In our CSA box this week was a note that read, approximately: “We were unable to supply green cabbage this week. We have replaced it with savoy cabbage.” Every time I get one of these notes, I amuse myself by imagining the person who gets really upset by produce substitutions. “Savoy cabbage? My week is […]
Every year around New Year’s we order a big boxes of spices from Penzeys. We’ve been doing it for at least ten years. I love getting packages—who doesn’t?—and this is my favorite of the year. It offers pleasures both culinary and clerical: we get to unpack, sort, date, sniff, and shelve each spice. Every year […]
If you’re thinking about taking your kids to Japan, here are a few clerical odds and ends that may be helpful. Get a PASMO card Some cities are blessed multiple train lines. Tokyo has multiple train systems, each of which has multiple lines. There’s the Tokyo Metro lines, the Toei lines, the JR lines, the […]
On Friday, our last full day in Japan, my friend Kristin Yamaguchi invited us to meet her and her three kids on Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. There are a couple of ways to get to Odaiba. We were hoping to take a boat down the Sumida River. Specifically, this boat, the Himiko, […]
People often ask me about my favorite food, and I have a favorite evasive, wordy, and unsatisfying answer, which goes like this: Any kind of spicy noodles with vegetables and meat. That’s actually an oversimplification. I specifically mean dry noodle dishes, not noodle soups, and they don’t have to be spicy at serving time, because […]
