Some Small News of No Consequence

Every Friday morning, Bon Appétit senior staff writer Alex Beggs shares weekly highlights from the BA offices, from awesome new recipes to office drama to restaurant recs, with some weird (food!) stuff she saw on the internet thrown in. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.

Belated postcard from Paris

Florence’s Paris apartment was filled with art and strings of colorful baubles. There was a miniature dollhouse kitchen scene displayed on a bookshelf; a huge oil painting consuming the entire wall of a teeny guest bathroom. So many DVDs! This was the first time I’d stayed in an Airbnb that was actually, clearly, someone’s home. So I kept joking that we’d return from dinner one night and Flo would be there, watching TV on the couch. Well...

On my birthday, halfway through shaving my right leg in a luxurious Airbnb birthday bath, the doorbell rang. Assuming it was Bill (classic Bill) back from his run and too lazy to use the key, I ignored it. Until the door opened and a voice called out, “alooooooooo?” It was indeed Florence!!! She’d forgotten medication she needed, which happened to be in the bathroom where I was occupied in ze nude. So that—plus treating myself to a tortoiseshell hair comb with my name engraved upon it, and the big beans at La Buvette, and the blood sausage at Le Verre Volé, and a long lunch at the perfect restaurant Mokonuts—was the highlight of my trip to Paris.

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Soooo what’d I miss?

[Flips past 17 pages of gigantic world events.] What’s this? A Claire Saffitz cameo on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver!!! Yesss!

The first thing I cooked

Was Andy Baraghani’s caramelized cabbage (which SO MANY people are making!). It was ridiculously good. “I would not have imagined that cabbage could taste this good,” wrote Anonymous from Maryland. (That’s from the generous tomato paste + spice combo.) I loved it so much I had to ration it out in my lunch this week because overeating cabbage risks a gaseous condition I call “deflating mattress farts.” A nonstop stream of toots. Disturbing.

Get the recipe: Fall-Apart Caramelized Cabbage

In memoriam

I was saddened to hear the news that the founder of Trader Joe’s, Joseph Coulombe, passed away last week. (Maybe some of you know about my life’s work reviewing the store’s new snacks, which comes from a place of love and devotion.) He wanted the store to be for “overeducated and underpaid people, for all the classical musicians, museum curators, journalists.” Gotta love that specificity. I’ll be raising a spicy cheese crunchy in his honor.

In lady news

This week, I read that the good martini restaurant Long Island Bar no longer calls their single-patty burger the “Ladies’ Burger.” Great, cool, fab. Alas, for every inch forward, a giant leap back, because I ALSO read that the new terrible bad restaurant from Mr. Salt Bae has a “FREE FOR LADIES” veggie burger that sounds like a crime against broccoli and gender discrimination laws.

Get yourself a tube of almond paste

I baked the famous Chez Panisse almond cake following David Leibovitz’s recipe last weekend and it might be my new favorite cake in the world. It’s buttery, eggy, almondy moist sponge. It all happens in the food processor and I even froze a wedge of it for later. I love that about a cake: staying power.

P&V

Little did I know when I invented a hard drink known as “hard prune juice” that Amiel Stanek was lightyears ahead of me. His recipe: drink half of a container of prune juice, then add vodka, give it a light shake to combine, and drink in a dark alleyway. “And you’re supposed to drink it FAST.” Noted.

Read more: 17 New Hard Drinks the World Isn’t Ready For

Edit of the week

U got it, Meryl!!

Tag of the week

Unnecessary food meme of the week

This one really hit home.

Unnecessary food feud of the week

Sarah Jampel asked the room: “People who have a gooseneck kettle, are you annoyed by how slowly it pours when you're using it for something other than coffee?” “It makes me feel fancy!” said Aliza Abarbanel. Amanda Shapiro is never annoyed by it, and, “it’s perfect for watering my plants.”

Well I am annoyed! I use my kettle to make tea, instant oats, and to fill crusty pots with soapy water to soak; I switched from a gooseneck to this Cuisinart electric kettle that heats nearly instantly and I’m never going back. Jesse Sparks is with me: “Get a normal kettle and pour it slowly—it’s called mindfulness,” he said. Jampel is conflicted, as you can tell from the variation from lowercase to CAPS: “I’ve always wished that my neck were longer, so I admire them/they make me feel elegant,” she said. “I love the CONTROL they offer, but when you need to pour FAST, like when you’re soaking rice noodles, they are PAINFULLY slow.”

Alex Delany uses his gooseneck for pour-over coffee and can’t fathom a situation in which he’d use it otherwise: “It’s not like you’re wasting years of your life because you have a gooseneck kettle,” he noted, gazing into both my past and future. Chris Morocco is obsessed with his: “Stagg is the best I have found. Annoying for tea because it comes out so slowly, still worth it.” (Maybe you’ve spotted the matte black kettle on his station in Test Kitchen videos.) Well this was a feud that didn’t really go anywhere. But some weeks are like that.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit