Friday, February 6 , 2025
Oranges: Oranges as a topic? I'm not going to fight it. My cravings for oranges in the middle of the winter are surely due to something real and measurable, like a sunlight/vitamin/chemical deficiency, but manifests inside me, predictably, as something more melodramatic, where I’m drawn towards paintings and even this serene poem about an orange. I also squeeze a lot of orange juice — it’s the only thing I crave after working out in the winter. I treated myself to this citrus juicer a several years ago, upgrading a more basic one, and as someone who loves to justify things as a cost-per-use amortization, I’m declaring it paid off several times over. Finally, the algorithm gifted us this tableside Valencia orange presentation in Spain this morning and forgive me while I watch it on repeat and then try to impress my kids/possibly require stitches. [Paintings: Alex Katz “Small Fruit Still Life” / Paul Gaugin “Still Life With Oranges” / BenediukArt Tangerine Painting / NatalyMak Orange Slices]
Bread and butter: Once upon a time early in my Smitten Kitchen years I was asked by an interviewer what my favorite food was and I said "bread and butter" and it was clear my answer was found to be uninspiring. It's not the whole picture: I also love artichokes and opera cake and french fries (I contain multitudes!), but my mind drifted back to this while treating myself recently to the very best example of bread and butter in New York City — the sliced sourdough you order with butter and jam at La Cabra. The butter is browned. The jam is a seasonally changing house-made compote. Together they're so good, they demand justice for any time bread and butter has been dismissed.
Reading: I’m out of my slump! Praise be! I’ve only knocked out three books this year [1, 2, 3] but man does it feel excellent, like a cartwheel for the soul. Thank you for nudging me along on this journey back to my most insufferable self, the one who when asked whether I’ve watched any good shows lately, had to mumble “I actually don’t watch TV.” And then, because I always explain too much, sputtered, “I, uh, stopped watching a couple years ago and now I… read books in the evening instead.” Send me all of your eye-rolls; they’re warranted.
Central Park Bench love stories: I’m not crying, you’re crying! Happened upon this Instagram account and had to instantly follow. “For Francine, for whom New York was life itself.” “When she missed the East Coast fall, he gathered leaves in Central Park, and mailed them to her in a box.” A Valentine’s Day card could never.
Lucinda Williams: I’ve loved Lucinda Williams since I first heard Car Wheels on a Gravel Road which I’ve since listened to so many hundreds of times, it’s none-too-dramatically etched in my soul. And yet, trying to see her live over the last decade has been one comedy of idiocy after another. Several years ago, I was walking by Webster Hall on my birthday, a day I was kind of in the dumps and hadn’t made any concrete plans for the evening, and saw on the marquee that she was playing there that night. But it was completely sold out. Last year, she opened a bar mere blocks from my apartment and yet I’ve missed every single time she’s dropped in for a set and nobody called me to tell me to head over. I wake up the next morning, see the jubilant posts from the night before, and scream into my phone. I finally broke the curse a few weeks ago and caught her at Rough Trade celebrating her new album’s release, and I’m so glad I did. Was this story, perhaps, interesting to anyone but me? Likely not, but if even one of you find yourself singing I Lost It in the shower in the coming days, I’ll consider my work here done.
The Egg Roll Hunt: For months, my husband has been lamenting how long it had been since he had a really good old-school egg roll — crisp, almost crackly and layered, perfectly hot. Well, he supports my hobbies [holding my towel and phone and limiting his eye-rolling on an icy beach on New Year’s Day] and I, in turn, love to encourage his. We did a quick run around Chinatown a few weeks ago, bringing home egg rolls from Great NY Noodletown (I’d pass; not a classic egg roll); Wo Hop (second-best egg roll and top-tier spicy mustard), and Hop Lee (our favorite of the three) and yes, we threw in some green beans and chopped up some cucumbers for, like, balance, but I’d call it a 10/10 experiment. Do you have a favorite Chinatown egg roll? Let me know in the comments. [Hop Kee was closed that day, but it was also on our list!]
The Hand-Pulled Noodle Tour: Irene (you remember her, right?) and I have been talking about having a cooking-together day together for some time, but when the day arrived last week, we detoured into a conversation about hand-pulled noodles and (oopsies!) ended up far from our own kitchens on a 12-degree day, slurping our way with glee and abandon through Chinatown. We started at 1915 Lanzhou Hand Pulled Noodles & Dumplings and got a seat at the window so we could watch our noodles pulled to order. [Watch the magic below.] The soup with braised beef was a dream, as were the pork buns with the crispy bottoms. Our second favorite was the famed big tray chicken at Spicy Village. We got it with added noodles. If you’re a fan of the cumin lamb noodles at Xi'an Famous Foods, you are not allowed to miss this. We also had a big bowl of soup and a stir-fry with knife-cut noodles at Tasty Hand - Pulled Noodles before we couldn’t eat another bite. I went home with two days of leftovers, basically living the dream. [Thank you Irene for the snaps!]
Pancake ice on the Hudson: It’s been so cold in New York for the last couple weeks, the Hudson River is filled with lily pads of ice and I find it absolutely stunning. It feels like a reward for dragging myself out for “fresh air” and other apparently necessary things. When I first saw them, I got really excited I took about 100 photos on my morning walk, then dragged my son back at sunset (he likes to take photos too, not sure where he gets it). We either got there too late or it was too overcast, but it was still magical. I’m convinced that it looks a little like Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sky Above Clouds series, don’t you? (I remember learning that she’d been afraid of flying but was awed by what she saw out the window.)
How this email actually finds me. And I’ll be here until Spring.
A few highly unstyled things I’ve cooked lately:
A moules-frites dinner party for 19 just because January is cold and makes us grumpy. And french fries do not. I walk us through all the details here.
Chicken Marsala Meatballs (recipe is in Smitten Kitchen Every Day, my second cookbook) over oven fries.
We call this White People Taco Night. It works with beef or turkey.
I make kung pao chicken with so much crunchy celery, I’m not sure if it’s even kung pao chicken, but we love it. All-star pickle-y sesame cucumber salad in the back.
Double Chocolate Banana Bread but I like to supersize it but cannot bring myself to update the beloved recipe on the site as written nor add a 6th (!) banana bread recipe to the archives so you will just have to know that it exists and we love it. (Mean, Deb. Very mean.) [Did my husband decide to buy a watermelon in January? Yes, he did. Did he regret it? Yes, he did.]
We seem to be on a sidecar kick. This picture might be a tiny bit styled.
From my nest to yours,
xo Deb
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I love these yaps so, so much. Today’s yap made me so happy: for you and these experiences and that you share them with us.
You will always and forever be my favorite person on the internet. I love your comparison of the Hudson River to O'Keefe's painting. We just studied O'Keefe in our homeschool co-op - so I'm always so excited to see her pop up in other people's lives too!