Published Work

After a holiday meal so gigantic that only stretchy pants will do, there remains one dish that everyone looks forward to: pie.

Remember that love affair we had with sourdough bread? It was an unusual moment in the sun for yeast. Some folks had extended, public bread-romances on social media, while others had short trysts that wielded little more than a dead starter, graying in the fridge. If you actually got to the baking stage, you probably noticed that nearly all sourdough bread recipes call for cornmeal.

On a cold winter’s night in 2017, a friend brought a 20-ounce walnut- and bacon-covered cheeseball to my Christmas party. It was my first holiday cheeseball experience and I instantly became enamored with the novelty of having access to a gigantic sphere of nearly endless dip. But when the next day dawned, I was faced with an unforeseen challenge: What do I do with the cheeseball leftovers? 

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind of peppermint mochas, ugly sweaters, Secret Santas, and cookie exchanges. Even though you’ve baked dozens of treats and eaten your body weight in butter and flour, we’ve just now hit the holiday home stretch, with cookie baking at full throttle.

Horns honking. Lights flashing. People complaining. Car traffic, foot traffic, pigeon traffic, it’s Times Square, New York City and if you’re an introvert or even a person that likes a split-second under 60 dB, you might be a little overwhelmed by the amount of human interaction you’ll have on your stroll down Broadway. 

My nose is frozen. Blustery winds tell me to turn around, go back into the subway. Passing through the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn on an unforgiving February day, you see SkyIce Thai Food & Ice Cream and think to yourself, Thai ice cream?