Food for Thought

Happy Ducks, Obsolete Root Cellars, and Other Signs of the Warmest January on Record

I’ve been thumbing through the short, final chapters of Joan Gussow’s most recent book, Growing, Older. They’re humorous even if the themes include dying, lifelong regrets, sea level rise and climate change. The later geological preoccupations are shared by both of us—we both garden in floodprone areas—and the balmy, 60-degree afternoons this past weekend reminded me that the future-oriented predictions of climate scientists seem more and more to have arrived in the here and now. (And, my colleagues at Edible Brooklyn tell me, the annual winter festival at Prospect Park was just cancelled, due to weather too warm to make snow.)

Why Joe Bastianich (yes, the Winemaker, Restaurateur, Author, Athlete) Wants you to Drink and Think SlowWine

Joe Bastianich has a new memoir, Restaurant Man, due in Spring, a multitude of thriving restaurants across New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a hand in the market called Eataly, a few NewYork marathons and Ironman competitions under his svelte belt, and a winery, to name a few of his myriad projects. Despite his fast-paced schedule, we caught up with him recently to talk about the new SlowWineGuide hitting our shores this January–don’t miss the launch party and first stop on the national tour this January 30!–his penchant for Slow Food-approved winemaking (these days that’s called low-intervention) and why you should drink a bottle of wine a day. Slowly, of course.

West Side Story: Goya Turns 75

Rather than focusing on adapting imports to America’s tastes, Goya primarily caters to each new wave of incoming Hispanics and waits for everyone else to catch up.