Dirty Martini Dressing, a Table-Styling Showdown & the Great Dryer Ball Mystery of 2023

It’s March in New York City, which means we dream of asparagus and t-shirt weather—as we’re getting lashed with cold, windy rains. But it’s the greatest city in the world, folks. Yep, yep it is.

I’m heading out soon for spring break with my family (skiing and college tours!) so let me get to the point, aka hit my deadline real quick:

Wondering what to make this weekend?

My co-founder Merrill and I always wanted to do a book called Veg & Dessert. In that spirit, here’s my weekend menu:

• A bowl of Little Gem lettuce or romaine with Food Editor Emily Ziemski’s Dirty Martini Salad Dressing (toss in some roasted chicken or oil-packed tuna, if you must!).
• Miso and Banana Upside-Down Cake, a recipe by Michelle Rabin that went viral.

Fellow beer drinkers, a source you should know about:

TapRM: They offer an ever-changing selection of craft beers, often from some of the breweries I love most, like Grimm, Talea, and Singlecut Beersmiths. All you IPA-heads out there will relish the breadth of their hoppy options.

A table-styling throwdown, Food52-style:

Kayla, one of our Shop buyers, and Dominique from team social went head to head to create stylish spring table settings in just 30 seconds. Find out if you're Team Blush or Team Green.

A new feature on our Shop pages:

You can upload photos of your Food52 products and show us how they live in your home. We’ve wanted this feature for, oh, five years. It’s finally here!

What I recently ordered from our Shop:

• Dryer Balls: I’ve had this set for years but somehow only two dryer balls remain. Unlike a sock, which lies flat and can easily be lost, I would like to know how four grapefruit-sized wool balls have evaded our searches. #thegreatdryerballmystery
• Margrethe Nested Tower Mini Prep Bowls: This is my second set. I broke one, which wasn’t easy to do, but if you’re clumsy enough, it happens. And I don’t like having incomplete sets, so now I have a LOT of prep bowls.
• Peanut Butter Variety Pack: Sent to a friend’s daughter at college, because great peanut butter on crackers is an essential part of the academic diet.
• HA KO Paper Incense & Dish: I told you I was into incense!

A good read, a good recipe:

Butter Week is past (sigh), but this unusual-facts-about-butter story lives on! And so does this Salted Butter Brioche from Erin McDowell.

Two questions for you:

1. How are you entertaining friends and family these days? Big groups? Small? Are you planning ahead or winging it? How casual? How styled?
2. For our Absolute Best Test column, Ella Quittner tests out a slew of techniques for making a recipe—what foods would you like her to test?

Email me your answers at [email protected], and if you have topics you’d like to hear more about from me, drop me a line!

Yours in slope shredding,
Amanda

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