We hear a lot about eating seasonally. I bet Maira Kalman's illustrating a Michael Pollan rule about it RIGHT NOW. In fact, I bet she already did. And I love eating seasonally—yes, it makes me feel superior and in tune with Mother Earth, ohm, but also it just tastes good. Like, a seasonal tomato versus a February tomato, those are two different vegetables. Two different planets. Two different galaxies. Two different universes that only Brian Greene can explain the simultaneous existence of. One is a vegetable, and one is gross, tasteless nonsense. Okay and also I do enjoy feeling sort of touchy-feely at-one with the planet, eating in-season, because otherwise, [...]

Even if you didn’t finish all last week’s assignments, you have reason to be proud of yourself. You’ve started—if only mentally—getting ready for the high hosting day. As you face down these final 14 days until then, periodically repeat these affirmations:

• I am not a procrastinator. I am organized. I am both confident and relaxed, because I have a solid plan and a clean house. • I give thanks for Thanksgiving. I am Thanksgiving personified. I am Squanto and Miles Standish rolled into one efficient thanks-giving machine. • The grocery store is an oasis of inner peace. Standing in line is not a frustrating waste of time, but [...]

I make a mean red velvet cake and cupcake. It has more cocoa powder and less flour in it than the Paula Deen recipe I used the first time I tried my hand at red velvet, and it is super moist and crazy red. The cream cheese frosting is waaaay less sweet than the miserable dreck that so often sullies the good name of the best frosting in all of Frostingham. But I won't make them for you. You have to make your own red velvet and here’s why: I despise red velvet cake.

First of all, it takes white vinegar. Which? You can’t see me right now but [...]

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to enter a baking competition. But I never would, because I’m chicken. The thought of losing… I don’t know, maybe I watched too much or didn’t watch enough Back to the Future as a kid but man, that kind of rejection? Not something I can handle, thanks.

Then a Williamsburg-based outfit called City Reliquary tweeted at me BECAUSE UGH THE INTERNET WHY IS IT THE WORSSSSSST THERE IS AN EMAIL ADDRESS RIGHT THERE IN MY PROFILE asking if I would donate a batch of Crack Brownies to a bake sale fundraiser they were holding for themselves. Oh man, and how [...]

The slide into winter, with woodsmoke curling in the air and the last vivid leaves clinging to the branches, doesn’t necessarily evoke the usual menu of rum cocktails. The mai tai, the daiquiri, the hurricane—they each want a fruit garnish and a tiny parasol. Yet on the cusp of our annual remembrance of the nonviolent collaboration between European settlers and American natives, rum is in fact the perfect commemorative liquor.

When the New World turned out to be devoid of commodities, the colonists turned to tobacco and sugar (brilliant!) to make their stakes worthwhile. Remember the “Rum Triangle?” It was the delightfully efficient trade circuit whose corners were sugar, [...]

There’s a thing that happens in the Fall and it always ends with random beers in your refrigerator. Which is fine if you’re normal, but perhaps you are a person who insists on being able to see the back wall of the fridge at all times and has a slight compulsion that causes you to remove price tags from foodstuffs and insist that all labels be facing forward? Because if you’re a person like that—not that you are—those stray beers rattling around inside your otherwise perfectly organized icebox might make you Shining-levels of crazy.

And sure, you could just drink the beers but perhaps you are also a person who [...]

You guys, I couldn’t be prouder if I were a den mother ironing some gold arrow points on your scouting uniforms. You can head into the final seven days before Thanksgiving with your heads held high. When you get released from work early next Wednesday, you won’t be rushing to the grocery store. Instead, you’ll have time for an extended happy hour or to pick up your visitors from the airport, because your shopping is done, the sheets are pressed and dinner is waiting in the slow cooker. But even though you are in an advanced state of preparation, with little additional planning left to do, don’t yet retire [...]

Out of compulsion, obligation or your own neurotic drive, you are hosting Thanksgiving this year. You know you have the experience and talent to pull it off, but you also know that the complexity of it—and your own high standards of performance—can sneak up on you, making the final hours before Thanksgiving dinner a tear-streaked melodrama of anxiety and disappointment.

So if you want to succeed without losing a finger, your sanity, or the weak familial bonds you still have, we need to start right away. For the next three weeks, your hand in mine, we are going to head into Thanksgiving with grace and confidence, getting enough [...]

It all started with one of those women who won’t give out her recipes. You know the sort. I suppose if I were a tougher lady, more Joan Collins-esque, I would have told her to stop being a ridiculous Greedy Gerty over her stupid brownie recipe and then thrown my drink in her face for good measure but the reality is that I’m the type of sucker who says, and really means, things like “I totally get it, no no, I completely understand—don’t give it another thought, you’re so sweet to even apologize.”

However.

While I may be a simpering twit, I’m also a touch competitive. So as [...]