Category: Travel
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The magic started right away, on the RER train to Paris from the airport, when two men carrying huge bunches of lilacs got on and sat next to us, their fingernails rough and grimy, chapped hands clutching the ragged ends of the lilac branches. They let us smell the flowers, us lilac-deprived New Yorkers, groggy…
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Last weekend: I ate my first guanabana (finally I know what a soursop is) and it was glorious; Saw Orion's scabbard for the first time and the Southern Cross; Heard my first screech owl (more of a cooer than a screecher, it turns out); Picked a grapefruit off a tree for the first time, and…
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Firstly, buy yourself a small bottle of Austrian pumpkinseed oil (from here or here, for example). Then the next time you make squash soup, drizzle some of this deep-green oil over each serving. You can get creative by forming droplets and drizzles like modern art on the surface of the soup. It’s supremely nutty and…
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Savoy cabbage at the organic market at Wittenbergplatz. So green, so frilly, so gorgeous. Proof that blue skies in Berlin in winter aren’t a figment of my imagination. Stolpersteine in my old neighborhood commemorating a family of Weiss’s (no relation) who took their own lives and those of their children in 1943. Oddly beautiful lanterns…
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This will be a very quick dispatch indeed, frustratingly quick, I'm afraid, because – people, this is big – I have tasted manna and I have no recipe for you and I can only hope you're all very distracted with Christmas plans and travel itineraries and far more important things than checking in with me…
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Not because of its beauty, its dramatic bridges and sweeping vistas (a nighttime drive up Twin Peaks took my breath away) though I couldn’t stop gaping at every corner. Not because of the romantic fog and bright, bright sunshine, both in one day – one minute – from corner to corner of the city. Not…
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I keep staring at this photo, seeing that golden tangle of fresh tagliatelle luminous in the afternoon sunlight, and rubbing my eyes. I'm used to seeing a tray like this on our table, for sure, but there's one small difference this time. This time, I'm the one who made that pasta and it's tickling me…
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This is my friend Alessandro. Yow! I know, right? My goodness. Artist, funnyman, and eater extraordinaire – he's an all-around Renaissance man. Last week he taught me, the self-anointed No. 1 Fan of tomatoes, bread and olive oil, a little something new about that holy trio. I didn't think it possible. But it's true! Hallelujah!…
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We were up in Beacon this weekend with a group of friends, staying at Ben’s mother’s house. It was rainy, rainy and warm, on Saturday, and then sunny on Sunday. While the rest of the group slept on Sunday morning, I showered and quietly padded out of the house to walk down to the Beacon…
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What can I say that hasn't been said before? I went to New Orleans and I fell in love. I wasn't expecting to, but I did. I'm back at my desk in New York now and all I keep thinking about is how much I want to be back there again, smelling that sweet, soft…
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