Friday, December 19 , 2025
Two paintings I bought in a bar in 25 years ago: In the year 2000, I lived above Mona’s on Avenue B yet somehow our weeknight haunt was Rue B, a (now closed) small jazz and live music venue down the street. All too often, my roommate* and I would go for “one” glass of wine and then end up staying and staying even on weekday nights but it was fine, nobody got hangovers back then. For a month or two they had a local painter’s work on the walls and I obsessed over them — the Edward Hopper-esque light! the slices of the city! — finally bought two and never figured out where to hang them up in the apartment we moved into 10 years ago until this past weekend. Ron Scott Sippel, wherever you are, I hope you know how happy they still make me. * I made his wedding cake here, by the way!
Huffing quince: I try to be cool (just kidding; I’d fool nobody) or at least try to play it cool especially when I leave my apartment to go to crowded public spaces like the Union Square Greenmarket, but all of this goes out the window when I happen upon fresh quince. My second favorite thing to do with quince in eat it, although I’m not great at cooking with it. I’ve tried roasting and poaching and it never really does what recipes promise it will, at least with the quince I’m getting. But my first favorite? I need to sniff it, deeply, embarrassingly so. How, how does it smell so good? How can anything smell so good? It might be my favorite scent on earth, or at least tied with newborn baby heads. There’s really no way to play it cool while you lean in and huff a box of fruits in public, so I don’t bother. Perhaps next time I’ll actually just buy a few so I can keep my weird hobbies behind closed doors.
Tell me your saltiest craving: Around this time of year, I get to do a lot of fun, sugary things like go to cookie swaps and judge bake-offs, including the amazing Met Opera one and last weekend’s Fruitcake Redemption Contest at Kitchen Arts & Letters. But this isn’t about baked goods. This is about the singular craving I have after every single one: wontons in chili oil. [“Your cravings sure do come with specific instructions,” my husband once said when I was pregnant and truly nothing has changed.] And now I have to know what you crave after too many sweets — tell me in the comments. However, if you say carrot sticks, I will have to reevaluate our friendship.
The Book Queue: In the last Yap, I admitted I didn’t know how to quit a book and now it’s been two months since I finished a book and it’s way past time to move on. You all had very excellent advice and I’m thisclose to taking it, especially given that my nightstand is stacked high with books that have since come in from the library that I’m actually dying to read. You’d asked to see what was in my queue, but may I make a single request? Please don’t tell me if you didn’t like a book you see here because la la la I don’t want to know. I love going into a book fully blind, with just a title and a dream. I’m not on Goodreads. I don’t read book reviews. They’re not, to me, useful in the way that a review warning that the $125 steak at some hot new restaurant isn’t worth it (p.s. it’s never worth it). I like books people hated (Milkman). I can’t get into books it seemed everyone in my family loved (it rhymes with Schmavalier and Schmay). I fall head over heels/ forever in love with books that seem random (Lincoln In The Bardo). But if I’m reading a book I’m too aware others didn’t like, I often read it just waiting for it to disappoint, and that’s a terrible way to spend my limited reading time. Deal? [Oh and P.S. Outsiders is there because I wanted to re-read it!]
The 2025 Word List: In a world full of distractions, one of the few I’ve mostly conquered is my obsessive need to stop what I’m reading and look up any word I don’t immediately know the definition of, or I’m a bit muddy on. It’s so hard to resist but if I pick up my phone, who knows what else will rope me in and if I’ll ever get back to reading. Instead, I use my Notes app to jot snagging words down to look up later. Later I might realize, oh, duh, of course I knew that. But not these; these were humbling. If you’re curious, the 2025 list is above.
Latke Vodka Party: Every year (that were not flying off to South America!) we host a Latke-Vodka Party at our apartment and last weekend’s was the best yet. It’s open house-style, as in, you can stop by anytime after 4pm for a latke, swig of vodka, and a quick hug before going to other parties that beckon, stay as late as you want, or simply show up whenever. The goal is to avoid traffic jams in a small apartment, but of course that always fails and I can never keep up with the latkes (despite buying 20 pounds of potatoes this year). This year I had what I’m now calling Introvert Shifts, where friends that needed a break from the crowd came to fry latkes for a bit and honestly, I’m thinking every party needs this. Maybe not mandatory, but the 10 year-old girls pulled out Twister at 10pm and honestly, it was perfect. We leave all clean-up until the next day. I really intensely dislike plastic and disposable things, and am entirely comfortable owning an amount of appetizer plates and glassware disproportional with a small apartment, so we ran six dishwasher loads on Sunday but I regret nothing. Here is a loose menu:
I made latkes, of course, and we had applesauce, sour cream, and a horseradish crème fraîche for toppings plus a pound of salmon roe that still wasn’t even close to enough.
