I snapped this photo and couldn’t bear to throw it out, so I drank it. With a bendy straw—just to make sure I got all the hot sauce at the bottom.

Hangover cures? I’ve heard it all: Sleep. Avoid caffeine. Drink water. Or pickle juice. Vitamin C. The Onion suggests taking a shower, in case you vomit, so you’ll have less cleaning up to do (eeewwww!). Travel + Leisure did an article on international hangover cures.  If you have foreign roots read it and find out how your great-great-great grandpa treated his delirium tremens.

Back home, you can go to a beach-front bar and have sopa levantamuertos—a seafood soup that raises the dead. If inland, head to a seedy bar, such as El Munich and order the same. Or just keep on truckin’—hair of the dog is probably the most universal cure.

I assume many of you will be toasting Benito’s first tussle with the French tonight and may be in need of a refreshment tomorrow morning. My suggestion: have a chilled michelada. You can have one tonight, too, natch—it’s the perfect warm weather drink.

MICHELADA
Makes 1
There are countless recipes for micheladas, with common ingredients being beer, lime juice, and ice. My version is below.

1 bottle ice cold beer, such as Pacífico
Ice
Kosher salt and black pepper
3 tablespoons lime juice
Worcestershire sauce
Hot sauce, such as Tabasco or my favorite, Valentina
Clamato or V8, optional

Rub the edge of a chilled glass with a lime, then dip it in salt. Fill the glass half to ¾ of the way with ice. Add the lime juice, ¼ teaspoon pepper, and Worcestershire and hot sauces to taste (and a splash of Clamato or V8 if desired) Pour in beer. ¡Salud!

Age 4: Bliss. Mac’n’cheese on a rainy day at my best friend’s house.

Someone asked me if I’d always “been into” food. I thought, “Not really…” and began reviewing my youthful ambitions: Ballerina. Disney Imagineer. Christian martyr.

Being a cook never crossed my mind. But then I went back and did some digging. If I had a bare wall and was allowed to decorate it only with the crispest snapshots of long-ago occurrences, food would be main point of focus. Some highlights in my food timeline:

Age 2: Buying powdered doughnuts at the drive-through convenience store in Miami.

Age 3: Sitting in the yard with my cousins, wearing a ratty t-shirt reserved for the stains from impossibly juicy mangos. Instead of mud pies, my grandmother and I made mud tamales.

Age 4: Tea time with my mother at 3:00pm, prompt: white toast with butter and guava jelly as the sun set in a blaze of orange. Tea time in Buenos Aires: white sliced bread, butter spread evenly to crust-less edges, cut into quarters.

Age 5: Realizing that not everyone had enough to eat. The supermarket in Granada was mostly dusty shelves. Encountering rice pilaf as an individual course in Mexico—and hating it.

Age 6: Experiencing fancy food: Guanábana bombe for a fancy dinner party, courtesy of my grandmother. Profiteroles bathed in warm chocolate sauce at a white tablecloth restaurant in Mexico City. Getting sick after eating marzipan grapes at a First Communion party. Discovering consommé.

Age 7: Eating birthday cake with Jell-o. Apparently a common occurrence at Mexican birthday parties. Feeling grown-up because I loved pistachio ice cream.

Age 8: Eating my first TV dinner—I just had to try that cherry cobbler.

Age 9: Reading the Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie series, mesmerized by the descriptions of food preparations. The Hobbit falls into this category as well.

Age 15: Reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s article about Roman pizza bianca, then devouring a 12-inch rectangle of said item at the forno in Campo dei Fiori. It was better than I’d dared to imagine.

Age 16: Discovering Roman peaches. I can still smell them.

Age 28: I don’t think I’d ever really enjoyed lobster until I had it cooked in briny ocean water in Cape Cod.

When I eat or cook it’s hard to stay in the present and not travel back in time. The smell, the taste, the touch—déjà vu and comfort.

My favorite way to eat coffee cake: smear both sides of the slice with butter and whatever topping crumbs you can collect, then griddle over medium-low heat until golden.

My apartment is overrun with cooking equipment and groceries. They’ve busted out of the kitchen cabinets and counters and begun squatting on the floor, on my dining room table, on top of the bookshelves… Developing recipes from home means I have to purchase groceries several times a week, and in some instances, more than once a day due to last-minute changes, “Hmm. I suppose I could use spaghetti instead of rotini here.”

I’ve been cleaning up as I go—never, never, ever allow pots, pans, etc. pile up in your sink until you’re done because I can tell you, woodland creatures are very unreliable and won’t clean up after you like they do for Snow White—but my kitchen can’t contain the abundance of paraphernalia I need for my assignments.

