Seanan Forbes
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Trans nonbinary disabled writer, poet, & storyteller. 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow, working on a queer YA prequel to Romeo and Juliet.
Articles by Seanan Forbes
16 Uses For Vinegar You May Not Know About
Picture Partners/Shutterstock By Seanan Forbes/Updated: Feb. 2, 2022 11:16 am EST For most of us, the word vinegar calls to mind "and oil," either as a salad dressing or as things that don't mix. There may be a few half-used bottles in the pantry: wine for salad dressings, white for cleaning, and malt ... because your ex loved fish and chips.
Watermelon Seed Butter Has Become My Summertime Staple
There’s so much more to watermelon seeds than spitting contests. By Seánan Forbes May 25, 2021 When I was young, I had a late-night habit that would have made a dentist squirm. After I'd brushed my teeth and gone to bed, I'd sneak into the kitchen, put a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter in a mug, creep back to my room, and lick the peanut butter from the spoon as if it were a full-fat lollipop. I loved all kinds of nut and seed butters; crunchy or creamy, salted or unsalted, it didn't matter.
5 Essential Midwestern Community Cookbooks
Chef Tim Graham owns more than 300 community cookbooks—here are five of his favorites. By Seánan Forbes October 29, 2019 Chef Tim Graham spent his youth trailing his parents around flea markets. While they looked for mid-century modern ephemera to sell for their business, Graham would page through stacks of women’s community cookbooks. Even then, he had a sense of wonder about the books. Now, his enchantment is balanced by curatorial responsibility.
Halloween Kitchen Gadgets to Prep for Your Halloween Party
Spooktacular serving pieces and beastly baking tools for a monster bash. BySeanan Forbes October 7, 2019 Edit All featured products are curated independently by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, we may receive a commission. Halloween kitchen gadgets run the gamut from delightfully disgusting to creepy-cutesy. These are our favorite Halloween baking tools and serving pieces for prepping a perfect Halloween party spread.
Fall Figs Are Fabulous: Here's Everything You Need to Know About Them
All featured products are curated independently by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, we may receive a commission. When it comes to fall produce, pumpkins and apples get all the love. But figs are amazing, and much more versatile than you might think. Figs have been around for a while: in myths, in legends, in history, in religion, and on the plate. But they’re still not given the credit they deserve.
What’s Their Pumpkin Spice? Traditional Autumn Foods From Around the World
BySeanan Forbes September 9, 2019 Edit You don’t need to be a calendar-driven chef to know that there are flavors for every season. Spring‘s asparagus and artichokes segue into summer‘s tomatoes and strawberries. Some tastes are particularly pervasive.
Marvelous Mocktails: Your Guide to Making the Best Non-Alcoholic Drinks
It's all about balance, and you won't miss the booze at all. BySeanan Forbes August 30, 2019 Edit All featured products are curated independently by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, we may receive a commission. Low-alcohol drinks continue to rise in popularity, but nonalcoholic drinks (also known as virgin cocktails, or mocktails) have been around for a long time.
9 Reasons Sangria Should Be the Star of Your Labor Day Party
Easy and affordable—and that's just for starters. BySeanan Forbes August 24, 2019 Edit All featured products are curated independently by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, we may receive a commission. When it comes to celebrations, sangria is a gift to hosts and guests. For guests, it’s the joy of freshness and flavor. For hosts, sangria’s greatest gift is ease. So let sangria take the work out of your Labor Day celebration.
It's Past Time to Expand Your Reading Beyond Cocktail Books
Are you a drink professional looking to expand your knowledge and network? Check out our Collective for a community of bartenders, chefs, makers and farmers who want the same. There’s an abundance of fine bartending books in the market and last year alone added the likes of Jim Meehan’s eponymous Meehan’s Bartender Manual, Robert Simonson’s testament to simplicity, 3-Ingredient Cocktails, and Amanda Schuster’s locapour-friendly New York Cocktails.
From the Pickled to the Spicy, Korean Appetizers Pack a Flavorful Punch
When you think about it, the idea of Korean “appetizers” is about as Westernized as the kimchi taco: “Asian food is not typically divided,” observes Rodelio Aglibot, Corporate Executive Chef of BLT restaurants. “There are just dishes, and they happen to be big or they happen to be small.” Owner Rachel Yang of Joule in Seattle agrees; “Koreans are not really people who have three-course meals. They [don’t do] appetizer-entrée-dessert.
