Would You Take Out a Loan to Buy This Week’s Groceries?
Americans are increasingly turning to “buy now, pay later” services for food and other everyday essentials. And there are signs that the practice is putting some in deep debt.
“Buy now, pay later” services, which allow consumers to pay for goods in installments, often without interest, have become increasingly common for food purchases.
By Priya Krishna

This Vietnamese Dish Is Layered, Luminous and Striking. It’s Also Forgiving.
The first taste of bánh cuốn led to a yearslong project of culinary discovery.

By BRYAN WASHINGTON
Recipe: Bánh Cuốn

On Remote Farms and in City Gardens, a Native American Movement Grows
Through classes, seed banks and plantings, tribes across the United States are reclaiming their agricultural roots, growing healthy foods and aiming for self-sufficiency.
By KEVIN NOBLE MAILLARD
Recipes: Tepary Bean Salad | Three Sisters Bean Patties With Raspberry Aioli

FRONT BURNER
Make More Room on Your Charcuterie Board
The company Brooklyn Cured has released a black truffle salami, cured beef bresaola and a Tuscan red wine salami.

Brooklyn Cured Black Truffle Salami ($36 for three), Spicy Bresaola With Calabrian Chile ($38 for three packs of slices), Tuscan Red Wine Beef Salami ($34 for three packs of slices), brooklyncured.com.
By FLORENCE FABRICANT

A GOOD APPETITE
3 Party Pies You Can Eat With Your Hands
Pie bars offer most of the same delights as their latticed counterparts, but are a lot more convenient, Melissa Clark writes.
A slab of creamy peach bars sits atop a piece of parchment paper set onto a marble cutting board. About half of the slab is cut into cubes. The orange-colored peach slices pop against the cream-cheese base.

These creamy peach pie bars are a little like cheesecake, but heavy on the fruit.
By Melissa Clark
Recipes: Raspberry Pie Crunch Bars | Coconut Pie Bars | Creamy Peach Pie Bars

21 Vegetarian Grilling Recipes for Labor Day Weekend
Change up your party with these deeply flavorful vegetarian options.
By Alexa Weibel

A Spicy Tomato Pasta for All Seasons
Alexa Weibel’s recipe is as great with ripe cherry tomatoes as it is with packaged ones from the grocery.
By MARGAUX LASKEY

14 Chicken Recipes Our Readers Can’t Get Enough Of
Baked, tossed into a salad, served with rice, and more ways to prepare everyone’s favorite poultry.
By TANYA SICHYNSKY

Soups and Stews for Summer
Recipes for when you need some coziness and comfort on a hot day.
By TEJAL RAO

This Nonalcoholic Aperitivo Is More Bitter Than Sweet
The new offering from Wilderton, a nonalcoholic spirits company in Portland, Ore., is perfect for cocktail hour.

Wilderton Bittersweet Aperitivo, $34.99 for 750 milliliters, wildertonfree.com.
By FLORENCE FABRICANT

Roland Mesnier, Pastry Chef to Five Presidents, Dies at 78
French born and French trained, he served up inventive and ambrosial desserts in the White House for more than two decades.

Roland Mesnier with the first lady, Laura Bush, in 2006. As the pastry chef at the White House for nearly 25 years, he created elaborate confections like this Christmas gingerbread White House.
By Sam Roberts

His Medium, Salted Butter. His Craft, Sublime.
Gerry Kulzer, the new butter sculptor at the Minnesota State Fair, is ready to capture the likenesses of the dairy princesses, if only he can sculpt their tresses in time.
By Christina Morales

WHAT’S NEW 2022
Berlin, Back in Full Swing
Berlin’s 178 museums, seven symphony orchestras and three opera houses are once again up and running, along with a flourishing restaurant and nightclub scene.
By CHARLY WILDER

Greek Party Islands Chill Out
For years, Santorini, Mykonos and Ios have been known for their embrace of excess. But some new operators on Greece’s Cycladic Islands want to break that cycle.
By Sheila Yasmin Marikar

UKRAINE DISPATCH
Devouring Oysters by Battlefield, Ukrainians ‘Switch Off for a Bit’
A businessman’s unlikely oyster farm not far from the front lines with Russia has offered a rare sanctuary for battle-scarred Ukrainian troops.
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

FOOD MATTERS
How the Chile Became Hot
Why did the consumption of hot peppers — after centuries of cultivation and global migration — come to confer status and sophistication?
By LIGAYA MISHAN, PATRICIA HEAL and LEILIN LOPEZ-TOLEDO

Shortcuts to Big Flavor
Dried minced onion, snack-size nori sheets and crème fraîche pack a punch in vegetable-forward cooking.
By TEJAL RAO

