How to Be Bored, and What You Can Learn From It
Figuring out the root cause of our lack of inspiration can help us make better choices in how we spend our time, experts say.
Voters Have Expanded Medicaid in 6 States. Is South Dakota Next?
“With people being put on Medicaid, you’re taking purpose from people, you’re taking dignity from people,” Mr. Moore said. “People need to work.” But advocates say South Dakotans who need health care are already working; the state’s unemployment rate is 2.3 percent, the lowest figure in more than a decade. The prospect of new jobs…
Julie Powell, Author of ‘Julie & Julia,’ Took Food Writing to a Franker, Darker Place
At the end of the year that Julie Powell spent cooking every recipe (more or less) from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” she came to mayonnaise collée. It is a hand-whisked mayonnaise thickened with gelatin — a kind of stiff, salty garnish that was piped decoratively over aspics and the like in…
Britain Takes Sides Over a Chocolate Bar That Is Often a Sad Holiday Leftover
LONDON — Hating or loving the coconut-and-chocolate Bounty bar, perhaps Britain’s most controversial confection, is the kind of topic that can cleave a nation in two in a much less harmful way than nations are usually cleaved in two. Recognizing Bounty’s less-than-stellar reputation, and perhaps trying to profit from people talking about it, Mars Wrigley…
Camille Charrière’s Mango Collection Is Inspired by Her Party Girl Era
Combine Parisian pragmatism with a Londoner’s “cool” factor and you’ll get Camille Charrière (a.k.a. Camille Over the Rainbow, a.k.a. Tasmania—more to come on that later). Once a fashion outsider working in finance, Charrière broke into the world of style and celebrities the old-fashioned way, or shall we say the new old-fashioned way: by starting a…
Delicious One-Pot Wonders With Big Flavor
After reading Yewande Komolafe’s most recent column — the diary of a truly perfect fall day with her daughter in Brooklyn — I started daydreaming about getting a pot of maafé going, scenting my kitchen with sizzling garlic and ginger and simmering tomatoes and peanut butter. Yewande makes the comforting Senegalese stew with plantains, squash,…
This Cocktail Recipe Will Change Your Mind About Sherry
Light, crisp, bright, yeasty, floral, savory, full-bodied, syrupy, sweet: Sherry’s spectrum of styles is wide and varied, translating to infinite adaptability in the world of cocktails. “Sherry itself is already like a cocktail,” said Chantal Tseng, a bartender and sommelier based in Washington, D.C. “All the elements are there. You have the complexity, you have…
As Dollar Strengthens, U.S. Students in Europe Feel the Benefits
The strengthened dollar sweetened the deal for Callie Colvin, 23, from North Richland Hills, Texas, who in September began a yearlong master’s program in modern history at the London School of Economics. Ms. Colvin said that she applied primarily to U.S. colleges, but that she chose the London university in part because the tuition was…
Can Cultural Identity Be Defined by Food?
“The food your grandmother cooked, that everybody cooked — suddenly it’s called something else,” Johari said. “It’s convenient for people to say, ‘It’s all shared.’ Of course it’s shared, but please give recognition where it’s due.” AT DAWN, FROM the Southern Ridges, the city was a set of dominoes against a sky of smoked orange.…
Indian Drugs, Sold Worldwide, Sometimes Deadly
They had fevers, aches, runny noses, the normal stuff of childhood. The kind of illnesses for which a doctor would prescribe cough syrup. But the children’s condition only worsened. They developed persistent diarrhea, then could no longer urinate, as their kidneys failed. The very medicines that were supposed to make them better, simple cough syrups…