How One Bartender Puts His Briny Skills to Use in Cocktails
Until recently, it was almost unheard-of for bartenders to cross the line into the kitchen, or for kitchen staff to ask questions about cocktail development. The locavore and Slow Food movements, combined with an increasing interest in wasting less and using more, has seen old barriers vanish. That new culture was behind Zachary Luther’s hands-on pickling workshop, an Edible Collective event. Luther brings nations, if not worlds, of experience to fermentation.
Elevate Your Cocktails With These Garnish Tips | Edible Manhattan
On a sunny November afternoon, New Yorkers stroll in parks and along riversides. Members of the The Collective gather at Pier A Harbor House. Sean McClure, head bartender at Sweet Polly, is leading a workshop in improving the garnish game. Angel’s Envy provides spirits for cocktails and tools for participants: notebooks, cutting boards and ceramic paring knives. Side tables bear glasses of edger scissors, fresh edible flowers, fruit, vegetables and paper-thin slices of dehydrated pineapple.
Bake Your Cocktails for a Sweet New Experience
What do cupcakes have to do with booze? Everything. Between working at Little Branch and founding the Cocktail Parlor, Courtney McKamey has developed a deep (and deeply unusual) knowledge of cocktails. She serves them neat, up, on the rocks and as pastries. At the Pier One Harbor House, McKamey gave Edible Collective members insights into the creation of boozy cupcakes. The drink on the menu was also in the cupcakes, and the cupcakes (McKamey promised) had a kick.
Take Beer Cocktails to New Heights This Fall With These Beertender Tips
At the Good Nature Farm Brewery and Taproom in Hamilton, New York, they call their bartenders “beertenders.” Good Nature’s co-founder (“We’re a two-headed demon”), Carrie Blackmore, leaves cocktail creation to Mackenzie Carter, one of the tap-room’s head beertenders, and Blackmore’s partner, Matt Whalen, whose culinary background proves invaluable behind the bar. In Good Nature’s early days, the law prohibited the brewery from using liquor in its drinks.
Why You Should Start Pairing Hard Cider and Cheese
Spain, France and England have offered generations of locals an uncommon pleasure: apples and cheese. The apples are for drinking, and the delight is not limited to the Old World. New York state has award-winning cheeses. The state is also the nation’s second-largest producer of apples (Washington comes in first), and hard cideries are thick on the ground.
What’s Their Pumpkin Spice? Traditional Autumn Foods From Around the World
You don’t need to be a calendar-driven chef to know that there are flavors for every season. Spring‘s asparagus and artichokes segue into summer‘s tomatoes and strawberries. Some tastes are particularly pervasive.
Kitchen Gadgets to Help You Prep for Your Halloween Party
Hallowe’en celebrations should be irresistibly haunting and undeniably delicious. It isn’t only about decorations (although whose life isn’t improved by amber-eyed raven lights?) and recipes for haunting cookies, demonic apples, and blood-red punch. To create the perfect ambience, your food and drink need the right presentation, from cake to glass. That means shopping for prep, as well as plating. Show your heart.
A Breakdown of Apples You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
BySeanan Forbes October 11, 2018 Edit Get set to score points in apple trivia: 7,500 varieties of varieties of apples are grown around the world. While the crabapple is the only one native to what’s now the United States (crabapples, like pumpkins, predate the Mayflower), 2,500 varieties are now grown domestically. The top three apple-growing states, in order, are Washington, New York, and Michigan. Apples are grown in every state, but only 36 states produce them commercially.
A Guide to Fall’s Most Underutilized Fruit: The Almighty Fig
Figs have been around for a while: in myths, in legends, in history, in religion, and on the plate. Figs first appeared in Asia Minor. Doing the future a favor, the Greeks and Romans carried them through the Mediterranean. In the sixteenth century, Franciscan missionaries brought figs to southern California. From those roots, we pluck the Black Mission fig. Figs are mentioned on Sumerian tablets ca. 2500 BCE, and remains of fig trees are found in 5000 BCE Neolithic sites. Garden of Eden?
Everything You Need to Know About Mocktails
Mocktails have been around a long time. As legend has it, when Depression-era child star Shirley Temple was out with her parents, they had cherry-garnished Old Fashioneds…but without the booze. The sweet drink has grenadine, some form of soda and, of course, a cherry. The word “mocktail” may date back to the 1930s or the 1970s. Since craft cocktail bartenders started catering to liquor-avoiding patrons, it has become ubiquitous. It has not, however, always signified something you’d want to drink.
