There have been so many changes in my life this year.

Chris and I moved in together! I am fumbling through a fledgeling textile line and a novel and the dream of a Thai-herb-inspired juice business. I learned to bake. I started personal training again.

On the road to Natchez, Mississippi. The only place I’ve traveled in nearly a year.

Perhaps, MOST importantly …

we finally bought a home soda carbonator for the kitchen. We chose the Aarke over the Soda Stream. I know. You guys are riveted.

But, if you knew the amount we spent on Perrier previously, you’d spit out your coffee and then never speak to us again … cause we are weirdos.

Ah, 2020. The strangest things bring me peace in this Swiss-cheese-canoe of a year.

The kitchen brings me peace most of all. Even when it’s a wreck. It’s my happy place; my small sanctuary within our apartment, where I can put on an episode of the Spooked podcast or some Nina Simone. I like wiping my hands on super-soft linen aprons. I like the way dough feels when it gets all silky. I love the smell of hot sauce and vinegar and cumin. I enjoy the accidental workout of hefting a cast-iron skillet or a 6-quart Dutch Oven. I like tending my basil clippings on the windowsill, before anyone else is awake, filling an old wine bottle to water the plants on the front balcony.

The kitchen is where I fail and where I excel. It’s where I get stressed, and I calm down. It’s the domain of my cat begging for cheddar cheese at my feet and the scene of the crime. Scars dot my forearms and alongside my fingers; knife accidents and oven burns. (Someone please buy me longer oven mitts for Christmas).

Successes I had in 2020: Finding a soothing amount of Rattan (there’s never enough), making my first giant centerpiece for Halloween, and finally getting Turkish Pide correct.

The kitchen might be the heart of the home, but it’s really where my own heart goes into things. I believe food is the great unifier. I believe we should always seek to build a longer table, instead of a taller fence. Food is how I show people love.

My travels come home in my kitchen. There are hot sauces from Cambodia in my fridge, taking me right back to a small school in Sihanoukville every time I open them. There’s a ziplock bag of ground spice mix from Istanbul that has no name, and a tiny, beat-to-hell metal wok, gifted to me in Myanmar. It fries an egg like nothing I’ve ever found.

If you’re looking to gift someone a skillet, I’m really enjoying this new company––Made In. I’m probably going to gift myself one of their Blue Carbon Steel pans later this year.

So many of us are leaning into our kitchens this year. Food is getting us through all the bullshit. I made a full Christmas dinner this past July, and it felt incredible to set a crazy-beautiful table … just for two.

With all of that said, I thought I’d share the gadgets, the sauces, the linens, and the culinary workhorses that I cannot live without day-to-day.

They all make fabulous gifts for that similar culinary nerd in your world, and the majority of these are small-business owned. If you’ve got money for presents, please consider shopping small and directly from a company, instead of giving into the ease of Amazon.

Aarke makes a seriously gorgeous counter-top carbonator. No more plastic bottle waste, either. Is the gold kinda tacky? Perhaps. We got chrome.

Have you tried Pok Pok’s Som Cordial?

Does that sentence sounds like garbled word salad? Yeah. Kinda.

Pok Pok is (sorry, was) the most incredible Thai restaurant by Andy Richter in Portland, Oregon. At one point, there were outposts in New York, too.

Then our government ignored a raging pandemic and left the restaurant industry to fend for itself. Pok Pok––though incredibly successful in 2019––is no more in 2020. Chef Andy Richter moved to Thailand, and I’m genuinely happy for him.

However! His ridiculously vibrant and delicious line of syrups––the Som Cordials––remain available for now. We have a membership. Three bottles arrive in the mail every 3 months for $50. We get to choose 2 flavors and then one is a “seasonal.”

Fill up a glass with soda water and mix in some Som. Then put in some tequila. Because it’s 2020.

A great gift option for yourself or any bartender. My personal favorites are the Pineapple Szechuan and the Thai Basil.

I’ve started throwing the world’s tiniest dinner parties. One person. Maybe two. It’s always the same people. I get a chance to work on recipes and to feel slightly normal. I make sure to deck out the table like it’s New Year’s Eve, even though it’s a Tuesday … and I’ve burnt everything..

One of my favorite purchases was this candlestick set from an antique shop on Etsy. They were $60 for the pair and they have that mix of noir-gaudy-bohemian delightfulness that I really enjoy in design. Cobralabrazzzzz.

I got these from Heyman’s Antiques on Etsy. But many, many shops have them for sale.
The House of Baltic Linen is another Etsy option for great tablecloths and sheets. They take forever to ship though, so maybe consider that when gifting.

A few weeks ago, I woke up all excited to make bread. Making bread destroys my kitchen, because I’m a rare combo of messy and clumsy. I opened up a bag of White Lily and found a bunch of tiny, disgusting black bug friends. I pirate cursed and threw the whole thing away and went back to bed. Then, I found similar bugs in my rice later that day!

“WTF is happening!?”

Louisiana is happening. You can’t thwack down a swamp 300 years ago, create a city and expect the bugs to move. No, they just shrug their shoulders and live in your house.

I cleaned the entire kitchen. Then, Google told me that often the eggs from bugs are in the flour and the rice from the warehouses. They hatch after you buy it. EW DAVID!

The best move? Put your flour in the freezer for an hour when you get it. Or, if it’s not too many bugs, just sift them out and use it. They won’t hurt you, apparently.

But, the best option is to buy these Airscape Canisters. The double seal keeps rice and flour and sugar and oats super fresh, as well.

You can buy them from one of my favorite kitchen sites, Food52.com

Finally,

I gift hot sauce to at least one person every year––my mom. Even if it’s just a small bottle of Tabasco, I make sure it’s somewhere in the gift pile or the stockings. I love that we both love hot sauce.

Hank Sauce is one of my favorite to gift. Made in New Jersey, by three buddies from college.

There are these things you carry with you … tiny moments of connection to your family members … that you enjoy more and more as you get older. It’s not even something tactile, but more a habit or shared a head-tilt.

It’s the way my dad and I high-five. We hang on to each other at the end of it, and do this dumb, funny arm wrestling thing; usually in the parking lot of fast food places on road trips.

It’s the way my brother and I speak about music, with a frantic excitement if the other hasn’t heard a song or a band yet.

My brother and me, putting up with my mom taking 1,000 photos an hour.

It’s watching my mom splash hot sauce alllll over something that … well … probably shouldn’t have hot sauce on it; and then asking her to pass me the bottle, because I’m “gonna have to attempt this.”

This year, it feels even better to buy from an independent business. There’s a longing to see people, as you slap a stamp on things, shipping it off to them instead. I’m hoping I get to go home for Christmas, to watch my dad open gifts in the sloooooowest way possible, picking quietly at a single corner of tape, as my mom puts hot sauce in her coffee.

I wish you all so much joy. Hold your loved ones close in your mind if you’re apart and remember that being apart could be saving someone’s life this year. And, you can always have Christmas in July. I did.