When Quitting Your Job Is the Answer to Everything
The email some anonymous stranger had sent to my boss was an agonizing reminder of how I lived, the choices I made, and the priorities I held close.
Writing Sex Was Easy Until I Had to Read It Aloud
I had one male audio engineer in the room with me, politely waiting to hear me record a graphic essay about youthful sex.
Jewish Comedy as a Love Language
It’s hard to say what about it is more charming to me, the hilarity of it or the inescapable Jewishness of it. Mel Brooks could be any man in my family.
In Defense of the Worst Cooks in America
The soundstage’s kitchen didn’t have a dishwasher, so he was forced to make dishwasher salmon in the oven instead—like some kind of hack.
To All the Pirate Bars Ayye’ve Loved Before
Visiting a beloved bar is less about the bar itself and more an attempt to re-inhabit happy memories, to open a door that leads to them.
Alton Brown Made Cooking More Approachable, One Prop at a Time
It was a corny, educational joy, as if Bill Nye and Monty Python had teamed up to teach America how to cook.
How Easy Is That?: Chasing Ina Garten’s Perfection With My Mother
On other cooking shows, the cooks might make mistakes and laugh about them. Ina Garten has never made a mistake.
Why I Love Terrible Kosher Pizza, and Other Mysteries of My Jewish Life
I am no gentile, but a Jew, with chill Jewish parents, who loves the pepper-and-onion slice at Alfie’s.
The Pioneer Woman and the Fairy Tale of Country Cooking
What does the word “country” mean? Does it mean anything on its own or does it just color in Americans’ fuzzy sense of what constitutes Americana?
Samin Nosrat, Phil Rosenthal, and the Spirit of Eating with No Reservations
Do we hold the specialness of each meal at the core of our travel? Or is a meal that happens during a vacation a shadow of the memories it serves to create?