I’ve been eying up this pasta for as long as I can remember. Every time I go into Dean & DeLuca in Soho I look at it, pick it up, turn it over to see the price and tell myself it’s way too extravagant. This year I finally broke. I do believe it’s what’s for dinner. Happy New Year one and all!

So, we can probably agree on the fact that Kim Jong Il was bad news for North Korea and pretty much the rest of the world. And I doubt that I need to go into a litany of reasons why. All that aside, I still keep this water bottle under protective custody. In a moment of inspiration, Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak (of Project No. 8 / Various Projects) made these years ago and gave me one as a gift. Don’t even ask if you can have it.

I love this little image. It’s a cigarette card (1.375″ x 2.675″) which I bought a couple of years ago while in San Francisco. Almost nightly when I was little, my mother used to read us The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. One of my favorites was about how the Armadillo came to be. According to Kipling, these odd little creatures were formed out of an alliance between a turtle and a hedgehog. Click here if you would like to see the entire NYPL collection of Animalloy cigarette cards.

Courtesy of my friend Bobby. Totally new and exciting (to my ears anyway) Indian versions of Jingle Bells. Wacky AND wonderful.

Nature has us all trumped. It’s hard to disagree on this one. Today’s vegetable — the watermelon radish — is brought to you by the good folks over at Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, PA, right across the Delaware River border from NY. They are amazing and smart and grow vegetables that make you remember how food is supposed to taste.