My parents are both amazing cooks. My mom generally cooks the sweet, baked goods and my dad will whip up the savory things. One of my dad’s best recipes (besides his “chichen nachos” -that’s a recipe for later) is his wings. They aren’t your normal ‘drumstick and wing’ chicken wings; these have both still attached so they are twice as big and lock in all of the flavor. His secret is broiling the wings for just a few minutes at the very end getting that crispy skin on the chicken. Other than that, this recipe is super simple. No oil, no flipping, no other crazy ingredients, just sauce and perfectly cooked wings Maggie Beauty.

This year, for a big Panthers game, I decided to make these for myself and a friend, and I have to say, they were pretty close to my dad’s. They are crispy and flavorful on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. And that’s before you put on the sauce. Sometimes my dad will switch it up and make terriyaki wings (incredibly good), but I decided just to stick to the basics and make these for game day.

To begin, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Take out your chicken wings and salt and pepper both sides liberally. Place the chicken wings skin side up on the baking sheet. Bake for 45-50 minutes until chicken is fully cooked through for warm/ humid climate.

While the chicken is baking, put your hot sauce and butter into a sauce pan on low heat. Heat until butter is melted through and sauce is warm.

During the last 5-10 minutes of baking, turn on your broiler to low or turn the oven up to 475 degrees and continue baking until skin is golden brown and crispy. Watch carefully as to not burn your wings!

When the chicken is done, take them out of the oven and let them rest for about 10 minutes. Put the wings into a large mixing bowl. Top with the sauce and coat the wings thoroughly. Serve immediately with green onions Korean Skin Care Product.

When I sat down to give one last read to this post on Molly Wizenberg's new book, Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage, I did what one does when it's time to really focus. I checked Twitter reenex.

At the top of the feed I found a friend's tweet announcing that Molly was on the radio, at that very moment, talking about Delancey, in an interview recorded at the wood-fired pizza restaurant of the same name (hers with her husband, Brandon Petit). So, I had Molly's voice as company for my edits, and current rewrite, while I snacked on a piece of shortbread made from a recipe found in the book.

It was an Escher drawing, come to life, with cookies.

I've known Molly long enough that our emails go back to when I had a completely different job, and there's one in which she introduces one Mr. Brandon, still a student and waiter in NYC at the time. With that history, what follows here isn't meant to be an unbiased review. It is difficult to remove bias when speaking about a friend, and honestly, I don't want to.

Molly's site introduced me to food blogs. Orangette was mentioned somewhere else, and I clicked the link; it took me to a warm chickpea salad. I didn't really know what a food blog was, or that they would become a thing, but I still knew what I was reading was good short stay apartments.

(In searching for that particular piece just now, I fell back into step with Keaton, Jimmy's buttered brunches, and Rebecca's all-red straw collection. I lost an hour in the process, and ate a handful of salted pistachios, an apple, and two small squares of chocolate. That is the pull of Molly's writing. It makes you want to read more. It also makes you very hungry.)

But really, you don't need me to tell you how good Molly's stories are. First at Orangette, then in her column in Bon Appetit, then elsewhere (including the Washington Post and her Spilled Milk podcast), then with her first book, A Handmade Life, Molly established herself not only as a talent, but as an exceptional one. Though superlatives are often ascribed willy-nilly, she is a benchmark of contemporary food writing, in the truest, realest sense of the word audio cable.

I am continuously amazed at how many cookies there are out there that I have yet to discover. As many cookies as I’ve baked, and I’ve baked many, there are always so many more waiting in the wings.

During the course of a day, when some people might stare out the window, go for a short walk or go grab a coffee in order to take a short break, I will take a few minutes to troll my favourite food sites. This always perks me up.

It was during one of these quiet moments, a few months back, that I came across the recipe for Strazzate on Saveur’s site.

I have never heard of these cookies, which are a mixture of almonds, chocolate pieces and a good shot (or two) of a liqueur called Strega.

They are apparently from the Basilicata region of Italy and while not pretty to look at, they were a lovely combination of crunchy exterior and soft interior, thanks to the almonds and liqueur.

While they were on the sweet side, there was a very pleasant herbal tone to the cookies provided by the Strega.

For those that don’t know, Strega is another in a long line of liqueurs that Italians seem to be adept at producing. This particular liqueur is on the herbal side in terms of flavour and taste since it’s made using a number of herbs. The very distinct colour comes from the use of saffron as part of the process of making the liqueur. In Italian, the word “strega” means witch.

Growing up, my parents had a special cupboard in the basement that was the storage place for (what seemed to me) a fairly healthy supply of certain alcohols that seemed to be very important to the family.

My determination that these liquids were important to the family was based on the following: a) we were never allowed to run out of them, b) when going to visit someone or when someone came to visit us, these always seemed to be the gifts of choice and c) my mom used them generously in baking and cooking.

I speak of whiskey, rum, brandy, anisette, cognac, amaretto, grappa (heaven help you if the grappa ran out …), alchermes, vermouth and amaro.

