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Want a Project?

Cooking meditations for those dreamlike holidaze.

Published December 22, 2025

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Coq au Vin with Shiitakes. Photo: Aya Brackett

Welcome to the weirdest time of year. Where, no matter what you celebrate, time seems to stand still. Personally, I’ve been in bed for the last couple days with the flu, bingeing on DayQuil and Twin Peaks. And I’m guessing, due to the trends of the last few weeks, some of you are in the same boat.

Once I’m ready to get out of bed, I’m really looking forward to cooking. “Getting dinner on the table” and “cooking” are two different things to me, and the latter is what I like to do in late December. Project cooking. Embracing recipes that require real chunks of time and lots of ingredients and steps and paying attention. It’s not that these recipes are necessarily better than the way most of us cook year-round, but they do feel special, even if it’s just from the eyes of the cook, who knows the efforts and layers that went into it.

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