Oleo Saccharum

If you’ve ever peeled an orange, think of the little spume of mist that bursts out when you break the peel, and how it smells. In some ways it’s even “orangier” than the flesh itself. It’s a shame to throw it away once you’ve eaten the orange. To capture it in a usable form with minimal effort, peel the orange as shallowly as possible (a Y-peeler seems best for this, but a regular potato peeler will do) as the white pith is bitter and has none of the aromatic oil that the surface does. Pile any number of orange (or any citrus) peels in a bowl and cover them in sugar. Leave the mess to sit until the oils from the peels have permeated the sugar and given it a “wet sand” appearance; overnight is good. (You can also accumulate this mixture in the fridge for a week or more while you work your way through your citrus, so you don’t have a bunch of nude oranges lying around making you uncomfortable.) Then add enough hot water to dissolve the sugar and strain the whole thing into the container of your choice. The resulting elixir can be used for beverages or drizzled on baked goods and will keep in the fridge for longer than it’s ever taken me to use it.

Shakshuka

I like to vary my cooking to a nearly pathological extent so I don’t really have “go-to” dishes, but shakshuka is a perfect food. Scales up easily, tastes just as good on the second or third day. Cheap. Great year round — use fresh tomatoes if you got ’em, but it’s wonderful with just canned too. Amenable to improvisation: there’s some spices it usually has but it needs very little spice and you can mix it up and still end up with something good. Add feta or another cheese, or don’t. Add cilantro or parsley or don’t. Goes with bread, goes with pasta, goes with couscous. Probably would be pretty great over potatoes or rice. And of course it’s fucking delicious. A perfect food.

Pesto

Another perfect food is pesto. Sure, the classic Genovese pesto is a very specific thing and pine nuts are expensive. But: instead you can use walnuts. Or sunflower seeds. Or, as appropriate, literally any other kind of nut. And basil isn’t necessarily good year-round: guess what? Use parsley. Use carrot greens. Use fennel fronds. Use arugula. Use cilantro. Use fuckin watercress. Or don’t even use leaves — sun-dried tomato pesto is a thing too. And of course you have as many options for cheese as for the other stuff.

You could argue shakshuka is a meal in itself whereas pesto is not, but really they’re both best over a grain. So: whip up a pound of pasta and make a pesto sauce in literally one minute. Spread it on some bread. Or even mix in some sour cream or yogurt and have a dip for crackers or vegetables! Or don’t and just dip things in it straight! Eat it hot or cold! Pesto! A perfect food!

Jars

I hate when something comes in a nice jar that I want to use for my own purposes when I’ve emptied it and there’s a label stuck to it with adhesive that only comes off in shreds. One trick I’ve found for such labels is to fill the jar with very hot water first. The heat may soften the adhesive (I can’t promise anything, I’m sure there are as many kinds of adhesive as there are kinds of jar) and enable you to peel the label off more easily. I recently achieved this with some jars from Penzey’s Spices, whose labels are absolutely impossible to remove at room temperature.