Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.They’re harder than hen’s teeth to actually see; kinda like imaginary friends, guardian angels …and Bigfoot.* But you can hear them from a quarter mile away, those brief, upward soaring spires of crystalline sound. How they can throw their voices like ventriloquists and give that sense of spiraling and those echo-y reverberations in a woodland without walls is one of those lovely mysteries I am grateful to encounter again and again.

One sunny April afternoon, I found myself strolling around the Wenshu Buddhist Temple in Chengdu. This now well-visited tourist spot is surrounded by popular street food, including a time-honored noodle eatery offering petite, snack-sized noodle bowls. It wasn't a tough choice to make, so I ordered two classics: liang fen (recipe here) and tian shui mian (甜水面), the latter translates as sweet-water noodles. It has been years since I last had it.

Sometime around day 5 after testing positive for Covid, I lost my senses of smell and taste. It was like a light switched off. One second the vapors of my lemon ginger tea were connecting with my brain synapses, and the next second they weren’t. It took me a moment to realize what was happening - and then I panicked. Yoshie and the kids were gone for the day, so I hurled myself out of bed (where I’d spent the majority of my quarantine) and shuffled to the kitchen where I began opening and huffing spices.

A meal at Tekés might be the most fun a vegetarian can have in Paris. This new address from the team behind Israeli restaurants Balagan and Shabour doesn’t have any meat or fish on its menu, but omnivores won’t miss a thing. The ambiance is lively, the service is friendly, and the food is both clever and delicious. MORE GREAT VEGETARIAN OPTIONS IN PARIS You can sit at the counter and watch t…

This salad really is one of my favourite things to eat at this time of year, (and really all times of the year if I’m being honest)! It’s so fresh and zingy and provides such a delicious contrast to the rich Christmas food we’ve all been enjoying. This is the kind of salad where it really all comes down to the dressing. The dressing is the star of the show, the leading lady, the one you tell your friends about….