Last Thursday, after staring at a laptop for 8+ hours, I decided to ease my digitally-overloaded mind by flipping through Trowel and Error: Over 700 Tips, Remedies and Shortcuts for the Gardener by Sharon Lovejoy, a recent birthday gift from a friend. It’s the kind of book you can read word for word or opt [...]

Through cumulative recent-birthday power, this household has found itself in possession of a slew of new food- and gardening-related books, sending us into a tizzy of re-working our summer reading lists & experimenting with new recipes. And as long as we’re making all that effort, we might as well share it with you, yes? So, [...]

June is the beginning of my year. New York manifests itself as a Technicolor utopia of sunbathing book readers, of shirtless banjo boys, of the girls with ribboned straw hats. We’re children again. Life is patiently weaving daisy chains and licking coconut yogurt cones for a heated moment. Everyone is so nice, we’ll say. With [...]

After trips to tropical islands (Katie) and the suburbs of Cincy, OH (me), we are once against nestled in cozily in our over-heated, now-crowded-with-Christmas-presents Greenpoint home. And we intend to hibernate. I mean, we are, in fact, at this moment, hibernating. I don’t think Katie has left the house in 48 hours; I did go [...]

Julie Powell, of Julie and Julia fame, talks with Double X’s Hanna Rosin about what seems to be the hobby trend of the moment (and is also the focus of her new book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession): butchery. The first proper butcher shop I ever came to know was Ottomanelli’s, on [...]