Step Aside, Fireball: Fire Cider Is Our Spicy (and Healthy!) Shot of Choice
Fire cider—the throat-stripping, sinus-clearing, hot-spiced, thoroughly modern cider vinegar concoction that devotees down in daily shots—has its roots in very old traditions. Debates rage about who truly created fire cider, and about whether anybody has a right to trademark the term. The concept is old, but the contemporary version has a widely accepted creator. Herbalist, teacher, and author Rosemary Gladstar developed the spicy vinegar in the 1970s and published a recipe in 1994.
8 Reasons Sangria Should Be the Star of Your Labor Day Party
When it comes to celebrations, sangria is a gift to hosts and guests. For guests, it’s the joy of freshness and flavor. For hosts, sangria’s greatest gift is ease. Sangria takes the work out of Labor Day. Everything is done in advance. Make sangria the day before you plan to serve it. Cut, slice, and mix everything in a container you can cover and stow in the fridge.
How to Perfect the Pisco Sour
Like good bartenders, all worthwhile drinks have a story. The pisco sour’s past is less history than it is mythology. Like the spirit, the cocktail hails from South America. Peru and Chile stake insistent claims. Born in 1873 to a Mormon family, Victor Vaughen Morris, aka “Vic”, worked for a floral company. At the turn of the 20th century, he moved to Peru and became a cashier for a railway company. Here’s where things take a bar-ward twist: When he retired to Lima, Vic opened the Bar Morris.
Everything You Need to Know About Ramps
Ramps are hard to describe. Ask shoppers about them at a farmer’s market and you’ll get all sorts of answers; yes, ramps look sort of like scallions, but they have these broad flat green leaves; ramps taste a little bit like amped-up garlic; ramps are too expensive…what makes these bewildering greens so dear to professional cooks? For an answer to that, it’s best to ask a chef.
Fall Ingredients and a Zero-Waste Approach Breathe New Life Into Cocktails
A regional collaboration between Edible Manhattan and New York bartenders, the Collective isn’t out to make a blazing neon name for itself. Collective members don’t hold splashy public events. What they do is learn together, support each other, get to know New York State’s products and possibilities, and—a challenge, for those members working twelve-hour-shifts in New York City—tune their work to the seasons.
How to Infuse Dry Vermouths
These days, it seems as if every bar and home bartender were making infusions. The ultimate neutral palate, vodka is a natural place to start. Rum’s warmth lends itself to some flavors. Tequila takes kindly to spice. But hard liquor isn’t the only route to cocktails or infusions. Low-alcohol, nuanced, and adaptable, vermouths are infusion-friendly. Like wines, beers, and liquors, they work well in the kitchen. Infuse them, and they bring crafty elegance to cocktails, desserts, and entrees.
Find Out About Local Pizza and Booze Pop-Ups With This Listserv
Join the Edible Collective and you’ll be joining the Edible Community. Think of it as a roundtable where bartenders, chefs, makers and farmers share ideas, education, enlighten and enhance skills. The Collective is made up of the people who make what we eat and drink. Two years ago, Logan Ronkainen worked in Flatiron as the head bartender at Trattoria Il Mulino.
How to Throw a Cocktail Party on a Budget
You can throw a cocktail party that breaks the bank or one that leaves you able to pay the rent and the bills (and happy to wake up in your own skin in the morning). It isn’t a matter of buying cheap booze, adding mass-market mixers, or using your SodaStream for a river of never-ending highballs.
How to Work with Egg Whites While Baking
Egg whites are to baking as jokes are to conversations. When they’re handled right, they make everything lighter and happier. When they fail, they fall as flat as a manhole cover, and feel about as heavy. There’s a world of hand-me-down tips: use a bone-dry bowl and whisk, and make sure there is no grease. When you’re folding, lead with the sharp edge. Bringing the flat side down on your egg whites will burst the bubbles. You’ll be making your job harder, even as you’re trying to get it done.
A Comprehensive Guide to Baking Brownies
Brownies are like perfect vacations; they mean different things to different people – and, as with destinations, there are countless variations on the brownie theme. Brownie adherents have their favorites: fudgy, gooey, dense, cakey, all edge, with nuts, never in the same room as nuts, made with cocoa, made with couverture chocolate, frosted, crisp, chewy. To get what you want, you have to know how to get there. See? Just like vacations. There is a starting point: what all brownies have in common.
