three best bites: free for everybody edition

Free subscribers, hi! Because I’m feeling especially benevolent, for the next four weeks, best bites posts are going to be available to everyone, not just paid readers. This is maybe a little bit of a sales tactic, I will admit, because how are you supposed to know you want to pay for something if you haven’t actually seen what you’re considering paying for?

Sure, Substack offers all kinds of free trials, but I understand if you’re leery of those. I once clicked a free trial to the Orlando Sentinel so I could read some stuff I needed to read for work, and then I proceeded to pay for the Orlando Sentinel for something like a year because I could never get anyone on the line when I tried to cancel. (PSA: If you do sign up for a paid Grazing subscription and ever want or need to cancel, you don’t need to talk to a single human to do so.)

So welcome behind the paywall. It’s nice here. Enjoy.

pasta with pork and tomato cream sauce: After work one night last week, I went to the grocery store with no plan, and I returned home with a bunch of fruit and snacks, plus some ground pork. When it came time to make dinner the next night, I pulled a few tomatoes off the vine and went to work on some pasta. After cooking the ground pork in a frying pan and noticing how uninspiring and dry it looked, I started to silently berate myself for not buying sausage, but then I noticed I had some heavy cream in the fridge. I simmered the pork and tomatoes in said cream, and the pasta sauce that resulted was good enough for Jesse to ask what this new recipe was and if I could make it again. There is no recipe, not yet, but stay tuned. I’m definitely making it again, and I’ll make sure to write it down.

Italian sandwich: There’s an Italian restaurant next to my office that has a long, narrow patio alongside the sidewalk. Men in suits eat lunch there, for what I assume are hours on end. Whenever I go for a walk after eating lunch at my desk, I look at these stuffed suits and make up stories about their lives. I assume the food they’re eating is terrible.

The other day, though, I was taken to lunch at this restaurant. I was a lady at a lunch meeting. I was not wearing a suit. I was, in fact, wearing sandals from Old Navy. I assumed the food I was about to eat would be terrible. I was shocked to find out it wasn’t.

The Italian sandwich at this restaurant was borderline spectacular. It was served on one of those structured but soft rolls and layered with mortadella, prosciutto, salami, thick slices of pecorino cheese, pepper relish and garlic aioli. The pepper relish — which looked like an electric orange paste — stole the show. It was spicy and just sweet enough to cut the salt from all that cured meat. This sandwich cost $19. I’m not usually in the business of $19 weekday lunches, but there’s a decent chance I’ll order one to go soon and eat it at my desk, like the non-suit that I am.

port, alongside a totally nonsense tinned fish-centric dinner

Quinta do Pego port: I’d never really been a port person until last month, and I’m still not a port person, I guess — but I now aspire to be one. You see, my best friend loves port, and when she came to visit me a few days after her birthday, I figured I should have some on hand. So I went to the liquor store near me, where there’s one particularly overzealous employee who always ends up being super helpful — but the process by which we arrive at that assistance is usually just a little bit awkward.

In this instance, I told the nice man I knew nothing about port, but that my port-loving friend was about to arrive. He proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions about what port she likes, and I proceeded to remind him that I know nothing about port and thus had no insight. We danced this dance for a while, and I finally told him tactfully that I’d like to also not break the bank. A bit more deliberations, and we we’d narrowed things down to two bottles, one slightly more expensive than the other. I shrugged and asked the man which he’d pick if he were in my shoes. “Both!” he told me. I explained that I did not need two bottles of port, and finally — finally! — we landed on the cheaper option, which my friend claimed was one of the better $20 bottles of port she’d had. It lives at my house now, and I’ve been sipping it on those nights when I want just the tiniest taste of a drink after dinner. It’s totally incongruous with the sticky July weather, and it’s not at all the type of thing I usually like drinking, and it’s also rich and fruity and I can’t stop pouring it.

I’d like to also start mixing some book and article recommendations into these best bites emails. If I’m not working, writing or cooking, I’m almost definitely reading. And I think there’s no greater gift than sharing a good story with other people — so that’s what I intend to do here.

My favorite baking book lately has been Natasha Pickowicz’s “More than Cake,” which is the most aesthetically pleasing cookbook I’ve come across in a long time, and I love the flavors she works with. I’ve been experimenting with her layer cakes, and despite the lengthy instructions and legwork involved in making them, they’ve come out beautifully every time.

Also, in case you haven’t clicked one of the many links to it I’ve already posted over the course of this summer, get your hands on Alison Roman’s “Sweet Enough.” It’s definitely more accessible than “More than Cake,” and I haven’t baked a bad thing from it yet. Start with the fruit scones, chocolate tart and strawberry cake, and don’t look back.

On the non-book front, I just read “Confessions of a Luxury-Wedding Planner” in The Atlantic, and ohmygoshhaveIgotalottosayaboutit. Read it. Laugh. Roll your eyes. Get a little sad. I’m in the middle of planning a wedding celebration party (basically just a wedding reception that’s happening a year after the corresponding wedding), and I am my own wedding planner. I’m doing a solid C- job, and this story almost made me spin out into a panic. Almost.