I’ll eventually shut up about onion rings

but, sorry,

along with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,

these are a few of my favorite things.

To try to get to the bottom of my onion ring obsession, my colleague Jonathan Dressler and I spent an afternoon with Michael Cecchi and Chef Cesar, learning how to make the city’s most perfect version of this addictive preparation.

Jonathan is putting the film together now and I’ll be eager to post it, along with the recipe, when it’s done. Until then I wanted to share with paid subscribers my “Five Things I’ve Learned About Writing By Writing About Food” class.

It was Andre Dubus who told Ann about Mark Nieker and his remarkable teaching/inspiration site called Five Things I’ve Learned, a site that brings together artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers who share live, online classes. Jane Hirshfield, whose poems are often brilliantly food centered, followed me, and tonight, my wife Ann, returns for her second class, this time a class about writing memoir.

Ann has written four memoirs, including the extraordinary grief memoir Comfort and the engaging coming-of-age memoir, Fly Girl, about her years as a TWA flight attendant. Check it out. (Five Things is offering $10 off to readers of this site, using the Discount Code SUBSTACK10.)

But here I’d like to offer my cherished paid subscribers, courtesy of Mark, free access to my class. The first hour recounts my unlikely journey from broke, unemployed, aspiring novelist to working with and writing about some of the most important chefs and food issues of our age—how I got here and what it means at each stage of the journey

The second hour focuses on craft, my convictions on learning to write and making the practice of writing a part of your everyday life.