Food

I’ve always been a breakfast person, thanks to the delicious meals I ate growing up in Hong Kong. Sometimes, breakfast was a scallion pancake topped with a fried egg; other…

In a corner on the floor next to our dining room table stands a plastic toolbox. It’s been there for years. It is kept closed, with a combination padlock securing…

My parents had initially planned to arrive in Basel in mid-February, just after the birth of their 10th grandchild, but my father’s recovery from a pacemaker operation delayed their visit.…

Deep in the recesses of our refrigerator is a cheap gallon-size plastic container emblazoned with an Italian tricolor crest and labeled “Caputo 00 flour”. You wouldn’t give it a second…

“Do you think I haven’t seen what you just did?” My grandma said as I jumped, startled by her voice. I tried to ignore her as she approached the table,…

Fork in hand, I mashed four thawed bananas—on the advice of the internet, I’d taken to freezing them in plastic bags—into about four ounces of applesauce. Vanilla extract entered next.…

“I portioned that so we’d have enough for tomorrow,” John says. “It’s just a few pieces of broccoli.” “But we’re having salad tonight.” “It’s not enough,” I snap back. John…

(or, How a Year with Covid-19 Shaped My Czech American Family, One Meal at a Time) It’s 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning; I’m sautéing onions and fresh spinach while calling…

By then, of course, we’d done plenty in the name of ritual—our word,   however off-target, for love.  Ah, rushlit December, lamb shanks with   the garden mint, heads bowed, may…

My hands don’t look like my own. They remind me of my mother’s in her wedding photos. (Are wedding photos taken for the sole purpose of perfecting the image of…

Alexander Chee is most recently the author of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel (Mariner Books, 2018), named a Best Book of 2018 by TIME, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired,…

Orchard Grove is a squat windowless building with a green shingled overhang beveled around wooden soffits. I used to walk there from Gerry Rushlow’s farm. Or was it Sally Rushlow’s…

Ling Ma is author of the novel Severance, which has been translated into seven languages and named a NY Times Notable Book. A recipient of the Whiting Award, she lives in…

1986, New Jersey As Indians, we have particular honorifics for each relative that convey how the subject relates to the speaker; it helps to keep everyone straight in as few…