The eye of the storm? My coffee table. If I need a moment away from The Pit of Despair I sit on the couch and bask in the order of that table. New magazines, books, flowers, and most importantly, cake. Cake sitting pretty under that glass dome is one of the few things that centers me and irons out the crease between my eyebrows…I should make cake more often. Don’t you just love cake?

A moment of clarity.

As if that title really needed a question mark.

Lately, I’ve grown rather fond of starting my weekends on Thursdays.  A cocktail with friends or dinner al fresco is the perfect way to start undoing that painful knot that steadily builds up under my right shoulder blade during the week.

This summer, I’ve rediscovered sangría. The concept of sangría has always appealed to me: it’s fruity, refreshing, and, well, it’s got booze. But for the most part, what’s poured at restaurants is watered down and tasteless.

I’ve made a few modifications. ¡Salud!

SANGRIA
Serves 4

Rather than diluting sangría with regular ice, I like to add tropical fruit ice cubes.  I love Goya varieties, like guava and passion fruit, but orange juice, white grape juice, or tropical punch are acceptable substitutes.

- Make ahead: 2 (12-ounce) cans Goya nectars (such as pineapple-passion fruit or tropical fruit punch)

- Shake juice cans well.  Pour into 2 12-cube ice trays and freeze.

1 (750mL) bottle red wine, chilled
1 ½ cups orange juice, chilled
¾ cup Triple sec
1 apple, cored, seeded and cut into ¼ inch pieces
1 plum, pitted and cut into ¼ inch pieces
1 peach, pitted and cut into ¼ inch pieces
1 ½ cups club soda, chilled

- In a large pitcher, combine wine, orange juice, triple sec, and fruit.  Stir in club soda and ice cubes right before serving.

I get into a cooking slump sometimes, especially when I come home late after work and yoga and don’t want to deal with cooking or cleaning up. But I gotta eat. And so does O. Although he’s pretty good about feeding himself when I don’t make dinner, one of my (many, many, many) pet peeves is when I see people eating cold leftovers  (please at least microwave your disgusting, plain, under-seasoned chicken cutlets before you eat them! – You know who you are).  Also, there was a container of Brussels sprouts lurking in my fridge that I had to make or throw out.

Admittedly, these don’t look radiant and green as a spring pasture after a light rain, but they’re really delicious – roasted, mildly bitter, with a sticky, sweet slick of glaze – and pair nicely with that rubbery chicken.

ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS with STICKY FIG GLAZE
Serves 2

12 ounces (about 3 cups) Brussels sprouts, ends trimmed, outer leaves removed, and halved lengthwise
¼ cup olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper
1 shallot, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fig spread or jam
1 teaspoon grainy mustard

- Preheat oven to 425˚F.

- Spread sprouts out on a rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper and drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Toss together with hands to ensure they’re evenly coated.

- Roast sprouts until they’re tender and lightly charred on the edges and areas where they make contact with the baking sheet, 15 to 20 minutes.  Place baking sheet on cooling rack and cover with foil.

- Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add the shallot and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the fig spread and cook until melted, 1 to 2 minutes. Move the skillet off heat and whisk in the mustard. Immediately add the roasted sprouts and toss to evenly combine. Transfer to a serving dish. Serve.

I seared a breast of chicken
It wasn’t very good.
How is that rubber
Can masquerade as food?

Bread is the perfect food. There’s no arguing that – it’s even in the Lord’s Prayer: “give us today our daily bread.” I know I’m interpreting that very literally, but there it is, in black and white.

I used to get my bread at Fairway on the Upper West Side and was pretty happy with it. No additives, no less-than-2%-of-the-following-impossible-to-pronounce ingredients. When I moved away from the UWS it was, for the most part, back to the bread aisle at the supermarket. There I would walk past Wonder and Sunbeam, Arnold and Nature’s Own. It got to a point where it didn’t really matter what I bought. All of these breads were wimpy and forgettable.

Tired of blah bread, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’d been to the library recently in search of a Boston cream pie recipe (coming soon!) and along the way found a recipe for honey whole wheat bread in Greg Patent’s Baking in America. Mr. Patent failed to inform this dimwitted reader that perhaps her standard-sized Kitchen Aid (aka Kiki) would be no match for seven cups of flour. I should’ve known it wasn’t, but if there’s a recipe in a cookbook meant for home cooks, I expect it to work with standard kitchen appliances. My little Kiki started bucking like a bronco, and rather than risk breaking her neck, I turned her off and plunked the dough onto the counter. Now I would truly have to take matters into my own hands – I would have to knead.

