The grocery store is an inspiring place, particularly the produce aisle. No matter what I have on my list, I make sure to take a few minutes to leisurely browse the fruits, vegetables, and fungi, just to see if anyone pops out to say “hello.” This week, I stumbled upon a large, sunny, yellow boi, simply named…

A reuben is not a reuben without corned beef, but that doesn’t mean that reuben toppings can’t be used to upgrade other, vegetable-heavy sandwiches, because vegetables is a good practice. Tangy Russian dressing, melted Swiss cheeses, and funky sauerkraut bring joy to everyone they hang out with, and vegetable lovers…

When I first started writing on the internet (for the now-defunct xoJane) my comments sections and Twitter mentions were mostly filled with wonderful, supportive women and non-binary people. There would be the occasional angry man in my inbox, but writing about food for a woman-focused website meant I didn’t deal…

Bitter flavors are often dismissed as undesirable, but a little bitterness can bring delicious nuance to an otherwise one-note plate. Bitter greens are particularly welcome alongside rich, salty dishes, and the best way to make them pop is with a drizzle of honey.

Angel Olson once sang “they made a meme out of my legacy darling,” but I have never found a meme that fully encompassed my lasting effect on the world. Luckily, I can now (easily) make my own bespoke memes, with a little help from template accounts on Instagram.

We are right in the middle of the bad, seemingly never-ending portion of winter, and all I want to do is eat mountains of creamy carbohydrates. Obviously our three-ingredient potatoes au gratin would do just fine, but the noble spud isn’t the only root that takes well to a gratin-ing.

Your snobby cocktail friend may fly into a tizzy (or worse, a lecture) at the utterance of “shaken, not stirred” but, though their feelings on shaken martinis are valid, shaking a cocktail can be good, actually.

In a former life, I was one of those trying women who would comment on articles about online dating with a “Wow. That sounds terrible. So glad I found my partner at 19 and got married by 25!” These comments were accompanied by an air of frantic smugness that is usually seen in a young woman who is just beginning to…

Dining and drinking out can be an expensive experience and you, as a customer, are entitled to an enjoyable one. But being entitled to something doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk about it. Sending food or drinks back from whence they came for no real reason is the saddest sort of flex, and there are few things more…

There is no such thing as a “girly” drink. There are sweet drinks, bitter drinks, fruity drinks, and stiff drinks, but the gender of a drink will always be fluid. Even pink drinks (which the unimaginative are quick to label as “girly”) are just that—pink. Just as color is not indicative of gender, it’s also fairly…

Try as I might to act like I am immune to the aggressively cloying nature of February 14th, I actually kind of dig Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s because my particular brand of anxiety is soothed by a brightly colored and visually uniform grocery store display, but it’s probably thanks to my love of candy,particularly…

Preserved lemons are something special. They somehow manage to bring all five flavors to the table. With only two ingredients—lemon and salt—their primary flavors are (obviously) sour and salty, but after hanging out at room temperature for a while, the citrus mellows, developing a gentle sweetness with just a bit of…

I roast a lot of garlic. The deeply flavorful, slightly caramelized cloves are wonderful pureed into tomato sauce, spread of top of a steak, or smeared directly across a piece of good bread. They are, however, kind of messy to extract from their paper.

During this first half of February, food-focused sites are awash in romantic meals for two but, in a lot of ways, eating with another person is overrated. Not only do you have to worry about stuff in your teeth, but you have to predict how the meal is going to make you feel (or smell). It’s a little exhausting, which…

I have never understood the point of canned, chopped tomatoes. They rarely taste as good as their whole, peeled brethren, and they never break down fully while cooking, keeping their cube-like shape long after all other ingredients have turned to mush. The culprit? Calcium chloride.

My love for boxed mix brownies is strong and true, but—besides a gloriously synthetic funfetti—I have never felt much affection for cake that came from a near-instant mix. They always seemed too sweet, too one-note, and had a distinct chemical leavening agent flavor that was impossible to ignore. But things are…

When it comes to french fries, fast food establishments do it best. It’s not that they use the freshest potatoes (they don’t), or that they have some secret seasoning (it’s salt), or even the fact that they deep fry (it’s a good tactic, but not necessary). The secret, my friends, is that they’re double cooked.

Eating is complicated. Not only is food comprised of complex chemical systems that affect our bodies in all sorts of ways (both good and bad), but once you start thinking about animal welfare, farming practices, and water use, it can be downright overwhelming to try to eat “like a good person.” But that doesn’t mean…

When it comes to cilantro, the leaves get most of the attention, but smart cilantro eaters know to hoard the stems. You can chuck them in your stock bag along with the rest of your kitchen scraps, or you can chop ‘em up and use them to flavor a big batch of fluffy, Chipotle-style cilantro lime rice in your rice…

Happy to the first weekend of February, and—if you participated—congratulations on making it through dry January. I’ve heard it’s cold out, and in my experience the best way to combat the cold is to stay inside and have a drink, preferably something with rum.