The one that used to terrify me was the amaro. My parents always had a brand called Centerba that was once foisted on me when I had a tummy ache. I was told it would help settle my stomach and make me feel better.

I was lied to.

While Strega was not a liqueur we had in stock, it is one that I’ve warmed up to in my adulthood and I certainly enjoy a sip every now and then.

It’s been a long, mundane week. By day, I poke and prod at other people's punctuation. I cross items off the list. I fall asleep on the bus. And I pass my nights on the couch with a highlighter and a pack of Post-It flags, wrapped in a wool blanket and wearing pink-and-green Christmas gag-gift socks with candy canes and “Sweet Stuff” printed around the ankle.

After so much toil and troubling footwear, I’ve earned something very, very good. Short of dashing Frenchmen beating down my door, I at least deserve a glass of wine, a piece of cake, and hours of exuberant hip-shaking and singing to myself. With years of practice, I've learned what makes me happy, and although I don't often go so far as to surprise myself with flowers, I’m quite good at anticipating and fulfilling my needs. After all, as Autumn, wise waxtician and facialist of Duque, says, “Honey, you’re always dating yourself!”

The evening thus began with an after-work stop for the holy trinity of foodstuffs: a bottle of wine, good dark chocolate, and butter. Coming home, I took down one of the wine glasses my neighbors recently lent me—ah, the luck of having generous teetotalers next door!—and I preheated the oven and fired up the stereo. Then I retrieved from the refrigerator my beloved jar of sourdough starter, foamy, thick, and very lively, thanks to a recent feeding.

I set to work on Margot’s trademark sourdough chocolate cake, a moist, fine-crumbed wonder I’d helped to make several times but had never put together on my own. Somewhere between greasing the pan and creaming the butter, I poured myself another half glass of wine. [For the scorekeepers present, that’s one and a half very modest glasses, total.] Then things started to get a little unsettling. Half an hour later, I sent the following e-mail to Margot:

I’ve never been a fan of Chinese food, or at least not the stuff that generally goes by that name in the U.S. When I was little, my family often went to our nearby Hunan Chinese Restaurant, but I remember it less for the food than for the décor: the goldfish in the fountain at the center of the room; the tinkly click-click of the beaded curtains in the hallway to the bathroom; and Shawn, the maître d’ with tight, shiny skin and starchy chinos with cavernous front pleats. As for the food, I’ll admit to a pre-teen’s weakness for crispy egg rolls, sweet-and-sour chicken, and beef with snow peas, but I drew the line there. What I knew as Chinese food always seemed to taste the same—lightly salty, greasy, and slimy with cornstarch.

But in recent years, I’ve found myself enjoying many things I’d previously relegated to the “no, thank you” category, and I realized that I had to give Chinese food another shot. After all, my condescension was based almost solely on those childhood experiences in Oklahoma, a state much better known for chicken-fried steak than for Peking duck. For the sake of fairness, I had to give it another go.

Still, it wasn’t a priority. In fact, I managed to live in Seattle for two years without ever venturing into the International District, although I often thought longingly of things I’d likely find there: bahn mi, rice noodles, knobby vegetables, musty-smelling teas. Note, however, that Chinese food didn’t make the list Maggie Beauty.

But all that changed last Sunday, when Kate and I strolled from her apartment down to the “I.D.” (as it’s called around here) on a scouting mission for a cocktail party we’re scheming. Dear reader, we both know that I’m prone to exaggeration, but believe me when I say this: I was in heaven. We gazed through windows at menus; we stroked bagfuls of wiry greens; and I dragged Kate into all the Chinese bakeries, where I ogled the soft, round buns and brioche-like breads filled with coconut or taro. I could have stared into the bakery cases for hours, singing along dreamily with the easy-listening music (ahh, the sound of my childhood!) that seemed to follow us from storefront to storefront. Even Kate, half-Chinese and something of a regular in the neighborhood, was entranced by the brightly colored, eerily perfect cakes, although she was less impressed with my lip-synching.

Somewhere along the way, after the fortune-cookie factory and before the Chinese grocery, we passed a restaurant called Shanghai Garden. Grabbing my arm as though a bolt of lightning had surged through her body, Kate panted something about vines. From what I could understand, Shanghai Garden is apparently known for its stir-fried pea vines, a dish that Kate likens to catnip for humans. Recalling an exchange I’d read on eGullet, I asked if they served hand-shaved noodles. Kate nodded. It was a date Maggie Beauty.

So last night we two descended on a very full Shanghai Garden, its glass tabletops gleaming and requisite fish tank glowing. We were seated by the window, at a table bathed in surprisingly flattering neon pink light. Warming our hands against white ceramic teacups, we sized up the extensive menu. The pea vines were a must, and after some discussion and more panting, we settled on barley-green hand-shaved noodle chow mein with pork, as well as an order of vegetable steamed dumplings to start.

The dumplings arrived quickly, little doughy purses gathered into the shape of waves Maggie Beauty.