PicoBlog

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts (like this one) each week. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading. You don’t even have to walk inside Flakowitz of Boynton before the authentically Jewish experiences begin. Arriving at the iconic deli at 10:30 a.

(Image credit: Gerry Visco, 2010) In the summer of 2008, I climbed a number of stairs up to the sixth floor of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, where I had agreed to start the following fall. I was feeling pretty ambivalent still: it would be my third school in as many years, and I felt like I might be making a terrible mistake by not putting down roots at my previous school.

“I just want to say that I truly love u all… remember if u r lonely… I’m thinking of you… & I know how it feels to be alone. I want you to know that you are beautiful and sexy and I love you.” That was a tweet from Sophie Anderson, the beloved pornstar and viral sensation, who passed away earlier this week at 36-years-old. She died two weeks after the sudden death of her husband, former soccer star-turned-pornstar Oliver Spedding.

I spent the past four years doing loops around the United States (plus a few international cities) as the Restaurant Editor at Food & Wine and I get 2-3 texts or DMs, at minimum, daily, asking me where they should eat in X, Y, Z city. Often times, those texts also come with different caveats like “I can’t eat seafood,” or “it’s a large group,” or “we really want pasta.” Instead of creating lists on the fly for each person, I figured I might as well start a newsletter that puts all of these recommendations in one spot — one with a searchable archive the next time you’re going on a trip somewhere.

I’ve always been more of cake over pie person. The only exception is my family’s banana cream pie and Cantonese egg tarts. You’ll most likely run into these little eggy pastries at Chinese bakeries or at dim sum. When they are warm and extra flaky I can easily polish off three of them without thinking twice. I have a great recipe for classic egg tarts (and Macau style ones, too) in my cookbook, Mooncakes and Milk Bread!

Hello, Dames Nation. Sophie and Margaret are off this week and I hope they are getting some REST but I bet they’re working hard and putting still more amazing work out into the world as per usual. I’m going to talk about Way Bandy, makeup artist to the stars of the ‘70s and ‘80s, for a while and I hope you’ll join me. I’ve been thinking about Way Bandy a lot lately.

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived! Today is officially the first day of the saldi (sales)!  In Italy, there are semi-annual sales in January and July. The exact dates vary from year to year and region to region, but there’s no doubt that these are the best times of year to shop. In Lazio, the summer sales officially kick off today and will last until August 16.

“My ma died in February.” Ada Calhoun and I are at the International Bar in the East Village, and I’m telling her the specifics of my mother’s death. The afternoon is gray and rainy, but the day-drinkers around us are jovial, and the Guinness I’m sipping warms my chilled bones a bit. Ada kindly listens while I talk, she herself having lost a parent in October of 2022—which, if I’m being honest, is probably why I called her to ask if she wanted to go on a walk.

Hello!! Welcome!! I've been wanting a place of my own for quite some time now, where my recipes and ramblings could live side by side without an algorithm to judge 'em and a like count to give me anxiety (or a boost of serotonin, depending on how many likes we're talking).  About a year ago, I even went as far as buying a domain, website template, and hosting subscription with all the additional bells, whistles, and upsells.