
I really like shellfish. Like, a lot. Crab, lobster, shrimp, clams — I would eat the ocean dry of these animals if I could. My brother, a cook, knows this about me, and so the other night he came over to make me a big bowl of cioppino, which is a seafood stew created by Italian immigrants living in the San Francisco area in the 1800s. Cioppino generally contains whatever leftover fish and shellfish one has lying around (assuming you have these things lying around; lucky you), in a tomato broth. It is very messy to eat, and very delicious. Cioppino is surprisingly simple to make, and not as expensive as most restaurants would have you believe (cioppino in a good restaurant can run you north of $30 a bowl). The fish and shellfish you choose to include is up to you; chunks of fish fillet, crab, shrimp, scallops, mussels [...]
Nice to see you. Please don’t touch me.
We do this thing with our hands, human beings. We cough in them. We eat food from them, licking each finger then picking the remainders from our teeth afterward. We wipe our butts with them. We stick various fingers in our ears and our noses. We pick up our pets’ feces with them, and our children’s. We sneeze into them, then wipe them on our pants because we think no one is watching us. We touch garbage cans, public toilets and the bottoms of our shoes. But the worst thing we touch? Other people’s hands. I’m a very polite person. I say “Please” and “Thank you” and I hold doors open for people and I let people who are waiting to pull into traffic go in front of me. I also believe in the polite and proper greeting of friends and strangers, which includes, among other things, shaking hands. I [...]