I am so pleased to introduce today’s guest-poster, friend and novelist Sonya Terjanian, author of, most recently, The Runaways. Her book follows the dovetailing stories of a teenage girl and a middle-age mother of two, both of whom find themselves at crossroads and decide to indulge their instincts to escape unfulfilled everyday lives. Most of the action (often harrowing, page-turning action)… Read more »
I know! This post is a long time coming! First, allow me to be the millionth person to tell you that Charleston, South Carolina is now one of the biggest restaurant destinations in America. As most of you know by now, we are New Yorkers who spend a week or two a year on Kiawah Island, about 25 miles outside… Read more »
A few weekends ago, Andy and I took a 55-minute flight from New York to Montreal to celebrate our 20th anniversary. I had never been, and we were only going for 48 hours, so we had some crucial decisions to make, especially as those decisions related to eating and drinking. There is only so much one can consume over the… Read more »
.. Where do I even begin with this post? A little over a week ago we returned from a family vacation we won’t forget any time soon: Twelve days in Hawaii. The trip had been something we’d all been fantasizing about for, well, on my end, maybe my whole life. (Or at least ever since I watched the Brady sisters… Read more »
I would say up at the top of the list of Reader FAQs, maybe after “What can I make with chicken breasts?” but before “Can you recommend a good book for my kid?” is this: “Where should I vacation with my family?” It’s an excellent question, and one we’ve tried to answer over the past seven years in travel posts here… Read more »
On vacation in South Carolina last week – one for the books I might add – the girls and I were riding our bikes over a bridge, the golden marsh stretching out for miles on both sides of us, Abby turned to me and said “What if for dinner tonight we turned pizza into a salad?” “You mean salad pizza?”… Read more »
I would say the second* most popular conversation at our dinner table lately has been: If you could have another house anywhere on earth where would it be? (The assumption being that our little hamlet in Westchester County, is everybody’s first choice. Yesss 914!) Typical answers tend to lean toward the absurdly exotic and end in “i:” Bali, Fiji, Kauai…but… Read more »
It’s funny to see “Virginia” in my Vacation Highlight Reel category, because Andy grew up there and I’ve been visiting his parents for long weekends and holidays since 1994, when we were newly dating college kids wearing Doc Martens (him) and oversized DKNY sweaters (me). But Andy’s from Northern Virginia, which, he always tells me, is really a DC suburb, and not what real… Read more »
When I mention the city of Austin, what is the first thing that comes to mind? (By mind, I of course mean mouth.) Barbecue? Brisket? Tacos? Migas? Franklin’s legendarily eternal lines? Me speaking at the amazing Texas Book Festival last month hawking my book? (A great CyberWeek price at Amazon right now BTW:)) You wouldn’t be faulted for thinking any… Read more »
Just a quickie today to make sure you all saw Bon Appetit‘s annual Best New Restaurant Issue, always good for some good vicarious adventuring. In fact, if you are like me, you probably went down the list of the 10 winners (and also the 50 nominees) and thought one thing: I need to get out more. The good news there —… Read more »
Forgive me broader readership, I’m going super local today. Many of you probably know that I live in Westchester County, which borders New York City to the north and is flanked by the sailboat-dotted Long Island Sound to the East and the mighty Hudson River to the West. With the exception of college in Western Mass and a decade in… Read more »
In his Bon Appetit column this month, dessert guru and Superiority Burger founder, Brooks Headley coined a phrase that I can’t stop thinking about: Good Anxiety. “The impermanence of seasonal produce is one of the joys of cooking,” he wrote. “It gets the blood pumping. It triggers the good anxiety.” It’s exactly the sentiment I experience when I wander the… Read more »
A few weeks ago, under the category of “Nice Work if You Can Get it,” I was tasked with tracking down the best cookbooks of the spring for the Times. Those of you who made your way through that round-up (bless you, it was a lot), might remember one of the stand-outs: Tasting Rome, by Katie Parla and Kristina Gill,… Read more »
So remember all that stuff I wrote about how much we love staying in rentals or Airbnbs when we travel? How, that way, we get to really immerse ourselves in our new environment and are more apt to explore markets and neighborhoods and discover real local flavor? Well, I take it all back — at least for now, while I’m… Read more »
Scrolling through our vacation photos was like the visual equivalent of watching Bubba’s famous Forrest Gump monologue: Barbecue Shrimp. Creole Shrimp. Popcorn Shrimp. Pineapple Shrimp. Coconut Shrimp. Lemon Shrimp. Pepper Shrimp. Wow, we ate a lot of shrimp! This, of course, made perfect sense in South Carolina — where we spent the last leg of our trip, and where we usually feel like… Read more »
Back in my magazine editor days I worked on a travel essay about Amsterdam. My girls were young at that point — probably four and five — and I remember the writer talking about what an impression the city made on her when she was a kid. That it was magical, that it was like living inside a dollhouse, and… Read more »
Back in the day – that is, before we had kids – we took our vacation eats very seriously. We’d start booking tables within minutes of reserving our flights. We’d procure a copy of a magical thing called “The Zagat Guide,” and we’d begin plotting our sight-seeing itinerary around the places that served the most authentic migas/coffee/minestrone/cassoulet/lobster rolls/etc. From a… Read more »
This is what the sky looked like every day when we were in Utah visiting friends last week. EVERY DAY. The photo above was taken at the top of Brighton, but we hit a few other mountains in the area — Canyons and Solitude — and no matter where we went, that sky followed us. Like it knew something. Like… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and Dinner: The Playbook More
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