In 2007, when this website was still in its infancy, I shared a recipe for a layered strawberry chiffon shortcake. I’d never made a chiffon cake before, but I brought it to a friend’s rooftop birthday BBQ, correctly assuming that no one would be unhappy with a towering, featherweight cake sandwiched with whipped cream and fresh strawberries, however inexpertly made.

While I could appreciate a chiffon cake back then, I wasn’t a superfan. Chiffon cakes seemed a little stiff and lean. Plus, they’re fussy: there’s sifting; cake flour instead of all-purpose flour; superfine sugar instead of regular granulated; an uneven number of egg whites and egg yolks; cream of tartar; and a minimum of three bowls just for the cake layers. Oh, and chiffon cakes have a tendency to dip in the center as they cool. Gosh, where do we sign up!?

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One of my most exasperating traits — or, perhaps one that makes me ideally suited for this space I invented, coincidentally, to suit my collection of traits — is that I have a terrific amount of random ingredient preparation ideas in the overflowing file cabinet of my brain that will spill into conversations the second I hear the triggering keyword.

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I’m not sure if this is a sign of hitting a certain age — like a sudden interest in bird feeders (check, and please tell me about yours), or beekeeping (well, in the TikTok sense, not sorry), and animated conversations on the best pillows (I hate mine) — but I’ve found over the last year that I have very strong opinions on chicken salad and the correct way to make it, which, naturally, is my way. I hope I’m in the right place to release them into the world.

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While I’m not from a cheesecake family — it is never unwelcome, but we are more deeply devoted to things like pastry creams, chocolate pudding, and stellar coffee cakes — I married into one, which means that even though this site’s cheesecake archives are very well-populated, not a single peep of protest could be heard as far as my apartment walls reach (to be fair, a short distance) as I tinkered with these bars over the last few weeks.

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If there’s anything that’s been consistent about this site in its near-20 years of beaming (babbling?) hypertext to servers and back to you, it’s that I’m very bossy when I get into something new, especially cocktails. When I fell in love with Porch Swings, I wanted you to as well. Ditto for Blood Orange Margaritas (but only when in season), a Perfect Manhattan era that spanned over a decade, Boulevardier that has been woven into almost every year since, and a Slushy Paper Plane phase last year. This past winter and spring still, it’s been Sidecars, 1920s-era cocktails with about as many conflicting stories as my kids regale us with when they didn’t do their homework.

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I’ve been pining for a springy way to combine leeks and lentils in an unfussy, one-pot, weeknight-friendly meal but would get stuck on one thing: how annoying leeks are — and I say this from a place of adoration! I think leeks are one of the most stunning vegetables, an ombre of chromatic ringlets from buttery yellow to pea green and back to a pale shade of lima. They look exactly like spring (even though it’s climatically July outside but will be March again next week), and taste even better: Oniony but not harsh and silky, wonderful, and a little sweet when braised. They should be everywhere, but first we need to address the fact that if you go to the store or market for a bundle of leeks right now, you have no idea how much leek you’re getting.

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I was in Paris* last week — no, I cannot believe I get to utter sentences like that so casually, either, pinch me — and it was really, truly, and surprisingly spring. The magnolia trees at the Jardin du Palais Royal supplied us with a lace curtain of fluttering pink shadows, the daffodils and hyacinth were popping up from the ground like they’d missed us, and everyone was outside and stayed out until after midnight and this energy climbed inside me, evicted all of the seasonal malaise (turned out I was just cold!), and I did my best to bring all of this warmth and joy back to NYC with me. And despite the fact that my grouchy (sorry, “weathered”) friends tried to warn me that we were experiencing a “false spring” and “don’t fall for it,” la la la, I said, it is spring in my heart now — and in my kitchen, and busted out a warm weather salad. Which is to say: I’m sorry, this sudden cold spell might be my fault.

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Somehow, despite how impossible it seems (to me, a person who has neither aged nor matured a day), it’s been almost twenty years since I first told you about my family’s favorite coffee cake. It’s tall, plush, crisp with a flaky layer of cinnamon sugar on top, studded with a quilt of chocolate chips and is downright, well, adorable when cut into cubes because they’re a little wobbly. When one tumbles, it shakes off a little pfft of cinnamon sugar, like a pup coming in from today’s blizzard. It’s perfect. It needs no changes or updates.

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How do you cook when your kitchen isn’t available for kitchen-ing? On a Sunday last April, I awoke at the crack of dawn jet-lagged from an (excellent) trip to Amsterdam* to an email from my apartment building that ConEd had found a gas leak in the main line to the building and had shut down service for safety. With this, I was indoctrinated into a society of New Yorkers I previously hadn’t known existed, as NYC is apparently riddled with tales of people who lived without gas for (what seemed like the minimum of) 6 months and up to 18 months while their building trudged at a snail’s pace through rounds of repairs and inspections.

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If you want a homemade pizza that requires no kneading, no special flour, or long wait time (because who among us has ever said “what I really crave is pizza that will be ready 1 to 3 days from now”), you should really, really be making more pan pizzas at home. You might even consider it a worthwhile addition to your 2026 cooking bucket list.

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