What to Know Before Starting a Cocktail Program
It's far too common to find restaurants with hot kitchens but tepid bars. How can your bar be part of the restaurant, with quality that sets it above the competition? Should you go for an extensive cocktail menu? Should you stay focused on a strong wine list? Rely on beers? Do you need cocktails at all? Chris Cardone is a bartender at I Sodi and the owner of Continuous Beverage Solutions.
NYC: 6 Top Places to Drink Your Dinner - Table8 Blog
Eating and drinking: two things New Yorkers excel in. From upscale to relaxed, fine dining to neighborhood spot, these six restaurants are among the best places to eat and drink your dinner. Many people go to Forrest Point for the coffee and food. No argument against those choices. The mac and cheese comes with smoked gouda, housemade béchamel, Parmesan, ciabatta crumbs and enough jalapeño to keep things interesting.
Jamming Out Behind the Bar with Preserves, Jellies & More
As summer ends, people start talking about preserving the season, making conserves and jams to carry warm-weather flavors across the year. What could be more comforting than a splash of raspberry jam on toast in the middle of winter? Spring jellies, autumnal marmalades and spiced jams in cocktails. All year 'round, creative bartenders put preserves to cocktails use in cocktails, changing textures, adding richness, invoking memories and making some of the best drinks.
How 4 Very Different Bars Handle Prep
When people think about bartending, they consider recipes, coordination, and an ability to get along with people. If they're smart, they also factor in stamina and an ability to absorb knowledge about everything from history to distillation to the favorite drinks of regular customers. Few people, however, factor in the backstage labor that starts hours before a bar opens: prep. From syrups to garnish, it's a fact of cocktail life.
NYC Under-the-Radar Dining Neighborhood: Harlem - Table8 Blog
Harlem is (thankfully) still true to its soulful jazz roots with excellent soul food, live music and vibrancy. Here are some of the best restaurants in the neighborhood that fall under that realm — and more outside it (think: some of the city’s best ramen). If The Cecil‘s (pictured top — (Photo Credit: www.thececilharlem.com) elegant banquettes say, “Be one with me and stay a while” – and they do – then the African/Asian/American food says, “Wake up and pay attention!” Do both.
Give a Cow Its Due
When people call each other cows, they’re offering anything but praise. It’s understandable. Few people have the chance or inclination to get to know one up close and personal. If you judge a cow by looks alone, it’s easy to think of them as dense, dull, creatures with no inner lives and not much in the way of outer ones. Inspect a field of cows, and you’ll see bunches of large animals standing around, chewing mouthfuls of cud, and gazing at nothing – hardly the philosophers of the field.
Wine Gadgets You Actually Need
You don't want to forget which wines you loved, liked or loathed. Notebooks are great in theory, but let's face it: You're not going to carry a book around. Your phone is at hand anyway, so turn it into a wine tool. One of the best apps is Delectable (pictured), which makes it easy to photograph labels, add notes and view ratings. If you want to connect with friends or follow sommeliers and winemakers, then take advantage of Delectable’s social community.
NYC: Top 5 Brunch Spots
In a city as dense as New York, brunch options are endless, but these 5 stand out… and here’s why. The creation of Uruguayan chef Ignacio Mattos and co-owner Thomas Carter (once the wine director of Stone Barn’s Blue Hill Restaurant), Estela has a following that comes from far beyond its East Houston base. The theme here is “sharing.” Eat This: As you’d expect hearing “Stone Barn,” Estela’s menu changes seasonally.
How to Fake Your Way Through a Wine Tasting
Tasting wine is a multisensory experience. First look at the color. If there are bright lights or sunlight, tilt your glass and look at the white tablecloth, where you'll see the color of the light that passes through the wine. Now put your nose way down into your glass and smell the wine. Note that the “nose” of a wine may be very different than its taste. Sip the wine, let it rinse your mouth, teeth and tongue, all the way to the back of your mouth.
NYC: Top March & April Openings
In a city where new openings are incessant, it can be tough weeding through the noise. Here are 5 of the most notable openings of the last two months — and why they stand out. AGERN In restaurant-rich Manhattan, Agern was one of 2016’s most anticipated openings. With Noma co-founder Claus Mayer at the helm, anticipation proved to be the amuse bouche for an exceptional experience. Why You Should Visit: The décor is as clean and sweeping as a pristine beach. Grand Central is awash in tourist traps.
