humanity

Humanity topics include pieces on the real lives of chefs, professionals, amateurs, inspiring youth, influencers, and general feel good human stories in the Feast food sphere.

Solace in a New York Deli
In all the health and love I'm lucky enough to experience, I'm not often pulled back through my haze of memories to those gray streets of Brooklyn. But when they hit, boy, do they sting.
By Kera Hollowa day ago in Feast
My Dad's Favorite Sandwich
Do you like Klondikes? Those ice cream squares covered in thin milk chocolate that cracks easily and drops onto your clothes? Many people do. I used to love ice cream sandwiches – the ones with vanilla ice cream between two thin, chocolatey brownie layers. That’s my best description of the commercialized American ones. I know they are made differently in other countries, and probably better! As a small child, fudgsicles were my favorite, and I never knew I sometimes had a chocolate mustache from eating them! Why didn’t someone tell me? Even as a child, I hated blue popsicles. The ice cream man would drive slowly through the neighborhood, music blaring, and we'd line up with our dimes and quarters. Why get a popsicle when you can get an ice cream bar, or a fudgsicle?
By Andrea Corwin 5 days ago in Feast
Andi's Jelly and Potato Chip Sandwich
A friend in a family of 10 kids showed me how to roll a white Wonder Bread into a ball. They called them dough balls, and we ate them as snacks while running around the neighborhood. It’s not something my mother would have allowed because it wasn’t nutritious - it was just filling.
By Andrea Corwin 5 days ago in Feast
Why Your Mushroom Soup Tastes Thin, and the Pairing That Fixes It
Once I made chicken soup with shiitake mushrooms. The chicken was tender and the broth had flavor, but the umami sat on the surface. You tasted it at the front, and it disappeared as you swallowed. Later I threw two slices of kelp and half a tomato into the same pot. Twenty minutes later, the thickness was completely different. The soup suddenly stood up.
By Jin6 days ago in Feast
"ℙ𝕒𝕤𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕜𝕖𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕦𝕡"
My parents got divorced when I was in my early teens, I honestly don't remember the year. Most years back then were chaotic and put in files in the back of my mind so that they weren't easily remembered. I was in survival mode. I lived with my Mom for a few years in the apartment she rented and when she moved to a different town, I didn't follow her, but instead rented the same apartment for a while with her financial help.
By Colleen Walters9 days ago in Feast
Blue Plate Special. Content Warning.
The neon sign outside the diner window was a buzzing, broken arrow that couldn’t decide whether to stay red or die completely. It was 3:00 AM on a slick, freezing October Tuesday, and the rain was hitting the asphalt outside with a steady, metallic hiss. This place didn't have a hostess, a dress code, or a line out the door. It sat right at the intersection where the highway gave up and turned into dirt, surrounded by thousands of acres of empty wood and black sky.
By Syl De'Vil11 days ago in Feast
I Froze Dumplings Outside in Minus 11 Degrees and Asked My Mom About Fillings
Dumplings Freezing Outside the Window It is minus eleven degrees Celsius in Harbin today. Frost clings to the iron railing outside the balcony. Mom carries the bamboo tray out and lines dumplings in rows. They look like small white geese sitting in snow. After a while she turns them. They freeze a little longer, then go into bags. The outdoor air works as a freezer. No electricity. No space inside. Open a window and use it.
By Jin12 days ago in Feast
The Receipt Printer Broke First: Inside CHAGEE’s Buy-One-Get-One Meltdown
On the 12th, when a China Blue News reporter walked into a store, the receipt printer was still spitting paper. A staff member looked up and said, “You’ll have to wait more than an hour. I suggest ordering later.” More than 200 orders sat on the counter. The sealing machine kept running. Lids were piled to one side. On people’s phones, the CHAGEE mini-program had briefly stopped working. Outside, people thought a big promotion was going on inside. Inside, the staff knew: this was an order explosion.
By Jin14 days ago in Feast
The First Bite
I haven’t celebrated my birthday in three years. Is June 2nd my birthday, or is it the day you went to the hospital and never went home?
By A. Bell17 days ago in Feast
The Cinnamon Spaghetti Incident
The Cinnamon Spaghetti Incident You were eleven the year your mother went back to school. Suddenly, your evenings were rearranged around her classes, her textbooks, and her highlighters, scattered across the kitchen table like confetti. Dinner became a rotating responsibility among you, your older sister, and whichever neighbor wandered in at the right time. Some nights it was grilled cheese. Some nights it was cereal. Some nights it was nothing but a bowl of popcorn and the promise that tomorrow would be more organized.
By Christina Pozzie22 days ago in Feast
Fish-Head Drinking Isn’t a Shandong Rule. I Lived There 40 Years and Never Saw It.
Last winter, in a small restaurant in Jinan, a fish stew in an iron pot had just arrived. A Shandong man turned the fish head toward me and asked, “Is fish-head drinking really that fierce in Henan?”
By Jin23 days ago in Feast
I Cooked 16 Flowers in One Spring. One Numbed My Tongue.
Eating Flowers The first time someone told me daylilies could be eaten, I put my chopsticks down. The plate was already on the table: green-yellow buds, thin and straight, mixed with pork slices. I asked, “This is a flower?” Nobody answered. My aunt took a piece and put it in my bowl. I ate it. It tasted like a mushroom that had learned to be tender. I ate three bowls of rice.
By Jin23 days ago in Feast