PicoBlog

That’s right: bye bye Park Slope, hello Cobble Hill! I have moved since we last spoke, and I am officially ALL IN on Cobble Hill right now. On top of hosting my first dessert pop-up with my sister Milly, I’ve been trying my best to hit every single establishment in the neighborhood that has a young vibe, since so much of Cobble Hill is overrun with parents and children and I’m simply not on that wavelength yet.

Saint-Germain doesn’t have the hipster cred of the 11th or the architectural richness of the Marais, but this Left Bank neighborhood represents for so many people the postcard Paris of their dreams. With its stately Haussmannian buildings, twisting streets, and leafy parks, Saint-Germain presents an ideal habitat for strolling (then reading, then snacking). Its streets are filled with bookshops, antique shops, and just-plain-weird shops. One of my favorite is Deyrolle, a taxidermy boutique that was frequented by Picasso, Dalí and Modigliani.

The Latin Quarter is one of my favorite parts of Paris. I’ll tell you about some of my favorite places to visit in these first few paragraphs, but you can scroll down to find the restaurant recommendations. The Latin Quarter gets its name from the common language that was spoken by students who came study in this neighborhood a thousand years ago. The early scholastic gatherings took place in the open air - students would bring their own stools to attend outdoor lectures here before the Sorbonne was founded in 1253.

This is the monthly extra post for paying subscribers. To receive full access to ‘Stiff Upper Quip’, upgrade your subscription here; it costs less than a mid-priced alcoholic beverage and is better for you. “We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” – The Middle Years (1893) I will start this piece with a bold claim, which will hopefully inspire you to read a little further – setting this in the context that my newsletter posts about artistic matters always hugely underperform the rest, for the simple reason that the reader feels they should already know the artist in question – namely that I believe that Henry James is the best novelist in the English language.

‘Tis the season for pie, right? There are two types of pies that we love with a passion: fruit or meat pies in a crust, and pizza pies. Dean Martin (and countless gondoliers in the years since) made the “pizza pie” phrase famous in the song That’s Amore.  But you might be wondering why we might even say the words pizza pie together at all, considering we tend to think of pizza and pie as two very different things.

If you can only visit one city in Belgium - it will probably be Brussels. After all, thats where you landed. If you can only visit two cities, there is a good chance you will head to Bruges, or maybe Antwerp. But, let me make the case for looking beyond the obvious. I am a big fan of less obvious cities and towns. Less touristy, but maybe no less interesting for the tourists that do turn up.

It’s a good question, because she wrote more than 40 books in her career. But there is not one right answer to this question! Often in the past the answer was to start with the Goudge book that you had available to you. Fortunately, now all of her adult and children’s novels are back in print so your options have expanded! We are still waiting to see her books make it onto audiobook, and to see the reprinting of her narrative biography of Jesus and her short story collections.

Madeline Miller’s Circe came out in early 2018. In the years since, the category “feminist retellings of Greek myth with the main character’s name as the title” has really exploded. The six examples above — Atalanta, Clytemnestra, Medusa, Medea, Alcestis, and Phaedra — only represent a subset of the examples I could find with 2023 or 2024 pub dates! Broaden the search to include a few more years and you can add Ariadne, Elektra, Hera, Pandora, and more.

Hello friends, I’m back with another gluten free product test! This time gluten free pizza crusts. I have an extra newsletter coming out for all of you this week on Thursday - a guest article, I think you are going to love it! It’s wonderful to make your crust from scratch - I have quite a few pizza recipes - try this Chicago Style Stuffed Deep Dish Pizza for instance.