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People who know me know I’m not much of a snacker-I like meals too damn much to ruin my appetite for them-and yet when I read this couple of sentences in Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal I slapped my own forehead and felt like a judgmental jerk for not seeing the obvious about a good, social snack, not the half granola bar in your desk drawer but rather the sort of nibble you serve to friends when they come over and gobble up yourself when you are the friend being hosted.

“Offer something small to eat as soon as anyone enters your house,” writes Adler. “It needn’t be sophisticated.” To her, that’s radishes or crudité, olives baked with lemon peel, simple crostini made from stale bread, “or toasted nuts, or halved soft-boiled eggs sprinkled with salt or topped with slivered anchovy.”

And why do this?

You will have provided the greatest hospitality you can, acknowledging the quiet gurglings we all have and never bother to tell anyone about*: we’re supposed to be hungry three times a day. When you insist whoever crosses your threshold is hungry for an olive all of the time, you permit hungers outside the thrice daily ones prescribed.

*This might in fact apply to people who don’t discuss the state of their stomachs with their sisters on g-chat.

It’s just so warm, this sentiment. We feed people not just to assuage hunger, but to make friends and loved ones feel good.

As for that toasted nuts suggestion, I’m all aboard. But while plain toasted nuts, especially pecans and cashews and hazelnuts, will delight even dietarily restricted guests, I think we can do better a lot of the time. By tossing the nuts with two Tabasco hot sauces, these toasted nuts have a ton of flavor. One sauce is fruity habanero, the other smoky chipotle. The combination might ignite your mouth, but as soon as the flames subside, you’ll be reaching for the next portion of this very good, very addictive snack. If you’re hosting a barbecue this Memorial Day weekend, don’t forget to offer some small bite before you throw the burgers on the grill. It’s the hospitable thing to do.

This post is sponsored by Tabasco as part of TABASCO® Tastemakers program. You’ll see more recipes in the coming months, too. All opinions, as always, are my own. Thanks for supporting the sponsors who keep BGSK delicious!

Summer is the season of eating outdoors, but that doesn’t mean that city dwellers can’t make great barbecue inside, in our little, backyard-less apartments. In fact, the oven is a seriously great tool for turning whole pork butts into the best possible pulled pork sandwiches. I’ve got a guide up today on First We Feast that shows you just how to do this. Check it out here.

One of the oddities about doing the big girl/small kitchen life in New York City is how long you live as a renter. Though it feels like being socked in the gut when you think too deeply about real estate value vis-à-vis ever growing up and owning an apartment, there’s a lot to be said for renting once you get into the rhythm and find a good landlord. You have less responsibility, less stress, less fear of commitment in your daily life. This can be a good thing.

Of course, then again we renters have to face a lack of flexibility in decoration. We’re not going to tear down our walls or redo our kitchens. And so we make do with what we have (which is really not so bad!), and we dream.

Except, honestly, I never dreamed all that much about my perfect small kitchen. I’ve worked in studio kitchens and suburban kitchens, my mom’s kitchen and strangers’ kitchens. At the end of the day, I like my space best, even though it’s small and hardly customized to me. So, when it came to envisioning the perfect small kitchen, I needed some help with the dreaming part, not to mention the design.

Pairing your book with your trip is an important task. Even when my backpack is stuffed and I know I won’t have oodles of time to read because I’m going to be visiting every church in Barcelona, I have to pack at least a mini bookshelf. Although racing through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy while sunning (ok, shading) on the beach may be an impossible combination to beat on the life satisfaction meter, one of my favorite ways to forge a successful match, in general, is to overlap a book’s setting or subject with the place where I’m heading.

Here are a few of my favorite combinations from past trips:

A flyover-state road trip + Ian Frazier’s Great Plains (to be supplemented with a visit to South Dakota and a read through On the Rez)

A bike around Provence + Peter Mayles’ A Year in Provence (Provence, 1970 would be a good one too)

The Sacred Valley in Peru + Mark Adams’ Turn Right at Macchu Pichu

Morocco + Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House

A couple weeks ago, I was collecting possibilities for our recent vacation to France, Spain, and Portugal (about which more soon) when I saw I’d missed the mark in terms of locality. The book I was already reading took place in North Carolina and the one on deck would transport me to Dubai. But then, at the last minute, I borrowed an audiobook from the Brooklyn Public Library, another Peter Mayles one but this time a novel called The Marseille Caper. Halfway through the actual journey, we boarded our train from Barcelona to Marseille, and I pressed play.

I am back! The last six weeks have taken me on three trips in a series of rejuvenating, wonder-filled days, and I feel refreshed, ready to dive into the big projects I’ve cleared my schedule for. Travel holds a different purpose for all of us, I think, but to me, being elsewhere presents the opportunity to observe how other people live their lives. I like architecture, art, and museums; I love food; I like biking and walking and sipping wine at lunch. But most of all, I want to watch the people, gauge their routines, and take in the character of a place.

And maybe that’s what’s most refreshing to me, the pop of the bubble of our own habits and outlooks with the reminder that there are so many ways to go about a day, including a whole lot of hanging out in outdoor cafes and squares in the evening, the way people do from Cuba to Marseille. We don’t have enough of that.

Coming home, of course, means a return to routine, and a lot of that is downright good no matter what everyone else around the world is doing. Cooking again is especially good. Last night, our first night back, as we struggled to stay awake, I made my signature braised broccoli with pasta, a dish that’s less pretty than this one but that takes cues from the same everyday need for something simple and rustic that also contains plenty of green. I’ll share that recipe here with you one day-it’s a great one, if ugly. But first, this bowl of slurpy cool ramen, which I made before we left. Half inspired by pesto pasta, half by ginger-scallion noodles, the concoction is rich, bright, spicy, and smooth.

I’m not a freezer hoarder, but I do keep Stonefire naan and pizza crusts in there for last-minute dinners like barbecue chicken pizza. But the convenience of these quick-to-reheat breads doesn’t mean they’re limited to desperate weeknights. On special occasions, the naan and the crusts come in handy too. This dish makes the most of two particularly special ingredients, smoked salmon and salmon roe, to turn mini naan into gorgeous, fancy bases for a Mother’s Day lunch or appetizer.

Growing up, Mother’s Day wasn’t a huge holiday for us (every day is mother’s day, says my mom), but if we did end up seeing my grandma, we probably ate smoked salmon, as we did on almost any holiday. While my grandma picked out only the best nova-thinly sliced, not too salty-she was agnostic about the vessel we ate it on. We had bagels, pumpernickel slices, and flatbread crackers.

That’s why I don’t feel even a little weird that I’ve stretched salmon’s traditional bagel and cream cheese pairing here using inspiration from Indian cuisine. Instead of bagel or pumpernickel, we’ve got warm naan. In place of cream cheese, a thick raita tweaked with horseradish. And to finish things off so this is fancy enough for a Mother’s Day celebration or a cocktail party anytime, I garnished with salmon roe, dill, and chives. This should all be close enough to the classic for you to imagine, easily, how good everything tastes together.

Nothing fancy here! On the other hand, I recently assembled a green rice bowl with about sixteen elements. When I’ve been away from the kitchen for a while. I often want to get all the dishes and cutting boards dirty. This has been a spring season of travel, but when I’ve been home in the interludes my desire to cook has swelled so immensely, the kitchen time I’ve put in might even out with a regular month.

That impulse eases, sometimes after an accompanying closet reorganization, and I get back to simple food, food that bucks all the weird …