5 delicious stay-cations for Labor Day weekend

What's more luxurious than a long weekend stretching ahead of you with nothing to do but hang out with friends, relax and cook something delicious? That's the beauty of a stay-cation. And when you can travel somewhere exotic right in your own kitchen (or on your patio!), that's even more delectable. Here are 5 delicious ideas.

Cross a virtual border

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Fry up some carnitas. Whip up some tortillas. Make a batch of guac. Squeeze a lime and make a margarita. Freeze up some strawberry-mezcal ice cream. Have a taco party, baby! 

Fly to South Korea

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Make a batch of easy kimchi. Flip through a new Korean cooking comic book. Chill with some cold spicy noodles. Discover the joys of banchan. 

A fling in sunny Provence

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Compose a salade niçoise.  Assemble a pissaladière. Devil a duck leg.  Showcase an orchard's worth of summer fruit on a tart. 

Three days and two nights in Tunisia

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Take a dip in the medina. Visit the coastal town of Bizerte, all-inclusive. Conjure a couscous. Savor a cardamom-scented sweet. 

Beijing without the smog

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Indulge in a cult fried rice extravaganza. Slice into a gorgeous, crisp-skinned lacquered roast chicken. Wiggle around in fabulous wontons. Fire up the wok and revel in baby bok choy. 

Or perhaps you prefer one of these other fabulous culinary voyages:

Wherever you wind up, don't forget to send us a postcard . . . .

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xoxox

Happy border-free Labor Day!

A new cookbook, 'Soup for Syria,' aims to help food relief efforts for Syrian refugees

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Yesterday I was thrilled to find a review copy of a new cookbook, one that will appeal to just about every border-free cook I know, in my mailbox.  Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate our Shared Humanity collects recipes by Alice Waters, Yotam Ottlenghi and Sami Tamini, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Mark Bittman, Greg Malouf, Anthony Bourdain and many more. All of them are for soup, and proceeds of the book go to the Soup for Syria project, a humanitarian campaign that aims to ease the suffering of 3.8 million refugees by delivering food and foodstuffs to refugee camps. 

A photograph of a girl in a refugee camp faces a recipe for gondi by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, a Beirut-based food writer and photographer, collected the recipes for the collection and photographed the people who are living in the camps. The project started when she was visiting a camp just 45 minutes from her home in the Bekaa Valley "where Syrian families crowd into plastic tents and children die of cold and hunger," as she writes in her introduction. "I try to sleep and ignore this reality, but it's impossible. I am not immune to the suffering of others."

The photos are beautiful; the people in them – particularly the children – are gorgeous. 

And the recipes, many of them simple, look wonderful. I've already put Post-its on a bunch I want to make (of course I'll share them with you once I do!). I have my eye on a recipe from Ottolenghi and Tamimi for Gondi, a Persian chicken soup with dumplings made from ground chicken and chickpea flour. Greg Malouf's recipe for fennel soup with lemon and cinnamon looks great, too. As does Paula Wolfert's recipe for lentil and Swiss chard soup (it's vegan!). Soup seems just the thing to cook for such a cause, as it's nourishing and nurturing.

Of course I'll share the soups with you once I make them, but thought you'd want to know about the project right away so you can help. The $30 book can be ordered through the Soup for Syria website.  The site also offers other ways to get involved in the cause, such as hosting a soup party where you can sell the book or take orders for it.