23 Easy Tomato Recipes for Summer
Let the indisputable season’s star shine in a simple sauce, pasta, salad or beyond, with any of these delicious dishes.
By Tanya Sichynsky and Alexa Weibel

Tuesday Fancy Mussels
Jazz up any ol’ Tuesday with a 15-minute pot of shellfish.
By TANYA SICHYNSKY

Vegan, Indian-Inspired Soups From Maya Kaimal
Choices like lentil and creamy spiced butternut come in shelf-stable packages with two servings.
By FLORENCE FABRICANT

This Cutting Board Won’t Harm Your Knives
Artisan Revere makes them from end grain, a configuration of wood that is said to be the least damaging to knife edges.
By FLORENCE FABRICANT

All You Need for This Crisp-Tender Skillet Cake Is Rice and a Little Time
A gorgeous snack drizzled with honey or a way to shuttle soups, stews or grilled meat from plate to mouth, this simple dish is the best kind of exercise in patience, Yewande Komolafe writes.

Sinasir, flat skillet cakes made from fermented rice, are perfect vehicles for sopping up soups and stews.
By Yewande Komolafe

A GOOD APPETITE
This Easy One-Pan Chicken Recipe Has a Trick Up Its Sleeve
If you’re not already trimming your corn kernels off the cob this way, you should be, Melissa Clark writes.

Sweet corn kernels are a lovely accompaniment to chicken thighs, especially when sautéed in chicken fat and browned butter.
By Melissa Clark
Recipe: Skillet Chicken Thighs With Brown Butter Corn

J. Kenji López-Alt’s Summer Staple? Guacamole With Grilled Corn
A restaurant dish melding the dip with creamy esquites loosely inspired the chef and cookbook author’s new favorite.

This guacamole is rich with flavor and texture.
By J. Kenji López-Alt
Recipe: Guacamole With Grilled Corn

Behold the Fruit Sandwich
In this Japanese treat, ripe, seasonal gems are enrobed in cream and nestled between slices of milk bread.

By LIGAYA MISHAN
Recipe: Fruit Sandwich

‘If You Can Make a Salad, You Can Make Kimchi’
Kimjang, the act of preparing kimchi, allows Koreans of the diaspora to keep the tradition alive — and invites everyone to join.

In a world where most people buy their kimchi at the store, making it at home has become a priority for Koreans who wish to carry on the tradition of kimjang.Credit…Tanveer Badal for The New York Times
By Eric Kim
Recipes: Kimchi | Baek Kimchi (White Kimchi) | Baek Kimchi Jjigae (White Kimchi Stew)

Ice Cream?
At KSTP-TV Ashley Halbach says, “Minneapolis ice cream shop Bebe Zito is now selling a pint with THC gummies mixed into the product. Bebe Zito says the ‘Pineapple Express’ pints taste like a pineapple upside-down cake. They started with a pineapple base and added salted caramel-soaked pineapple upside-down cake mix-ins and THC gummies containing hemp-derived THC (Delta-9) from a local Black-owned company, Cultivated CBD. … The ice cream packaging shows that each pint contains a total of 40 THC gummies and that each gummy has 1.25 mg of THC.”

In days of olde, before COVID wracked the land, whenever I bought water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica) at the farmer’s market, it was usually dismissed with ‘insect ridden’ or ‘too old’ and chucked into the garbage. Well, after the passage of time, and the advent of inflation at the Asian stores, the last two bundles I’ve bought at the King of Spinach’s stall have received quite different treatment. After the purchase, I texted someone that we could either eat it or they could take it to their sister’s — their choice. It seems either the growers have improved or my eyes have improved, but their sister did not get the bundle tonight, and, oh my, the stems were crunchy.

Dented, Dated, Discontinued? At the Salvage Grocery, It’s Called a Deal
Salvage food stores have long been a lure for the frugal and the intrepid. But inflation, environmentalism and some clever rebranding are expanding the fan base.
By KIM SEVERSON

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
In a Tense Political Moment, Taiwanese Cuisine Tells Its Own Story
The relationship between the island’s cooking and the food in mainland China is complex.
By TEJAL RAO

This Bakery Wants to Be Carbon-Neutral
A bakery in the Catskills is trying to be as sustainable as possible. Here’s an inside look.
By DEVORAH LEV-TOV

I Eat at Restaurants for a Living. That’s Not Why My Stomach Always Hurt.
Half the world’s population has H. pylori, a type of bacteria that can mess with digestion. So why doesn’t the problem have a higher public profile?
By Priya Krishna

The Lamp That’s Taking Over New York
A sleek newcomer, the Pina Pro, is appearing on droves of outdoor tables in the city — and sometimes disappearing, as diners fall for its mellow glow.