Kneading was not easy. I’m too short to really bear down on the dough, so I strapped on some heels, but they didn’t help my situation – the heels provided height but not much in the way of support. Back in sneakers, I stood on my tip-toes and tried my best to work the dough, pretending all the time I was Lady Macbeth, outing the damned spot. Sweat started beading my brow and the bile starting bubbling. “I hate Greg Patent!” I muttered. But I kept going. I was scared because the dough was dry and crumbly and for the first few minutes, my labors did nothing to bring it together. It wasn’t smooth or elastic, just an ill-formed, uncooperative lump. To make matters worse, I kept remembering what my old boss W. told me about dough: “It’s alive.” Surely, I was killing it.

What a lump.

I continued to fret while the bread was rising. It wasn’t smooth and beautiful, but heavyset and squat. Into the oven went two loaves anyway and without waiting for it to cool I cut a slice and buttered it. It was dense and a little chewy, bland in flavor, and OK at best.

Squat, toad-like loaves.

I’d decided to make bread despite the fact that I had a date the very next day to meet a real baker at a bakery a friend described as “THE BEST BREAD EVER:” Clear Flour Bakery (www.clearflourbread.com). Clear Flour specializes in the production of French and Italian breads that are real: no additives, no preservatives. My new baker friend D. gave me a tour, which was awesome: Brobdingnagian mixers, about 50 times bigger and more powerful than my dinky little Kiki, imposing deck ovens, buckets of dough, stacks of beautiful frielings and bannetons (round and rectangular molds for shaping and proofing bread), and the main event: bread. There were baguettes, ficelles, olive rolls made with green olives, focaccia smothered with onions, hearty rolls with studded with nuts and plump raisins bearing the very poetic name of Paris night.

Bannetons.

Big mama mixers.

There is but a small area in front of the counter at it was packed solid at all times. Everyone, staff and visitors alike, were very kind, though, letting me be all interrupt-y with my camera.

I bought an assortment and Señor O and I promptly went about the business of eating it. The ficelle was perfectly crunchy and French, as was its larger friend, baguette. I didn’t get to the baguette till this morning and, swoon, it was so perfect in its simplicity and straightforwardness that I was completely swept away. I spread some good European butter on it and ate away. I also treated myself to a Paris night roll with some apricot preserves I brought back from a recent trip to Rome. I haven’t enjoyed breakfast this thoroughly since I can’t remember when. Thank you, Clear Flour for keeping it real.

A dream of Paris.

I saw this on display at a bakery in Brooklyn. Seriously, it’s for real.

Yes, dear readers, I have forsaken you. Few and far between though you are, I have left you hanging. The truth is, I’ve been in a rut. I’ve been cranky, tired, and every other day or so, having mini-breakdowns over this, my latest career move. My brain shorts out, my palms get sweaty, and I go into panic-attack mode. What possessed me to leave my – in the eyes of many, enviable, I should note – job and take out an absurdly large loan to become a cook? A COOK? I have no answer for this. Maybe I got a hunger pang and mistook it for a gut feeling. Next time you get a gut feeling, please, have a sandwich or a Snickers and rethink whatever it is you were convinced about doing. Decisions are made much more rationally on a full stomach.

Despite everything, however, I continue to cook. On Saturday I made gnocchi (from scratch!) with brown butter, sage, and toasted hazelnuts. Also, pork tenderloin stuffed with wine-poached pears and cranberries, bacon, and mushrooms with a plum glaze.
And on Sunday I made strawberry cornmeal muffins.

Bleakly yours,

HH&F

I have a 10-year-old brother who owns a guinea pig named Diego. I met Diego for the first time a month or so ago when I went to visit and it was an interesting encounter. I saw Diego peek out from the little plastic castle in which he spends most of his time and I cooed, “Ohhh, how cute.” I was overcome with warm, fuzzy feelings. And just as I was experiencing these pleasant emotions, Diego crept out of his cage. He was a little bit like a bunny. And a lot like a rat. Remember Wuzzles? They were these cartoon animals that were two animals in one…like Eleroo (elephant / kangaroo)… So I guess a guinea pig would be like a burat (bunny/rat) or a runny (rat/bunny)… Even now when I think about it I’m confused. Do I love Diego and his kind? Are they meant to be cuddly pets or pests that should be exterminated? In any case, the more relevant question to this discussion is: SHOULD GUINEA PIGS BE EATEN?

My little brother was appalled when I told him some cultures are rather fond of guinea pigs – as food. His concerns on the matter are better illustrated in this video.

High Heels & Frijoles