I made some quick fridge pickles, this pickled cabbage salad, and had started to make this beloved endive salad (to serve as boats with the salad stuff to scoop on top) but ran out of time.
I also made gelt-looking cookies (this recipe, this cookie stamp), sprinkle cookies (this recipe, these sprinkles but don’t roll them in the snowflakes; they melt in the oven), and we had a few dozen jelly doughnuts (half roasted strawberry jam; half raspberry-verbena) from the wonderful Fan Fan (although if nobody talks me out of it, I’m going back to making my own next year).
We also had a pot of onion soup (technically, a new version I’m toying with) on the stove plus some cheesy toasts in the oven for people who were hungrier.
Five flavors of infused vodkas: Lemon, Orange, Grapefruit, Pomegranate, and everyone’s favorite (by a mile), Horseradish Black Pepper.
My parents old punch bowl with a non-alcoholic pomegranate-orange-ginger beer-seltzer punch (no recipe, but if I get my act together sooner next year I’ll write it up) and I made an ice ring studded with pomegranate arils and orange slices (which sadly floated so you can’t see them).
My t-shirt goal was to embarrass my children (success!). My husband was aiming for more of an ugly sweater moment and was delighted when it arrived to realize it was wired to light up.
New Winter Goal: Live Inside a Frances Featherstone Painting A few years ago, I began attempting to disengage from the kind of scrolling that made me feel bleh and to engage more often with the type that left me inspired. To do this, I started following more painters and artists (but that’s what does it for me; maybe your thing is crafts or, like no pressure whatsoever at all, left-handed cooks in imperfect kitchens?). Through this, I’ve come to really enjoy Frances Featherstone’s aerial paintings of rumpled fabrics with a human burrowed inside, said human usually buried in a book, and I’m pretty sure the coziness of the scenes influenced me to buy a striped duvet cover set for an attempt at the full experience. But apparently that wasn’t enough. Nope, for the last two weeks when I’ve been out but cold, tired, and eager to get home and climb under the covers for a while, I’ve taken to saying “I want to be inside a Frances Featherstone painting!” And even though almost nobody knows what I’m talking about, I’m doing my best to change that today. [Also: New Yorkers, she’s got a show at the Arcadia Contemporary Gallery in Soho through 1/3. I’m definitely going to check it out.]
NYC recently and a perfect bowl of lemons from Rincon Tropics, thank you Nick!
Some things I’ve made for dinner over the last couple weeks:
Chicken Curry plus a rice and a cucumber salad
A Sausage and Mushroom Pasta from way back in the archives I’m just going to start fresh with
Chicken and Dumplings from Smitten Kitchen Keepers
Tomato-Glazed Meatloaves with Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Crispiest Chicken Cutlets + Caesar Salad with gorgeous baby gem lettuce from the market, which we had for two nights of dinner
Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter (but I used bucatini, just to see if it’s still my least favorite pasta — it is!) from Smitten Kitchen Keepers
A Cauliflower, Leek and Cheddar Galette I’m toying with
P.S. December has been so ridiculously, but happily, busy I’ve failed repeatedly at the “Weekly” part of the “Weekly Yap” promise (not the Yap, clearly). If this continues to be a pattern when life is calmer and lazier in January, I’ll reconsider the newsletter name. Until then, let’s consider the name more of an … aspirational publication schedule.
P.P.S. I’m taking a break from questions this week but do send me some new ones for the new year. You can add yours right here.
Cheers,
Deb
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Love the Weekly Yap, it's like the letters to and from faraway friends that we used to write and receive. Inspired by your latkes, I am going to make some tomorrow and invite our cross-the-street neighbors from Nigeria to try them. That also will kickstart me to finally put up the artificial tree that we bought more than twenty years ago and that is still making me happy, these many years later. Of course, it sheds needles just like a real tree, and we leave it up till pitchers and catchers report for spring training, because Seattle is dark and dreary till spring.
Loved Rue B! I lived on 13th between A and B in 2002-3, and it was the first “fancy” wine bar I frequented after many nights spent at Odessa and Niagara