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Ever since I saw Paddington 2 (a seriously great movie), I’ve wanted to make orange marmalade. The problem was that every recipe that I read involved letting the fruit soak overnight. Overnight! Does Paddington let the fruit sit overnight in the movie when he has to feed all those prisoners? Methinks not. Consequently, I spent…

There are many things in this world worth pickling–cucumbers, carrots, pig’s feet (if you happen to have a few lying around)–but my favorite thing to pickle? It’s peppers, just like that tongue-twister about Peter Piper. (How do you pick a peck of pickled peppers, anyway? If they’re pickled, aren’t they in jars? I guess you…

I think this happened last Saturday, but let’s pretend it was Sunday because “Sunday Morning Kumquat Jam” sounds better than “Saturday Morning Kumquat Jam.” Having made my coffee, and contemplating breakfast, I stared at the leftover kumquats sitting in a mesh bag on my counter. They were starting to wrinkle a bit, losing their potency.…

There’s a very hip restaurant in my neighborhood called Joseph Leonard; you go there, and everyone else is either more attractive or more wealthy than you. There’s a very cool bathroom with a medicine cabinet over the sink that has Q-tips, Altoids and tampons (I bet women wish more restaurant bathrooms had tampons; or maybe…

Ask someone if they want chocolate cake, chances are they’ll say: “Ya-huh!” Ask someone if they want a pickled wax bean, their reaction may not be so kind. I learned this the hard way after making a jar of pickled yellow wax beans from the Park Slope farmer’s market a few weeks ago. The recipe…

Craig’s cousin Matt came to stay with us this past week and he and his friend (who also stayed with us) had a wild time. Out every night, hitting up the town, they’d wake up bleary-eyed every morning and ask me what Craig and I did the night before. “We, ummm, bought a keg and…
There comes a point in every young man’s life where he must make a decision. For Harry Potter these decisions are frequently epic: how might I pursue the man who killed my parents? How can I learn the secrets of my past? Potter’s decisions, however, pale next to the heart-wretching decision I had to make…