Can we agree that the best thing about holiday parties is the food?

If you’ve ever had a stuffy nose, you know how important your sense of smell is to your sense of taste. You can be eating the most delicious food in the world, but if you can’t smell a lick then it’ll all just taste like underseasoned Styrofoam. In theory, scent should be able to satiate. One time I tried to make…

Craft brewers, perhaps the scrappiest team of underdogs in American culture, have never shied away from taking risks. These risks almost always succeed in building buzz, even if (or especially if?) the brewery in question gets slapped with a cease and desist letter or two along the way.

Saudi Arabia has been trying hard in recent years to rehabilitate its reputation as a repressive place for women. They can now wear colors. As of last year, they can drive. Earlier this year, a royal decree by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman permitted them to travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission. And…

It’s still too early to say for sure, but a bunch of 4- to 11-year-olds in London might have been instrumental to a major medical breakthrough.

Some people love Taco Bell to such an extent that seemingly nothing can stop them from living más: Not a blood alcohol level way over the legal limit, not the fact they’re driving an oversize RV that can’t fit through a drive thru—not even a bright red “DO NOT ENTER” sign. When your body tells you that it needs a…

By now, you’re probably familiar with last week’s Peloton ad, which, instead of making the $2,245 exercise bike seem like a nice holiday gift, appears to be selling a torture device for imprisoned wives. Peloton stock dropped precipitously, amounting to a $1.5 billion loss in market value. The actor who played the…

This holiday season, let us extend our charity beyond humans, beyond mammals. Let us open our hearts to the plight of disabled chickens; let us be vessels of avian compassion; let us use our hands to build them teeny tiny chicken wheelchairs.

Art is not just a celebration of beauty. Art is life. Art is a force that smashes the frozen sea inside us. Art, ideally, should make its creators and also gallery owners lots and lots of money.

For anyone looking to do a good deed before the year is out, it’s worth remembering that bell-ringers’ big red buckets aren’t the only place to perform a kindness (and those are controversial as it is). According to San Diego ABC News affiliate KGTV, Mainstream Bar & Grill in nearby Poway recently had to shut down for…

I am a huge fan of any “booster” recipe, a sort of a mini-recipe that is both easy and packs a flavorful punch, designed to enhance other recipes. Whether it’s a crunchy topping, a glaze, or a sauce, these sorts of recipes can take a dish from simple to special, usually with minimal effort. Often, they can be made…

Fruit baskets come in for a lot of ridicule this time of year. Mostly because in general we tend to forget they exist until December comes and we realize we have to buy holiday presents for people we don’t really know all that well but to whom we must convey respect, or at least professional appreciation. And then we…

Years ago, I vowed to allow myself to be proud of my accomplishments, even though I’m Catholic and I know that this makes God angry. I have sons, and sons learn about women from watching their mothers. When anyone notes one of my husband’s accomplishments, he says “thank you,” and that’s that. Compliment received,…

There is no song that sums of the American Jewish experience better than that heartrending classic “A Lonely Jew on Christmas” from South Park: “I can’t sing Christmas songs or decorate a Christmas tree / Or leave water out for Rudolph ‘cause there’s something wrong with me / My people don’t believe in Jesus Christ’s…