When I moved to New York City almost fifteen years ago, a friend took me on a downtown tour of inexpensive places to fill my belly. One stop was the Lahore Deli, a Pakistani joint on the edge of Soho where for four dollars I could have a little box of rice, dal and veggies plus a hot cup of sweet milky chai. The chai's share of that bill was one dollar; these days it's a buck fifty.

It was there, inside Lahore Deli, where my love for chai blossomed and as I made my way farther afield in the city, I scouted out other places for great chai, but I never found one that matches Lahore's and so when the craving comes — and it comes almost daily — I either meander over to Crosby Street, or I make my own.

When the Occupy Wall Street movement was born last September in Zucotti Park, just one and a half miles from my apartment in New York City, I started noticing some striking images on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and so one day at lunch I walked down there.

It wasn't so much the now ubiquitous handmade signs protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and corruption that drew me in, it was the everyday slices of life. People were living there. To a food writer, that triggers another thought: they are cooking and eating there, too. So I began to document these protest picnics, notebook and iPhone in hand.

Okay, it's time to stop denying it, this is really happening: we're at that point where there's hardly any fresh, local, in-season produce in the markets to inspire wild innovation in the kitchen. It's time to stretch.

How do you honor the hearty ice-kissed greens and mighty squash of winter and not yawn over your dinner plate? This is a great problem to have and one that has made me a better cook than when I have all the produce I ever desired handed to me in a farmers' market tote. Stretch and you shall build muscle.

A few tips and they all start with b: break out the balsamic and bacon...

Come January, the hum and buzz of juicers everywhere builds and I hear of more and more people making resolutions to clean out their systems and drink more juice, at least temporarily. No judgement; in fact, last year at this time I was on a five-day juice cleanse so my juicer was working hard and I was feeling alive and clean. This year, though, I am more in the mood to make my ice cream machine hum rather than my juicer.

A while back I took a spin through Ireland, mostly County Cork, learning about the Irish dairy industry, which meant meeting some of the nicest people I've ever known, and eating endless amounts of butter. One particularly pleasant experience that involved both nice people and lots of butter was an afternoon spent with Rachel Allen and her husband, Isaac, whose mother Darina Allen runs the nearby Ballymaloe Cookery School.

The heaviest, most awkwardly wrapped and cautiously placed gift under my Christmas tree this year was a bowl full of homegrown Meyer lemons. While here in New York we're fully ensconced in cellared vegetable season (turnips! beets! potatoes!) my family in California is kicking off citrus season, so I was lucky to have some beautiful Meyers brought straight from Los Angeles.

We blew through a few of them right away — squirted into cocktails and squeezed over ricotta pancakes — but to clear out the rest, I needed a quick solution, ideally one that would keep well and get me through the rough patches of an east coast winter.

I've been writing about this wreath on the site since 2008, each year updating the story, because I think it's worth reminding you how perfect this bread is to start a holiday morning. When I say I make it every year, I'm not kidding. It weaves its way deeper and deeper into our family's memory each holiday.

Of all the Christmas gifts my mom has given me, the one I remember most and the one that is still with me is the tradition of cooking and eating on Christmas, and it is one that I'm now passing down to my daughter.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece called Coming Home to My Mother's Kitchen. I asked readers to send me photographs of them in their childhood kitchens, the spaces where they first learned to cook and to love food. The emails poured in. Readers sent images and long, flowing memories of cooking at home. They were such intimate offerings to me, a stranger; almost like love letters.

I had the best Brussels sprouts of my life last week at a lovely little restaurant in Brooklyn called Vinegar Hill House. It was just before Thanksgiving and it got me thinking about the dwindling stock of green food coming from the earth this time of year.

Winter eating can be depressing for a girl like me, but given the limits and challenges of cold-weather cooking, some pretty amazing stuff can pop through this kind of tabletop sorrow.

We're all about re-inventing the classics around here, and Thanksgiving is no exception. For example, for the last six years, I've celebrated Thanksgiving abroad with a healthy portion of gallo pinto (Costa Rican rice and beans), sand in my toes and surf in my ears. This is a move that has annoyed the parts of my family that stay state-side. So this year I threw my mom a cookie and asked if she would have us to her house in California for an early celebration.

"Let's keep it simple," was my only instruction.

For two food professionals — that's mom and me — this was a weighty exercise in restraint. The task at hand was to balance the desire to chill out while also keeping it classy. We succeeded, sort of.