers food world personalities with loving names like “The Porcine Pantload,” “The Human Scratch n’ Match,” and “The Drivelist.” (I’m lucky I got away with “The Tyro” and now “The-Not-So-Tyro-Anymore.”) To say that she writes…

  • Diana’s Birthday Lamb

    Diana’s Birthday Lamb

    Cooking a big meal for a friend’s birthday is something that I enjoy, especially when that friend is Diana. But, inevitably, the party will end, the dishes will be stacked in the sink and, most devastating for a food blogger like me, there will 1,000 pictures of the meal in my camera and I’ll feel…

  • Anatomy of a Dish: Momofuku’s Sugar Snap Peas

    Anatomy of a Dish: Momofuku’s Sugar Snap Peas

    It’s difficult to improve upon a sugar snap pea. It’s nature’s candy: green, crunchy, juicy. It’s interactive: you peel away the thread and then throw it in your mouth. This spring, I became a sugar snap pea junkie–buying moundfuls at the farmer’s market and snacking on them all afternoon. The few times I cooked them,…

  • Honeycomb Run

    At 11:47 PM, after watching two episodes of “The Wire: Season 4,” it hit me like a ton of bricks: an intense craving for Honeycomb cereal. To put this into perspective, I haven’t consumed Honeycomb in years. I haven’t consumed cereal in years. What brought this on? Why was I out my door, shuffling along…

  • Reader Query: Chinatown Lunch

    Since my readers have been so helpful in the past, I’m seeking advice for an upcoming lunch date I have in Chinatown this week. What’s a great Chinatown spot, open weekdays for lunch, and what should we eat there? Your advice is much appreciated.

  • Hill Country

    Hill Country

    I swore off restaurant reviewing a while back, and yet I really like talking about restaurant experiences. Unfortunately, a singular experience can somehow morph into what seems like a review and that’s not my intention. With that in mind, here are simple facts about a meal I had last week with Craig and my friend…

  • Lunch at Lupa

    Lunch at Lupa

    The West 4th stop of the D train has two exits: one on Waverly Street and one on the actual West 4th, in front of the IFC movie theater. These two exits, for me, mark two very different moods, two very different frames of mind. To exit on Waverly is an act of self-denial, a…