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“I Just Want to Eat Her Up!” in The New York Times

Illustration for “I Just Want to Eat Her Up!” used with permission from Beth Hoeckel. 

Well, then. It has been a momentous year. Got married, had a kid, and had my first piece published in The New York Times. 

It’s about why we talk about fetuses and babies as comestibles. Why do we compare a six-week-old fetus to a blueberry, and a 26-week one to a chuck roast? Why do we talk about gnawing on babies’ legs as though they’re fried chicken legs? Where did the cultural taboo on cannibalism go?

I interviewed eight women at the top of their various fields for this one, including a genius anthropologist, a very smart linguist, a professor of food history and a talented psychotherapist. I couldn’t be more pleased with the results, and learned a ton. The article is here, and I’m grateful to you for clicking.

By the by, if you haven’t yet checked out the NYT Parenting hub, it is wonderful, featuring some of my favorite writers, so I hope you check it out as soon as possible.

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food, feminism, and freedom

Stilton in Hudson
Eating Stilton and celery while sipping walnut liqueur, as one does in Hudson, New York.

I have another piece live in The Washington Post this week, and somehow the copyeditors let my Dad’s verb “snarfle” slide right into the final copy! The feature, which I believe will be in print tomorrow, is about women, cooking, and freedom. It’s loosely a profile of Tamar Adler, a talented writer and cook whose new book is coming out this spring, but the piece is also about inclusivity and feminism. I so hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading. (And jeez, make that tipsy cake! It’s so good and so simple.)

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otto’s one-legged turkey

granny pop-pop

I was lucky enough to know all four of my grandparents. Grandpa Van Buren showed up every Christmas as round and rosy-cheeked as Santa Claus, bringing with him a big suitcase full of gifts—sweaters with snowflakes, and sensible things like that—he and Grandma had picked out in Florida. Even into his 80’s, he remembered meeting her, clear as day, when she was a nurse at the hospital where he was a doctor: “Her red hair shone like an angel’s!” He fought in Korea, and they raised eight kids in Flatbush, and then Long Island. Though Grandpa has passed on, grandma is still with us, living in Massachusetts. She is 99. She still looks like an angel.

Granny and Pop-Pop raised my mother first in Queens and then in Long Island, just down the street from the Van Burens. The photo above shows them on their first date, on Central Park South, on May 1, 1936. They were so clearly already smitten, and they went on to marry and raise seven children together. (Our family weddings—teeming with aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins’ babies, all of whom think they can dance—are no joke.)

My memories of Granny and Pop-Pop are ferociously strong, so I wrote about them—my Granny’s frugality, my Pop-Pop’s pride, and a one-legged, possibly rabid, rather Irish-Catholic turkey—for The Daily Beast this Thanksgiving. I think I edited this piece 33 times on my own before sending it to Noah Rothbaum, who is running one heck of a food and drink page for TDB. I hope you enjoy it, and that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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bread and circus

bread

Photo credit: Alex Van Buren 

It’s been—ack!—almost a year since I’ve posted here, which attests to the state of the world, my reluctance to write without pay, and my desire to revamp this site powered by WordPress as soon as humanly possible.

I’ve been busy in the best of ways; for a couple of fun months last summer, I served as digital strategist and temporary deputy editor for Panna Cooking. I got my analytics fix and revved up their social media voice, running a little editorial department while their EIC was overseas. It was a blast, as they’re good people doing good work.

I also wrote a ton of articles (164, Google?!) for Travel and Leisure, a few for Epicurious, Real Simple, and The Food Network, and ghost-wrote a cookbook for Phaidon. I picked up some neat new clients, among them The Daily Beast and The Kitchn, which has started to ramp up its long-form in the coolest way.

Lastly, I’ve been writing a cooking column for MyRecipes. Smart staffers from Bon Appétit have wended their way Birmingham-wards, and are making correspondingly smart changes to the site. (And I adore my editor, Darcy Lenz.) You can check out one of any number of oddball short pieces I’ve written here, from the power of baking a gateway loaf of bread to my mother’s thoughts on stretching a food dollar to how to prepare unattractive winter vegetables.

These have not been an easy few months, world-wise. I find myself sleeping uneasily.

But although there’s not a ton I can do to change international affairs right this second, I picked up my head from the laptop this Friday afternoon to see that the sun is shining and people are smiling on the streets of Brooklyn. A little boy is eating a folded slice while the cheese slops on to the sidewalk, in the style of this fantastic town.

I’m planning a trip to Paris. I made a few new wonderful friends this last year in New Orleans, Nashville, and Raleigh. Things are generally rad.

Here is the recipe for the bread pictured above. It’s a good one. And here is my recipe for spring: you, rosé, and a bag stuffed with olives, bread, cheese, and a blanket. Find the nearest green space. Pack your shades. Summon friends. Lie down. Shut off your phone. You can do it. Turn the newspaper into a pillow, for an hour. Self-soothing: It matters.

Is it your birthday? Good for you. Listen to “Birthday” by the Sugarcubes. No? “Israelites,” by Desmond Dekker. The whole album. It’ll help, I promise.

Hang in there, you. Hang in there, 2017. You got this.