Applesauce cake and NOLA recs

The last few months!

A look back at October and November—what I ate, made, and read.

🎺 NOLA NOLA NOLA

At the beginning of October, we went to New Orleans to celebrate my friend Aimée’s [REDACTED] birthday. This was my second time in the city. The last time we stayed was at Hotel Peter and Paul (incredible pricing due to the June heat index, and, yes, I almost got heat stroke). I fell in love with Marigny and was happy to stay at a house in the neighborhood again.

Aimée scheduled dinners and a swamp tour (!!!), but we were on our own to explore otherwise. For dinners, we ate at N7 (my recommendation; Skylar and I went last time), The Chloe, and Coquette. All were fabulous, though I had a dinner of tea and a plate of saltines at Coquette, as I felt the effects of the weekend’s rich diet.

Photo by Chelsea Stahl

Let’s see… where else did we eat… Breakfast at Elizabeth’s, beignets at Cafe Du Monde, and a disappointing breakfast at Hotel Peter and Paul’s Elysian Bar (I fear a crime was committed against omelets). We also picked up po’boys (fried oyster for me, shrimp for the crew) at Verti Marte and had a pre-dinner hang at Bacchanal. I love the style of Bachannal’s service; you pick out a bottle of wine and a small custom selection of charcuterie from their wonderful shop, and then you find a table in their lowkey backyard before settling down with live music. (Lagniappe in Miami is a similar set-up; we discussed how overrun this type of place would be in NYC!)

The rainy swamp tour was fantastic, and afterward, I was impressed with the group’s stamina at the drive-through daiquiri spot. We even managed to squeeze in a long afternoon visit to The National WWII Museum, which I thought was fabulously done. We went to the Le Creuset outlet, too, and I ordered a stunning Bamboo Green Dutch oven that I was able to ship back to New York, $160 off!!

Back in New York, we kept it lowkey. Aimée and I had a Ralph Fiennes-athon one Sunday—she made double pasta (!) and a salad while we watched The English Patient (loved!), and then the rest of the crew joined us as the theater for Conclave (loved!).

Eric, Skylar, and I took the train for an afternoon trip to the Rockaways one cold Saturday. We went on a beautiful walk along the boardwalk, hung out at Sayra’s Wine Bar, and got Uzbek food at Uma’s.

🍞 Applesauce cake

I am still sluggishly adjusting to the early sunsets and winter produce. I did make an Instant Pot carrot risotto (with marinated tofu and roasted romanesco) and this hearty tomato grain stew (which I prepared with quinoa and about a cup of cooked RG Coco beans).

I also tried to make it through a large Barton Springs Mill order of freshly ground flour. I made biscuits, sourdough, focaccia, and tortillas. I also turned the jar of much too-sweet applesauce from our upstate trip into a fabulous applesauce cake. I followed this recipe, halved the sugar since the applesauce was so sweet, replaced the allspice with cardamom, and skipped the icing.

Of course, we also cooked Thanksgiving. Our menu was unchanged, though I made Bon Appétit’s lightly spiced pickles as a pre-dinner snack. The acidic, spicy addition was much-needed and will undoubtedly be a part of our menu going forward. We also served Mirto, a Sardinian liqueur we had while in Gergei on our honeymoon. I was pleased to see that Astor Wine and Spirits sells it, along with a few lovely Sardinian white wines.

🌼 ICYMI

68 ways to eat fewer ultra-processed foods

A recipe for homemade peanut butter

My Thanksgiving tablescape and ideas for yours

Thanks were given, tables were scaped

🛒 What I read

In October and November, I read Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman and Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro.

I thought Grocery was a good introduction to the industry and a nice history of the modern American diet. This is painfully obvious, but the book made me consider how intrinsically tied ultra-processed foods and the branding and packaging of food are—it’s hard to imagine one without the other. The book’s throughline centers on a small grocery chain out of Ohio, which, while engaging in parts, felt limiting in scope. The chapter on eating meat was defensive and silly, but it was nothing a good eye roll couldn’t address.

I loved Perfection Salad’s introduction and conclusion. I didn’t realize until the end that the book had been written in the 1980s (the 2009 publication date was a reissue). Despite this, the conclusion felt painfully relevant. I skipped about 50 pages of overly detailed history near the end, but it’s a fascinating account of the American domestic science movement.

I’ll be thinking about this excerpt for a while:

“Domestic cookery seemed to cross sex lines right around the time sex did, and nowadays there are men who, in traditionally female fashion prepare ordinary meals for ordinary mealtimes. For the most part, however, women’s cooking remains an anonymous service to their families, while men’s cooking tends to become a highly personal gift to a grateful audience.” — Lauren Shapiro, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century

I also read Liars by Sarah Manguso (meh) and When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe (good, but by two New York Times reporters, so it reads like 15 distinct NYT articles).

🎁 Links

• I loved reading Brianna Plaza’s interview with Will Cooper. Will is a writer and private chef on an estate in the UK. Not only is his unique career so interesting, but I love reading about his adventurous escapades into traditional foods, like charcuterie and cheesemaking.

• This season’s hottest pairing is Martha on Netflix and Alicia Kennedy’s essay on the documentary.

• It’s gift guide season! A few I really liked: Extremely Specific Gift Guide: For the Fiber Freak by

  Alex Sujong Laughlin
  , The Staring at the Ceiling Gift Guide by
  María Vargas Aguilar
  , and the Trash Panic Guide to Gifting by
  Glenn Mae
  .