A few things I’ve written recently:
1. My story about the Houston food scene ran in the New York Times on Feb. 7:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/travel/07choice.html?em
2. A story about a bakery in Queens that’s doing much more than making fantastic bread, in the November 2009 issue of Food & Wine:
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/hot-bread-kitchen
3. I ate some bugs—but mostly I watched other people eat bugs—and wrote about it for the Economist’s culture website, Nov. 2009:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/salma-abdelnour/should-we-be-eating-more-bugs
4. In each issue of the cool new travel magazine AFAR, I interview a different chef on where he/she loves to eat in a specific city. In the current (December/January 2010) issue, Dave Chang tells me where to eat in Sweden and Denmark. Look for AFAR in bookstores and at newsstands everywhere.
5. What’s the bacon of wine? And what’s the White Castle burger of wine? And why can’t we chill out and talk about wine as easily and happily as we talk about food? From the October 2009 issue of Food & Wine:
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/wines-for-drinking-not-overthinking
6. I spent part of my childhood in Beirut, and I love it to death—but it’s a mess. Dubai, on the other hand, is not a mess—and therein lies the problem. Here’s a short essay I wrote musing on this contrast for The Economist’s culture site, MoreIntelligentLife.com, in August 2009:
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/salma-abdelnour/beiruts-triumphant-mess
7. I rode horses, I shot guns, I ate incredibly well, and I did some stargazing, deep in the heart of Texas:
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/cowboy-junkie
8. I include the following piece here mainly because reporting it inspired me—or pretty much forced me—to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner by myself, in July (while the November 2008 issue of O was in production). I fed the midsummer turkey dinner to my brother, who was visiting from California. I may do it again someday—just never again in July.
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200811_omag_thanksgiving_story