Lately, something has changed. Lately, I've been reacting to fancy coffee the same way a child reacts to an accidental sip of red wine mistaken for grape juice. I don't know when it happened, but I've devolved into an unexpected love affair with bad coffee. It's not just instant coffee that I hanker for each morning, either, it's any subpar coffee I can get my hands on.

Food is my family's love language, but a bag of dumplings from the freezer connects me to the love of a larger Vietnamese community I rarely see.

Tomie dePaola’s book is full of chaos, bad pasta, and mixed-up lessons about doing the right thing.