The Pina Pro lamp (pictured here at Momoya in SoHo) has popped up at restaurants across New York, its prevalence buoyed by outdoor dining.
By Priya Krishna

A GOOD APPETITE
The Best Summer Dinner Is Assembled, Not Cooked
Adding quickly grilled shrimp to a classic pairing of melon and feta turns a light weeknight meal into a hearty, yet refreshing main.

You can use any kind of melon or a combination in this simple salad.
By Melissa Clark
Recipe: Grilled Shrimp Salad With Melon and Feta

Late Summer Tomatoes Are Perfect for Spaghetti al Pomodoro
The purest distillation of summer umami with just four ingredients.

By ERIC KIM
Recipe: Pasta al Pomodoro

The Best End-of-Summer Party Starts With Tacos
Here are expert tips on how to put together a delicious spread that gives you even more time with family and friends.

Carne asada and arroz rojo are just two elements of a festive, low-effort spread.
By Genevieve Ko
Recipes: Carne Asada | Arroz Rojo (Red Rice)

TRADITIONS
And for Our Next Course … the Centerpiece
Chefs, artists and other creatives are making edible spectacles a meal’s main event.
By ALICE CAVANAGH and CHARLY GOSP

Zucchini Time
If you haven’t thought about zucchini lately, you should.
By EMILY WEINSTEIN

The Season for Grated Tomatoes
Plus a bonus recipe for sizzled eggplant.
By TEJAL RAO

THE POUR
12 Reasons to Love California Chardonnay
The wines have evolved, but the negative stereotypes linger. These diverse bottles will challenge what you think you know.

These bottles reflect a style of California chardonnay that prizes freshness and finesse.
By ERIC ASIMOV

Jan Longone, Influential Scholar of Food History, Dies at 89
The cookbook collection that began in the basement of her home became the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan.

Jan Longone, whose extensive collection of cookbooks and culinary ephemera became the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan.
By KIM SEVERSON

That Dinner Tab Has Soared. Here Are All the Reasons.
As diners everywhere suffer the shock of inflation, we tally up the many costs and forces driving up menu prices at a single restaurant.
By PRIYA KRISHNA and UMI SYAM

In Italy, Where Pizza Was Born, Domino’s Bows Out
The company entered the Italian market in 2015, but seems to have been done in by a proliferation of home-delivery food during the pandemic and a desire for more artisanal pies.
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Corny on Main
Sometimes you just can’t get enough of those sweet, fresh summer cobs.
By EMILY WEINSTEIN

Slow-Cooked Lamb That Can Stand the Heat
A meaty main, cooked indoors or out, anchors David Tanis’s August menu, book-ended by a light tomato-eggplant salad and an effervescent fruit compote.

A tomato salad and eggplant roasted over an open flame, then served over flatbreads, are an ideal complement to this lamb dish.
By David Tanis
Recipes: Tomato Salad With Smoky Eggplant Flatbread | Slow-Cooked Lamb Shoulder With Green Beans | Summer Fruit Compote

In Search of Mexican Pizza
Taco Bell may have made the name famous, but this pizza — made with leavened dough and traditional Mexican ingredients — has become a genre all its own.

The Chicana pie, topped with tomatillo sauce, mozzarella, black beans and chipotle-spiced chicken, goes into the oven at Rosario’s Pizzeria in South Philadelphia.
By REGAN STEPHENS

24 Freezer-Friendly Recipes to Cook for New (and Tired) Parents
A collection of ready-to-eat meals is almost as good as a full night’s sleep.
By MARGAUX LASKEY

Yotam Ottolenghi Has Made Thousands of Meringues. This Is His Favorite.
There are many variations of the simple, elegant sweet — but pavlova with seasonal fruit is among the best.

By YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
Recipe: Sunset Pavlova With Sweet Vinegar and Rosemary

The Perfect S’more Is Practically Burned and a Little Salty
Potato chips, Nutella and even Peeps can step into this campfire classic, but success lies in its balance of flavors and a healthy char.

In an ideal classic s’more, the marshmallow is oozy all the way through and charred on the outside.
By TANYA SICHYNSKY
Recipe: S’mores

THE POUR
The Problem With Wine Bottles
They may be a perfect container for aging wine, but glass bottles contribute enormously to climate change.
By Eric Asimov

Georges Briguet, Who Presided Over Le Périgord, Dies at 85
The owner of a classic French restaurant in Manhattan for a half-century, he welcomed his well-heeled guests by name, offering them a serene urban oasis on the far East Side.

Georges Briguet in 2015. He turned Le Périgord into a quiet oasis for unhurried New Yorkers and out-of-town regulars of a certain age and class.
By SAM ROBERTS