Dear dinner diaryI’m back. Did you miss me? I, you. It is officially fresh notebook and journaling season. I’ve long been enthralled by Sylvia Plath’s Food Diary, an account on X that chronicles what the poet ate and drank, according to her journals, letters and other published writings. The intimate entries range from the gastronomic aside (“made a big picnic,” Aug. 24, 1952; “I ate as much as I could of the baked beans,” 1963) to more evocative, lyrical accounts of the charmingly mundane: “Woke, dazed, to pare potatoes into cool white ovoids, carrots into long conical spheres, onions slippery glossed & bulbous popped & cracked from their rattle-paper skins,” March 8, 1958. These diaries have been top of mind after several weekends of sumptuous summer meals away from home in various cabins upstate. I snap my little photos to remember them, but I know writing down the subtler details better helps me commit them to memory. I’ve pledged to make a habit of jotting down the big and the small. That’s how I can tell you that on Aug. 24 I ate Mark Bittman’s five-star corn salad with tomatoes, feta and mint, prepared by two friends, at dusk on a towel-draped picnic table. That’s perfect end-of-summer eating — salty, sweet and fresh. Get it while you still can. Corn Salad With Tomatoes, Feta and MintAnd on Aug. 29 I cubed a two-day-old loaf of sourdough to riff on Melissa Clark’s panzanella, dicing up yellow, orange and cherry-red heirloom tomatoes and tossing them with plenty of garlic, herbs and more vinegar than called for. I left out the cucumbers, mozzarella and capers, but the dish still packed plenty of punch. I also made oven-roasted corn on the cob, something my dining companion didn’t even know you could do. Reader, you can! On Aug. 31 I drank three consecutive cans of Coca-Cola. On Sept. 2 I halved Alexa Weibel’s instant-classic crispy tofu tacos, a simple recipe to scale down, though I immediately wished I hadn’t. Seasoned with soy sauce, cumin, paprika, cayenne and garlic and onion powders, the filling is smoky, savory and a little spicy. I ate the entire sheet pan in one sitting. Next time, I’d like to try the filling in big leaves of Bibb lettuce. And on Sept. 7 I made the Brooklyn-infamous Chez Ma Tante pancakes, piling them onto a platter with raspberries and halved Thomas’ corn cakes that had been griddled by a friend. It was Sunday, and I was too lazy to make clarified butter from scratch, so I fried the pancakes in coconut oil to brilliant, crisp results and sweet aromas. They don’t call for buttermilk, making them the no-brainer choice for last-minute pancake cravings like ours. I’m making note of my future plans, too. Christian Reynoso’s creamy butternut squash and coconut noodle soup, a loose vegetarian riff on khao soi, has been scribbled into my journal, as have a few ingredients I need to use up: about one-third of a box of bucatini, a ton of mint, a block of firm tofu, a pint of cherry tomatoes. So I’m also thinking about Melissa’s creamy bucatini with spring onions and mint, as well as her crispy tofu with balsamic tomatoes — two quick and easy dishes for the busy September days ahead. As one of Plath’s entries, from 1959, reads: “I do love to cook & just don’t understand how anybody can be a bad cook when the recipes are so simple and easy to follow.” Thanks for reading, happy journaling, and see you next week.
Panzanella
Crispy Tofu Tacos
Creamy Butternut Squash and Coconut Noodle SoupFor a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. One More Thing!The journalist Reina Gattuso wrote about Sylvia Plath’s Food Diary for Atlas Obscura in 2021, and her piece is worth a read if you missed it back then. In it, she spoke to Rebecca Brill, the writer behind the account, and explored Plath’s complex relationship with food and domesticity. “Brill hopes that this historical reimagining offers, tweet by tweet, a more nuanced and joyful portrait of a complex woman,” she wrote. Email us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have questions about your account.
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