NYC: Best Openings of the Year So Far
In a city where new openings are incessant, it can be tough weeding through the noise. Here are 4 of the most notable openings of the year so far — and why they stand out. New Yorkers may have a reputation for taking to the couch. We all have so much to unload, we have to hire listeners – but the city’s latest, Freud, which opened in February, is out to nourish your body, not your mind.
America’s Best Chefs Just Leaked Their Top-Secret Vegetarian Recipes
Deveri Gifford and Jason Yates’ restaurant, The Brooklyn Street Local, draws crowds with their supremely messy (but supremely worth it) vegetarian spin on Canadian poutine—a beautiful mess of fried potatoes, mushroom gravy, and cheese curds.
How Meaghan Dorman Trains Her Team
Cocktails and service are up-front and visible, but the best bars have an invisible art: that of training and educating your staff, and giving your crew inspiring reasons to stay. In the worlds of cocktails, hospitality and creating an elegant ambience, Meaghan Dorman is widely known. When it comes to training, education and inspiration, Dorman is a master of the invisible art.
Preserve the Season: A Call for Incorporating Shrubs in Cocktails
Five years ago, Ryan Maybee – then co-owner of the speakeasy Manifesto and The Rieger restaurant; now also a partner in the J. Rieger Co. Distillery and a co-founder of the Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival – decided that The Rieger needed drinks that “were lower in ABV, and food-friendly.” He immediately thought of shrubs, a classic form of drinking vinegar.
How To Casually Serve Wine Like You Know What You’re Doing
3. Chill. “I usually pull a bottle of white out of the fridge a half hour before service,” Frost says, “and I put a bottle of red wine into the fridge for a half hour before service to approximate cellar temperature.” 4. Forget pairing rules. The old-school stance of drink this wine only with that food or that cheese only with that varietal doesn’t matter half as much as personal tastes. If a pairing makes you and your friends happy, then what else matters? Sharing wine should be a pleasure.
Advanced Amari: An Overview (and 14 Bitter Bottles to Try)
Many Italian amaro brands have been commercially available in Italy, offered as a pungent, bitter digestif and aperitif, since the 19th century, but its roots trace back to ancient history. In the States, it’s become a key component in cocktails. Its versatility and usefulness are largely due to two things: depth of flavor and breadth of category. Not all Fernets are Branca. Amari can be spice-forward, like Cardamaro or Meletti.
Cape Town's classic shake - WPSD Local 6: Your news, weather, and sports authority
On a blistering summer day, one milkshake puts all the others in the world to shame: the fresh avocado and mint shake at the Royale Eatery , a burger and shake shop on Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa. Made with just three components (mint, avocado, and vanilla ice cream), it is as dense as poured concrete and as sweet as a summerfirst visit to the Royale Eatery in Cape town, South Africa, was almost a decade ago. The Royale was young then; it opened its doors in 2003.
How Adam Seger Channeled a Love for Botanicals Into a Spirits Brand
Adam Seger has a carefully balanced, very full rack of hats: executive bartender and corporate sommelier for iPic Entertainment, mixologist in residence for the Art Institute of Chicago, and the co-founder of Balsam Spirits and the Rare Botanical Bitters Company. Scroll back to the first decade of this millennium, with winter coming, and you’ll find Adam Seger at Nacional 27, setting up his annual “Adopt the Herbs” program.
Cape Town's classic shake - KAUZ-TV: Newschannel 6 Now | Wichita Falls, TX
On a blistering summer day, one milkshake puts all the others in the world to shame: the fresh avocado and mint shake at the Royale Eatery , a burger and shake shop on Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa. Made with just three components (mint, avocado, and vanilla ice cream), it is as dense as poured concrete and as sweet as a summerfirst visit to the Royale Eatery in Cape town, South Africa, was almost a decade ago. The Royale was young then; it opened its doors in 2003.
Irish Whiskey 101: A History and Tasting Guide
Prior to Prohibition, Irish whiskey was a very popular spirit in the United States. By the end of Prohibition, Scotch and Canadian whiskies were in, Irish was all but unheard of and our ancestors were missing out on spirited experiences. Unfortunately for most of us, there is still a void where Irish whiskey should exist: in our bar orders, in our home stocks, in our experiences and in our knowledge. The Dead Rabbit is many things to many people. To all drinkers, it is excellent.
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